All things wrong with antinatalism
After a couple of years of spotty discussions on anti-natalism I've decided to combine some of the points I made against it over the years. The anti-natalist position is, paraphrased, that living causes suffering and that therefore it's better for people to never have been born.
The position and metaphysical limitations
I will address a position of anti-natalism that I think makes at least some sense, to avoid the metaphysical nonsense of "people never having been born, being better off than if they had been born". I consider that obvious nonsense because we are comparing nothing with actual, or possible, people. Since non-existing persons are basically nothing, we cannot ascribe properties to them.
We cannot imagine a person's suffering "as if" they don't exist because that is to assign properties to "nothing" (it's akin to saying something exists that doesn't exist, which is a contradiction). We can imagine a person's suffering "as if" they do exist. And if they would be born into a situation of abject poverty, where the good does not outweigh their suffering or because of a biological defect that cannot be treated, we understand that "poverty" or that "defect" would cause unacceptable suffering and we should not have a child under those circumstances. What we are comparing then is a possibility of existence with other examples of possible lives lived and we find that possibility unacceptable. But this is fundamentally different from saying this "non-existent" child is better off never having been born because when we talk that way, it is neither a child nor a person nor capable of having any properties, because it is nothing.
It is then the following position of anti-natalism that I suggest has some measure of logical rigour to it:
that any possible persons, who will suffer more than is outweighed by the good they will experience, outnumber people who will suffer less than is outweighed by the good they will experience. Or in short form "unhappy persons outnumber happy persons".
A question of causality
If living entails suffering (e.g. philosophical pessimism) then living doesn't cause suffering. Much in the same way that me killing a person doesn't cause his death, killing entails death. Or if I enter a room at noon, I don't cause someone to enter the room at noon. And water, by its mere existence, doesn't cause itself to be wet.
So if the position is, suffering is intrinsic to life then it must necessarily fail as an argument because living then does not cause suffering and the ethical question becomes moot.
If the argument is that it is not intrinsic to life , then it becomes necessary to examine the causal chain. And then you run into problems because living is never a sufficient condition for suffering, merely a necessary condition.
The fact that all living things suffer at some point in time, is not a valid argument to conclude that living is a sufficient condition for suffering so this does not resolve the causal chain. A disease causes suffering, being run over by a car causes suffering, a break up causes suffering etc. etc. Suffering is unique and particular and for an important part based on how a person experiences it and remembers it.
A question of control
We must therefore necessarily conclude that the suffering we should worry about from an ethical point of view is the suffering that is not entailed by living but is unique and particular. Then for the anti-natalist to continue to have a point it must be the case that there are currently more unhappy persons than happy persons because all the unique and particular circumstances cause a superfluous amount of suffering.
However, now that we know that these circumstances are not intrinsic to life, it follows that we have some measure of control over them. We imagine that poorer people are unhappier, so we alleviate poverty. We imagine disease causes suffering, we treat diseases. Even if unhappy persons currently outnumber happy persons, it appears to me that we can control for circumstances to maximise happy persons over unhappy persons. It is, after all, not a lottery when we choose to have a child. See also Nordic exceptionalism with respect to happiness.
So the solution is not to retreat from society but to engage it by taking care of our fellow man. Give to charity, get a job helping others, etc. In short, the only moral act here is to support the creation of societies that brings forth happy persons as opposed to unhappy ones.
The reductio ad absurdums
Finally, two unexamined points that occured to me.
If living causes suffering we should be killing everything on the planet and murder would be a just act.
If the anti-natalist plan is succesful, there would be no moral actors around to judge the world to be a better place, leading to another metaphysical nonsense comparison between what we have now and nothing - or at least a world where there are no moral actors to experience anything and have an opinion on the matter. Saying such a world is better than this one is meaningless.
The position and metaphysical limitations
I will address a position of anti-natalism that I think makes at least some sense, to avoid the metaphysical nonsense of "people never having been born, being better off than if they had been born". I consider that obvious nonsense because we are comparing nothing with actual, or possible, people. Since non-existing persons are basically nothing, we cannot ascribe properties to them.
We cannot imagine a person's suffering "as if" they don't exist because that is to assign properties to "nothing" (it's akin to saying something exists that doesn't exist, which is a contradiction). We can imagine a person's suffering "as if" they do exist. And if they would be born into a situation of abject poverty, where the good does not outweigh their suffering or because of a biological defect that cannot be treated, we understand that "poverty" or that "defect" would cause unacceptable suffering and we should not have a child under those circumstances. What we are comparing then is a possibility of existence with other examples of possible lives lived and we find that possibility unacceptable. But this is fundamentally different from saying this "non-existent" child is better off never having been born because when we talk that way, it is neither a child nor a person nor capable of having any properties, because it is nothing.
It is then the following position of anti-natalism that I suggest has some measure of logical rigour to it:
that any possible persons, who will suffer more than is outweighed by the good they will experience, outnumber people who will suffer less than is outweighed by the good they will experience. Or in short form "unhappy persons outnumber happy persons".
A question of causality
If living entails suffering (e.g. philosophical pessimism) then living doesn't cause suffering. Much in the same way that me killing a person doesn't cause his death, killing entails death. Or if I enter a room at noon, I don't cause someone to enter the room at noon. And water, by its mere existence, doesn't cause itself to be wet.
So if the position is, suffering is intrinsic to life then it must necessarily fail as an argument because living then does not cause suffering and the ethical question becomes moot.
If the argument is that it is not intrinsic to life , then it becomes necessary to examine the causal chain. And then you run into problems because living is never a sufficient condition for suffering, merely a necessary condition.
The fact that all living things suffer at some point in time, is not a valid argument to conclude that living is a sufficient condition for suffering so this does not resolve the causal chain. A disease causes suffering, being run over by a car causes suffering, a break up causes suffering etc. etc. Suffering is unique and particular and for an important part based on how a person experiences it and remembers it.
A question of control
We must therefore necessarily conclude that the suffering we should worry about from an ethical point of view is the suffering that is not entailed by living but is unique and particular. Then for the anti-natalist to continue to have a point it must be the case that there are currently more unhappy persons than happy persons because all the unique and particular circumstances cause a superfluous amount of suffering.
However, now that we know that these circumstances are not intrinsic to life, it follows that we have some measure of control over them. We imagine that poorer people are unhappier, so we alleviate poverty. We imagine disease causes suffering, we treat diseases. Even if unhappy persons currently outnumber happy persons, it appears to me that we can control for circumstances to maximise happy persons over unhappy persons. It is, after all, not a lottery when we choose to have a child. See also Nordic exceptionalism with respect to happiness.
So the solution is not to retreat from society but to engage it by taking care of our fellow man. Give to charity, get a job helping others, etc. In short, the only moral act here is to support the creation of societies that brings forth happy persons as opposed to unhappy ones.
The reductio ad absurdums
Finally, two unexamined points that occured to me.
If living causes suffering we should be killing everything on the planet and murder would be a just act.
If the anti-natalist plan is succesful, there would be no moral actors around to judge the world to be a better place, leading to another metaphysical nonsense comparison between what we have now and nothing - or at least a world where there are no moral actors to experience anything and have an opinion on the matter. Saying such a world is better than this one is meaningless.
Comments (1338)
By whose standard? Where do we get this knowledge of whether the next child will be happy or unhappy?
Quoting Benkei
Not exactly. As you said:
Quoting Benkei
And this applies even if literally 99% of the planet is happy. You cannot use a general statistic in a particular case. If 99% of the planet is more happy than unhappy that does not entail that there is a 99% chance the next child will be more happy than unhappy, you have to look at particulars, and that is impossible.
And even if you don't, that 1% chance poses a problem. What justifies you taking that 1% chance risk for someone else?
Quoting Benkei
Unless killing is a form of harm as well, which it is considered to be by most, antinatalist or not. Also you said:
Quoting Benkei
But here you are arguing as if living causes suffering.
Quoting Benkei
Antinatalits aren't striving for a better world. They just don't want to risk hurting people. Which is why some adopt.
You make the whole antinatalist approach sound as if it is about weighing risks, and choosing adoption in preference to procreation. However, when I have got into discussions over antinatalism the whole argument is very narrow.
It tends to make sweeping emotional appeals about suffering, leading to the belief that it would be better to not having been born at all, with an overriding conclusion that it is wrong morally to bring children into the world.
Suffering can lead to enlightenment, to a higher awareness of oneself and the world. I wouldn't say all suffering does, but some of it at least.
Difficulty isn't inherently negative. From a limited point of view it appears as negative. But from a higher point of view it enables positive things. If there was no difficulty, there would be no such thing as courage, adventure, discovery, achievement, the greater the difficulty the more positive they are.
And so by seeing suffering and difficulty as not entirely negative, or rather as less negative than usually thought, we're led to the idea that there is more positive than negative in existence.
There are beings who suffer most of their life here, but it is assumed that their existence begins when they are born here and ends when they die here, maybe their existence as a whole is very positive, and the suffering they experience here will be positive in some way for them elsewhere.
At that point the antinatalist will say since we can't know for sure better not take the risk to bring a being here, and the antinatalist is free to not take the risk, and the natalist will remain free to take it, and the game of life will continue, potentially in a more and more positive direction overall.
Your very existence risks hurting people, yet you're taking that risk all the time. An antinatalist risks hurting a child he adopts. So why take that risk if the antinatalist can't know for sure?
Then it's a bad argument.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I just said that some antinatalists adopt. I don't mean to say that all antinatalists must adopt.
Because I am part of this calculation too. The "expected value" of the harm I would cause unto others is much lower than the "expected value" of the harm I would cause myself by killing myself. So I continue to exist. You have to consider alternatives.
Quoting leo
If he risks hurting them worse than the orphanage they're in would then he shouldn't be adopting, agreed. But that's why orphanages don't just give out kids to anybody. You have to consider alternatives.
And unlike in birth, in adoption a child consents to getting adopted (after 12).
Perhaps what I am saying about antinatalism sounds like a sweeping statement and a bad argument. But the whole argument that life results in suffering and that this means that it would be better to have not been born at all is a bad argument. It has a lack of imaginative scope around the human response to suffering.
But you can't calculate that expected value. Like the butterfly effect, it is possible that you do something apparently innocent, which eventually ends up causing enormous harm in the world. How do you put a probability on that? It's possible that the act of killing yourself would cause less harm. But you can't put a probability on that either.
So in the face of the unknown what do you do? You do your best. And that's how natalists see it too. They are faced with the unknown. But they do their best.
For either side. In the same way you can argue that my existing risks harming others severely I may argue that my death risks harming others severely.
Quoting leo
It is also possible that I stop this. And I cannot stop this if I'm dead.
Quoting leo
Exactly. So I do my best.
Quoting leo
But for natalists it is not unknown. They know for a fact that having a child will risk harming them. And they also know for a fact that that decision need not be made. It is not like the case where there are two alternatives both of which cannot be precisely calculated which you just cited, no. Here there are two cases:
1- Take an unjustified risk with someone else's life (risk of harm)
2- Don't. (no risk of harm)
Critical misunderstanding. Antinatalism isn't about how life is bad all the time. Antinatalism is about how the risk of causing a bad life is justification to saying that having children is wrong.
In everyday life we never make decisions that may harm someone without their consent when a neutral alternative is available EVEN if we think those decisions would benefit them. I don't go around buying you things with your money (even if I am trying to help) without asking you, because there is an alternative where I simply don't. I don't go around changing people's internet companies (even if I am trying to help) without asking them, because there is an alternative where I simply don't. I'm not coming up with the best examples right now but you see the point.
What other situations in life is it the case that:
1- There are two options, one which can cause harm and one which doesn't take the risk.
2- Consent is unavailable.
3- We pick the option that can cause harm.
I am not sure I can agree on that formulation. For possibly some types of utilitarian-based antinatalists, this might be acceptable. Rather, they would say, it is best to maximize the minimum amount of harm (negative utilitarianism) which might default to antinatalist conclusion. However, one doesn't need this formulation. Rather, one that is closer to my stance is that it is wrong to force unnecessary impositions on people. Recently, I have been using the term "dealing with" situations (I'll just call DWS for short since I'll probably bring it up a lot). To force someone absolutely into DWS, is wrong to do. Absolutely here is defined as not needing to experience a DWS instrumentally to get a more desired state, but simply put people in DWS unnecessarily and by force.
An example would be if I forced you into a game that you just had to play with no escape. The game lasted a lifetime, you cannot escape except through death, and you have to overcome minor and major challenges in the game. The game is also complex enough that it allows for unexpected contingencies to befall you. So, on top of the known struggles to overcome in the game, there are unknown probabilistic contingencies that could befall you that you would have to deal with as well. I may paternalistically say, "This game is good because you get to experience overcoming challenges and experience positive experiences". Of course, the person before this game did not need it in the first place (in the case of life, there was no life before life to need to live as you point out).
Quoting Benkei
There are several ways to answer this. The easiest way is to simply say that until all causal chains of suffering are worked out, it is not worth risking that suffering onto someone else. If we knew the world was a utopia without suffering, then we are in the clear. Otherwise, as you point out, we don't know every avenue of the causal chain, so precisely the reason to not impose the causes onto someone else. One need not know which cause to know that all causes are not resolved. Even if we are to weight some causes as "not as bad as others", there are some really bad causes out there that are indeed bad.
However, that's not even a main argument. My main argument against this reasoning is in regards to the idea that suffering is unique. While I agree, each instance of a particular brand of suffering is suffered individually by humans, certainly there are categories that can be distilled down that are well known sources of suffering. Further, I do agree with philosopher's like Schopenhauer that life isn't just instances of contingent harms (that is to say situational, probabilistic, contextual, etc.) but rather there are necessary forms of suffering as well. Necessary here meaning, sort of "baked into life". These baked in forms of sufferings are overlooked for the more immediate (I'd characterize as Western) ideas of suffering (physical torture, hunger, disasters, disease, illness, emotional anguish, etc.). However, I do take seriously that we are imposed upon to "deal with" survival, finding comfort, and existence itself (overcoming one's own boredom). These are forms of suffering in the form of deprivation. There is always a lack of something to be overcome. Now add the usual (Western) forms of contingent harm that we must deal with and overcome and the bigger picture of an existence of both necessary and contingent harms comes into focus. All of these are DWS imposed upon the person born.
Quoting Benkei
Again, since it is not my position that contingent harms are the only harms, and further, even without the belief in necessary harm, we have not even been able to untangle the causes of contingent harms (even the worst of them), it would still be an imposition.
Quoting Benkei
Of course, I do not think this is an either or. You can be both an antinatalist and do these things you mention. But certainly doing these things does not negate the imposition caused by being born in the first place.
Quoting Benkei
As far as the first part, one of the main reasons antinatalists are against birth is the idea that there is no possible consent, so this is an important part of most antinatalist claims. Certainly if consent is a factor for birth, it is also a factor for death.
Now, as far as your idea bout no moral actors, this I find not a good argument. There's two ways to address this..
1) Let's say it is almost 100% certain a baby that would be born would get tortured. Your reasoning would conclude, "Well, the baby would have to be born in order for there to be a person in the world to be tortured, so considerations of the baby being born don't matter until they are born". Clearly, that is faulty reasoning to say that the baby needs to be born so that torture exists so that we can say torture should not exist.
2) No suffering in the world means no people who suffer, nor people deprived of happiness. The instant a person is put into the world, the antinatalist position becomes valid. You do not need people to exist in order to recognize that the "good" of not existing is taking place. All you need is the fact that if someone does exist, the position becomes valid at that point. We can have millions of years of nothingness, and then this position would be sort of "activated". Once something exists where suffering would take place, then it becomes valid.
Good write-up. I would add that the core notion that any risk of suffering ought to be either mitigated or completely prevented is, on closer examination, a very dubious proposition. You allude to this in the reductio ad absurdum at the end of your post.
The anti-natalist position necessarily treats suffering as an absolute evil. The idea is borrowed from standard utilitarianism. But utilitarian positions are usually concerned with relative suffering for a given number of moral subjects. This has it's own problems, but it can at least plausibly refer to the preferences of those subjects to choose the path that entails less suffering as the source of the moral imperative.
Anti-natalism, on the other hand, doesn't have any such basis. There is nothing here to give the supposed imperative any weight. There are no subjects to benefit, and the actual addressee doesn't even feature in the consideration. It could only possibly be grounded in some divine principle, and that is in effect how the argument treats it. Which is also the reason why the anti-natalist position can imagine a world without moral subjects to nevertheless be a moral good.
Quoting khaled
But the decision does need to be made. Because not having children is also a decision. If you're going to treat a potential existence as a moral subject, you have to do so consistently for both options. So it's not:
Quoting khaled
It's rather:
1. Bring a life into existence and risk it suffering
2. Deny that life it's existence.
Every act in life involves some degree of risk. To say that preventing people from harm by not allowing them to exist is overloaded use of the word 'harm'. Speaking of the consent of non existent people is questionable. We could argue that by preventing them from existing we deny their capacity to make decisions, although I know what your answer is, as you argue that it is too late.
I am not saying this I have absolutely no sympathy with your beliefs about questions of bringing people into the world but the conclusions are two simple. We can find ways of transforming suffering. think it would be worth you going back to the original discussion by @Benkei because it gives a full description of the problems of the antinatalist view, and see if you can challenge that analysis.
But I don't see a problem here. See what I said to Benkei here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
This only makes sense if you presume there exists some divine logos which is the source of morality and also capable of recognising possible states of "good" and "evil".
Otherwise, the phrase "You do not need people to exist in order to recognize that the "good" of not existing is taking place" just doesn't make any sense.
But it does. Only in situations where someone is capable of suffering, does the position become valid.
The term "valid" usually refers to the structure of an argument. You're obviously not using it that way, the problem is I don't know what you mean by it.
Morality is a practical consideration that arises when moral subjects interact. Outside such an interaction, there are no moral judgements. They're not somehow inherent in the state of the universe. To assume moral states of affairs is to treat morality as some object, like a physical law, which can be empirically described.
Thanks for putting that together.
I also think the whole “preventing suffering” argument is lacking because it could be used as an excuse for the prevention of a variety of ills, to prevent greed or bad gas for instance. One could just as easily say it prevents any number of good things, too, even the exact opposite of suffering. That they present the prevention of life as a prevention of suffering suggests some degree of bad faith. We should not let them pretend that life is a one-to-one ratio with suffering.
But we know for a fact that any decision we make risks harming others, whether they are alive now or will be in the future. And we can't foresee all the consequences of the decisions we make, using again the analogy of the butterfly effect.
In your example, if the person decides not to have a child, this may have unintended consequences more harmful to existing people and to future children than if the person had decided to have the child.
So really, antinatalist or not, the best we can do is do our best, and neither the antinatalist nor the natalist knows for sure which decision will end up being the best one.
But you have a great regard for the well-being of others and that's commendable, the world would be a better place if more people didn't only focus on themselves.
You can argue that your next child is going to cure cancer. But you can also argue that your next child is Hitler 2 electric boogaloo. So it makes no sense to me to argue in terms of the potential of the child in the first place.
And I would argue that even if you somehow knew that your next child would do something great (which is impossible) it is the right decision not to have them. That it would be right to have them would imply that the suffering of the child doesn’t matter, as long as he alleviates the suffering of others which I find is a disgusting idea. If I knew my next child would cure cancer but also that he’d suffer severely during his life I wouldn’t have them. In my view: You do not have a duty to help people, but you do have a duty not to harm them.
I don't think the argument that living logically entails suffering is one anyone reasonably makes. It seems a strawman. Surely one can envision a life without suffering, even if such a life has never been lived. I would think the philosophical pessimist would only need to commit to the proposition that all lives that have ever been lived and likely every life that will ever be lived will be filled with suffering; therefore we ought not propagate life. It'd be like me saying that cold medicine tastes bad. It might be the case that all cold medicine tastes bad, but it's not required that in order for the medicine to be cold medicine that it must taste bad. It's just the case that in every case it does.
Quoting Benkei
This doesn't do justice to distinguishing between happiness and pleasure and so we are left with suffering being the counter to happiness. This becomes more clear when you provide examples of how we ought to find the sources of suffering so that we can eliminate them so that we can increase happiness. If I suffer from hunger, I'm sure I will be happier if I am fed, but I don't know you've made any real progress toward making me happy in the holistic sense typically needed to truly declare me happy just because you tended to my needs.
What this means is that happiness is not alleviation of suffering and that suffering is not incompatible with happiness. In fact, considerable wisdom, growth, perspective, and gratitude arise from suffering, all of which are traits of someone who is happy.
Quoting Benkei
I see this as a stab at creating a formula for societal harmony, but I don't see it as eliminating suffering entirely. I also see this as only half the solution for creating societal harmony. The half you provide is that those who have more should be generous and giving. The other half of this would therefore be that those who have less should be humble and gracious. This societal harmony is achieved I would think only upon recognition that everyone is both of these halves.
My point being that I don't see suffering as demonic, devoid of all light, joyless, and evil. I see suffering as a necessary component needed to fully achieving one's full potential. This obviously means that I'm placing an intrinsic goodness to life itself and its promotion and development. I'm not entirely sure you can avoid pessimism about life if you're not able to posit the intrinsic value of life.
What this means is:
1. Although it is not logically required that every life have suffering, every life ever lived has had suffering.
2. Suffering is required for happiness.
3. Life is intrinsically good and worth living even if one experiences no happiness or only suffering because life is the end, not the means for anything higher.
The sense I get from this is that you somehow imagine the perfect life to be some form of solitary existence in a state of bliss, which I find kinda odd. Isn't the point of living in a community to help others? To imagine duties as only negative is to imagine yourself to be untied from everyone around you, which of course you are not.
Tangential to the topic, I know.
Jack Cummins makes an important point about anti-natalism:
Quoting Jack Cummins
I see that here lies the motive for all the anti-natalist nonsense as it's a way to give for some a moral reasoning for not having offspring and to get a chance to have a whack at those institutions promoting natalism, starting from ones like the Catholic church. Perhaps it's like a response of a perceived hostility of the traditional society which universally and even quite logically values children, does see in positive light that people have children, especially at an age when birthrates are universally going down. For those who cannot or do not want children, other's emphasis on children and stories just how wonderful and important they are seems in our highly sensitive age as a veiled hostility against those without children, especially if they could have them.
I haven't followed the topic, but I guess there might be a proponent or two of anti-natalism, but likely it's debated just as an interesting philosophical argument.
Of course, one reason might be is just to annoy conservatives and those holding traditional views. At least looking at the length of the discussion of this bizarre concept, they have succeeded in their trolling.
You'll just get stuck on the causality issue any way so it doesn't matter how you formulate it. The main point of the metaphysical part is that we need to be sure we are comparing something with something and not nothing with something, to avoid the contradiction that something exists that doesn't exist, etc.
There's also some issues with the loaded language of "force" and "impositions" which are assumptions but since it doesn't matter for the end result I'll leave that as it is.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We don't need to know the avenue of all causal chains because it's obvious that living is not a sufficient condition. Just being alive doesn't cause suffering. If your point is it does, then suffering is intrinsic to life
and therefore an ethical moot point because living doesn't cause suffering if it's intrinsic. We should be dealing with the proximate and sufficient conditions for suffering to resolve it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I find philosophical pessimism totally irrelevant to this discussion as pointed out before. If suffering is intrinsic to life than living doesn't cause suffering. It reveals a misunderstanding of what causality is.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't ask for consent of animals to breed them, to kill them or to eat them. Ethically totally fine. Yet the idea of killing every animal on the face of the earth seems to be an issue.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Probably because you misunderstood the point.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quite obvious this is not what I said nor does it follow from what I said.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But your "no suffering the world means no people who suffer" actually means "nothing who suffer". You're just camouflaging bad metaphysics and bad language. Of course we need moral actors to exist. Without moral actors to experience "good" there is no good or bad. If we are in a position where we cannot ascribe propositions such as "people are suffering" or "people are not suffering" then the absence of suffering is not a moral good because it's not enjoyed by anyone.
Quoting Hanover
These arguments usually don't start that way until you raise the issue of causality and then all of a sudden life equals suffering because no life is without suffering, etc. etc. So it does come up and I just highlight that the argument goes nowhere. Of course, there are more roads to Rome and more ways to skin a pig to reach the same point.
Quoting Hanover
I don't disagree. I'm constraining myself to how antinatalist often argue their case to hopefully demonstrate that the philosophy is inconsistent and therefore wrong.
Quoting Hanover
Good point. It's my priviliged upbringing and position that probably got the better of me here and as you know I'm devoid of humility and grace so at the same time I have no clue what you're talking about.
Quoting Hanover
There's certainly a value to philosophical pessimism. I don't believe in progress as much as the next because of philosophical pessimism. I think we're all basically barbarians and that the relative peacefulness of Western societies is only a very thin veil of civilisation that is easily disturbed. I don't consider Holocausts or genocides unthinkable or as something that will never happen again. I don't believe we've fundamentally evolved morally speaking. In fact, I agree with most conservatives that there's a lot of "happiness" eroding due to social and technological pressures. I disagree with them how these should be dealt with. I think social media, deep fakes and the information apocalypse will make the world worse off by... a lot, and we've only seen the beginning with the latest (further) fragmentation of US society.
But I also see that getting a pandemic under control requires us all to work together and that nothing we do is done without the context of what came before and what exists as a society around us. Even this thread would never exist without a disagreeable anti-natalist. So in the end I believe in the Hegelian aufhebung, that we will find a way upward in these conflicting forces... it's just going to get messy.
Please just don't. It hurts my brain.
I have to disagree on both counts. If someone is drowning - and since I'm an expert swimmer - I should safe them. I doubt anyone would deny this moral duty. Similarly, I might have to harm someone to protect either them or others from something worse. Harming a criminal in the act is perfectly fine. Jabbing a vaccine needle in a child is morally right.
But this is of course not your point. The point here is whether you're treating the child as a means to an end by accepting his suffering for a greater good and whether that's ok. I'd say, it depends. Have you played The Last of Us?
Okay, what does that change if it is inherent in living?
Quoting Benkei
I believe this to be the crux of your argument. I believe I answered these when I said that your idea here seems to indicate that if a baby was born into torture, then it would not be a legitimate move to prevent that birth for the sake of the future child. Its the same with impositions. You don't need someone born at x time present, for y time future to make a difference for a person that will be born.
Quoting Benkei
That's fine, being born causes it then.
Quoting Benkei
I mean vegans would say otherwise to that first part. I'm not as concerned with the animal part. I think that once an animal has the ability to deliberate about its own existence, this becomes more relevant. I don't really want this to be a debate between human-centric and sentient-centric antinatalism. That would just become a side debate that wouldn't add to your main point.
Quoting Benkei
But yet it seems to be what your talking about with comparing nothing with something. It directly contradicts that.
Quoting Benkei
So how is this not about the baby being tortured argument? There is a state of affairs where no being is suffering. Once the capacity exists for a state of affairs where there could be suffering, then one should prevent the conditions for which suffering occurs.
Even if we grant that there is only contingent suffering, as I stated earlier, there is not sufficient ability to prevent the causes of suffering. It would be like building the airplane as you are flying it, since we have not prevented it beforehand, and people just have to deal with the consequences after-the-fact.
Also, you seem to not account for not agreeing with the conditions for life. There can be no possibility that the person born can agree to the impositions that life presents. Why should we say, "Well people should accept life's impositions (DWS) because they must exist in order to realize they don't like aspects of the imposition". Again, we are back to that argument.. It seems to go back to that.
It seems Benkei, you want to drop the idea of future states. It's like the future tense "Will happen" means nothing here. You keep thinking that is an illegitimate move when it isn't. We do it all the time. It matters not, if no actual human exists, as long as we know that a future human can exist. That would be denying cause and effect in itself, the very thing you are accusing antinatalists of doing.
What does that even mean? There is so much metaphysical weirdness here. Even if you were to prove the Nietzschean notion that there is "higher meaning" in suffering, what kind of paternalistic BS is this to impose known suffering on another person because you think there's higher meaning?
It's like natalists/optimists think that we have gained no understanding of life since the dawn of man and that these are not sufficient to know what we can be preventing. "OH, we never know what can happen.. Ya never know!!" It's like people who rely on arguments that have no sense of history. We do have a notion of the impositions that will be imposed on the future person.
I would. If you didn't get them there you don't owe them saving. At least not as much as you owe them not getting them there.
Quoting Benkei
That's not "harm" as I use it. As I use it, it means that you will have a net negative effect. A vaccine does not have a net negative effect.
Quoting Benkei
I didn't because my potato PC can't run it but I've watched playthroughs. Pleasantly surprised someone else plays videogames around here. I'd say Joel was right. Ellie didn't know she was about to die, she wasn't given a choice.
Give me an example to understand this one. Someone is drowning and you can save them. Under which circumstances wouldn't you?
I see helping others with problems you didn't cause the same way I see charity. Good but optional.
People with strongly individualist, neo-liberal ethics don't want the human race to continue after they're gone. Are we really surprised at all by this?
I don't think it should even be dressed up as serious philosophy. It's just one of the extensions of the modern obsession with the self. "All that matters is my comfort and if I'm in the slightest bit inconvenienced then it's a problem". The "it's not fair to bear children" stuff is just a logical extension of this basic selfish premise, which - given no community ethic - they see no reason to avoid.
All the arguments basically boil down to - no-one should be able to impose anything at all on me, I owe no-one anything etc. The basic individualism which drives modern capitalism.
That's something I noticed in @khaled's reasons not to help someone too. That morality is somehow transactional, something I must owe someone else. It's an interesting divide that I don't think can actually be bridged.
I don't think people have transactional ethical intuitions in lots of circumstances; families, lovers, kids, pets, friends. If a parent's strictly transactional with a child something's gone very, very wrong.
What were my reasons not to help someone? Could you specify those? I don't remember giving any.
You're not reading what I write.
Quoting Benkei
This is clear about not having babies under specific circumstances.
Quoting Benkei
This is clear that the point is to improve circumstances.
Quoting khaled
Sorry, I misread. You would help them but don't think you should. I still think that's a transactional interpretation of morality though.
Yes. This is different form "I think I shouldn't".
Quoting Benkei
What do you mean "transactional"? The alternative would be either I must not help them (which we can agree is ridiculous) or I must help them. But if we look at other scenarios such as charity or volunteer work, we don't feel morally obligated to do those do we? Or are you saying charity and volunteering are also obligatory and if so, how much must one donate to who?
Quoting Benkei
For me a moral duty is more something like a "least common denominator". Something I think everyone should be doing at least. Which in my case is not harming people intentionally.
Generally, this refers to a view of society that is comprised of individuals meeting each other on a level playing field with no previous obligations, and where the goal of social interaction is ultimately to restore that state of no obligations.
It's called "transactional" because it treats all human interactions as market transactions between strangers. For historical reasons, this view of society underpins the idea of rights and freedoms which traces back to classical liberalism. It also lends itself to a moral philosophy which is fundamentally based around what you should not do, where positive moral duties are exceptions that arise if you have in some sense an outstanding debt. Hence again this is a transactional view where moral subjects have no standing connections to each other, and any interaction is concluded with reinstating that status quo.
Okay, so we can gain common ground here at least that we can recognize future states of people who will be born and compare that to not having future people.
Quoting Benkei
Yes, but again, I don't think these are mutually exclusive. You can try to improve circumstances while at the same time recognizing that the conditions of life are not something to impose on the person that will be born. Hence, my emphasis on the idea that we know generally what conditions will be imposed, and we even know that there is unforeseen suffering that usually happens too to that individual. The known impositions are known and even the fact that there are unknown impositions are known as well. Imposing these things on someone else is where the problem lies here. Now that we have the common ground of being able to compare a state of affairs where someone is born and thus imposed or a state affairs where no one is imposed, we can move forward with this.
Better than I could've said it. Thanks.
Quoting khaled
I don't see how it follows that if I say that if you can save someone's life that you must therefore do it, that you must therefore also give to charity and do volunteer work. I think not saving a person who's drowning would make you a bad person and therefore you should do it, not because you owe him but because it's the right thing to do. While it's laudable to give to charity or to help others through volunteer work and you'd be a better person for it, it doesn't follow that if you don't you'd be a bad person.
I'm asking what the difference is. Why does not saving a drowning person make you a bad person while not donating to charity doesn't?
No.
Quoting Benkei
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again. I'm not imposing anything unless I know there are particular circumstances that will cause harm. Since living in and of itself does not cause suffering I have no obligation to avoid every life (only specific ones).
I'd go further to say that there is no such thing as a "positive moral duty". If it's a duty then doing it is what is expected, it is not positive. If you have a duty not to harm others for instance, and so you do not harm others, you are not being virtuous, you're doing the bare minimum. To be virtuous you have to go out of your way and actually help someone with something, which I repeat you don't have to do.
Because there's a difference between a moral act and a moral obligation.
Why is charity a moral act but saving a drowning person is a moral obligation? You sound like you're just dodging the question by rephrasing the things I'm asking about over and over. What properties make charity optional but make saving a drowning person mandatory? I hold they're both optional because I cannot find such a morally relevant property.
So if you've been reading my last posts, I perplexed how natalists/optimists think that we do not know the general impositions/conditions imposed on a person and we also know that all life has some form of known and unknown forms of suffering. You don't seem to be reading my posts.
Here's some examples to clairfy. Let's assume selling guns is illegal.
I sell you a gun. You go out and murder someone. Did I murder that person?
I sold you a gun 10 years ago. You go out and murder someone. Did I murder that person?
My grandfather sold your grandfather a gun. You inherited it and go out and murder someone. Did my grandfather murder someone?
The proximate cause is you murdering someone. The sufficient conditions are the sale and your murder taken together. The sale of the gun alone is a necessary condition. You murdering the person alone is a necessary condition too.
I sell your neighbour a gun. You steal it and murder someone. Did I murder that person?
Here there's a proximate cause: your murder. An intervening cause, your theft. All necessary conditions but only together do they form the sufficient condition of murder.
And certainly the death is avoided by taking away the gun before I can sell it but my sale of the gun cannot be morally blamed for the murder because there's no causal link - at least, we do not say the sale caused the death, we point to the proximate cause - your decision to murder someone. And this is what you keep doing, you blame the sale for every bad things that happens afterwards.
The only scenario where this is acceptable is the following:
I sell you a gun knowing you will use it to murder someone. You murder someone. In that case I'm almost as morally culpable as you except for the agency you exercised by actually pulling the trigger. But I can certainly be blamed for that death.
Ok, so you go the point right here though. We know what life's impositions are. It is not something that is unknown. You keep making it seem like we cannot fathom what things befall people who are born. Of course we know. If anything, one of the themes of my posts are to recount what those are.
Because I think people should make an effort to search for answers themselves. Should you stuff your face with cake everyday because you can? Or is it better to refrain from doing so? Is there an obligation to refrain?
Quoting khaled
And that's cute too. There is no moral property to be found. You either subscribe to a moral framework or you don't.
No moral obligation either way. It is better for your health to refrain from doing so. No moral obligation.
Quoting Benkei
I didn't say "moral property". I said "morally relevant property". So for example: In one case you caused the harm and so you must alleviate it but in the other you didn't so it's not any of your business. Note this doesn't apply for charity vs drowning.
Quoting Benkei
I've found my answer. They're both optional. And I've given my reasoning behind it. I'm asking for yours. Because if you don't consider charity obligatory then I can see no reason to consider saving a drowning person obligatory. In both cases you didn't cause the harm. In both cases you could help alleviate it. But in one you must and in the other you don't have to. Why is that?
Yes yes, you keep falling back on the intrinsic suffering of life but those aren't caused by life. You seem to have problems grasping what causality means and why you must distinghuish between intrinsic suffering and particular and specific suffering. The first are morally irrelevant (because not caused by) the second are not caused by because it's not a sufficient condition without proximate causes. It's only when we're aware of particular and specific circumstances that will be proximate causes for suffering that there's reason to consider not having a child.
So the unavoidable suffering of life that you're so hung up on such a death, boredom and whatnot, are morally irrelevant.
Right. So one is better but there's no obligation. Not that hard was it?
That's not what I understood you were saying
Quoting Benkei
Is this "therefore you should do it" a moral obligation or a moral act? I thought you meant it as an obligation.
If you meant that it's better to save a drowning person than to not, then no one is disagreeing there, sorry for misunderstanding if that's the case.
How so?? Those are structural to life itself, and are known knowns, if you will. That should be the most morally relevant because of how structural they are to life itself. And if suffering is intrinsic or equated with life somehow, then there is a cause, and that would be what starts life, which is birth. So there is a cause here, which is being born. We can at least say that if it is true that there is inherent suffering to life, that being born is where this starts. So we can compare a state of affairs where no inherent suffering is taking place for a future individual and where it is. Being born is the demarcation between these states of affairs. I also want to put out there that capacity is a large underlying factor here. Where one has a capacity to cause the future suffering one can also have the capacity to prevent the suffering which will by default of inherent suffering be imposed on the future individual.
As far as contingent/proximate reasons for suffering, even these things are well known. Because we are debating whether it is good to impose things on other people, especially negative states that one must deal with, if we know that X general cases are dealt with by almost everyone (as if it was inherent to existence) why would we not assume that indeed, this will be just one more thing that this particular instance will also have to deal with?
See, I think you know this. You know that we all can generalize what basic categories of suffering, necessary or contingent can befall the future person. The real question is not "Will these generally recognized forms of suffering occur" (because we know with almost certainty it will) but whether causing impositions itself is something one should not do.
I've answered all this in the OP already. Either suffering is intrinsic or it isn't. When it's intrinsic it's irrelevant, if it's not intrinsic it's not a sufficient condition. Simple.
If I'm understanding this correctly I think it's laughable. We can all agree that murdering people by shooting them is wrong correct? However when you shoot someone, that is not a sufficient condition to cause their deaths or even to harm them, as your gun might jam. So the way you put it makes it sound like "It is wrong to kill innocents, but pointing a gun at an innocent person and pulling the trigger is fine since pulling the trigger is not a sufficient condition for causing harm" :lol:
I'd like to get back to this, because perhaps I just don't understand your point with intrinsic suffering being irrelevant.
However, I think I have addressed your issue with contingent suffering, which you did not address here. See my last post.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I understand the difference. In an early reply I outlined this
Quoting khaled
What I don't understand is what makes charity optional but saving people from drowning mandatory? Here you made it seem like saving people from drowning is also optional:
Quoting Benkei
But if that's not your intention I ask again: Why is donating to charity optional but saving people from drowning mandatory?
Quoting Benkei
and here:
Quoting Benkei
In both you seem to be saying that since birth does not guarantee suffering, you cannot say that having children causes suffering, and therefore it is okay to have children.
If that is the case then the fact that the act (pulling the trigger) does not cause harm should be enough of a reason to say pulling the trigger is okay.
People who are born are guaranteed to suffer but being born doesn't cause suffering. There's an important moral difference here and the analogy breaks down because of it.
Nah. Sounds like bs to me. Will have to go back and read more closely. Anyways, about the whole charity/drowning thing. Care to answer why one is obligatory and another is optional? That's what I'm really interested in.
The universe guarantees life. The big bang did it! That would be the bs.
"Positive" here is used in a similar vein as "positivism" or "to posit". It's a positive duty because it obliges you to act in a specific way. A negative duty on the other proscribes certain behaviour. It establishes ways you should not act, the command includes a negation, hence it's called "negative".
Quoting khaled
I'm not sure I follow this distinction. If virtue is to act in accordance with a system of morality, then it doesn't seem to matter what grammatical form any obligation takes.
There are almost unlimited ways to formulate rules/obligations/imperatives. You could say that you should help those in need according to your ability as well as saying you should not withhold help you're capable of giving without danger to yourself. What matters is less how you formulate your rules and more how the system as a whole functions.
For example, the rule "first, do no harm" has very different effects in a system where "harm" is understood to be a specific violation of an enumerated "freedom" as opposed to a system where "harm" is understood to be any consequence by which a moral subject ends up with less ability for self-actualisation than before.
David Graeber's "Debt, the first 5000 years" has quite a lot on the relationships of debt and morality. Not a logical argument for why they must go together though!
The problem I see with your argument is you don't give enough account for what we know about the impositions of life. We can generalize what they are without knowing each particular case. We know these would be impositions. The Big Bang and other non-deliberative things cannot evaluate this and prevent these impositions but we can. I think this is a case of ignoring what doesn't fit your case. We know the impositions that occur, both structurally, and even contingently what is in range of what people often have to deal with. There is even the case that because we don't know all the contingent harms, this is even more evidence that it is best to prevent those unknown harms from occurring. But, even if you think unknown harms are not enough reason, even if you don't believe in necessary harms, even the known contingent harms should be enough evidence to prevent it.
It seems we're a better lot than we were overall 1,000 years ago. It's a historical question I suppose, but it seems we do a better job not bludgeoning each other than we did back then.
This is a different sort of pessimism you now discuss, which is one where you've lost hope in mankind, expecting cycles of peace and violence with no forward movement, with us now being fortunate enough to live in an apparent peace cycle. The pessimism of the OP was that life is nothing more than suffering, so it'd be best if we just stopped producing new generations of sufferers. These two different types of pessimisms do share the similar trait of suckiness, so neither would go under the Christmas tree as a particularly good thing to have bestowed upon you.
Even if we were to accept an optimistic outlook in the first regard, meaning there were actual evidence that the world is evolving toward Nirvana, I don't know if that would resolve the pessimism of the second regard, which is that life today isn't worth living. That is, just because I know that generation 10 will be wonderful, does that really justify generations 1 to 9 living horrible existences, considering that 1 to 9 will be dead and won't see the benefits of their suffering. To argue that future happiness of a distant generation is a virtuous goal is an interesting concept because it posits inherent value in the enterprise of being human. If you're willing to assert as a foundational statement of faith that humanity is worth it in the distant future, why not just assert that there is something inherently sacred about every human life that is achieved in each life without regard to whether we are meandering toward a better state of humankind or not.
Hard antinatalism is the view that no one should have kids. Soft antinatalism is just the view that this is a bad world to bring kids into. Would you say yes to the softer version?
"X is paternalistic BS" is not a question.
So, in your view, do you consider the expected harm a person being born will experience through life greater than the expected harm experienced by those who wish to have children if they follow antinatalism? I’d also be interested to hear how you quantify harm. For example, is 1,000 people getting paper cut equal to one person breaking their leg?
Yes but this is not just a “consideration” it’s a logical argument. If you say that a person experiences X harm due to not having children then all having children does is pushes this X harm onto one or more people (depending on how many children they have) unless THEY (the children) also have children. So the only way to avoid causing X or more harm is for people to reproduce forever. But I’m pretty sure we can agree that Adam and Eve experiencing X harm is less than all the suffering of humanity thus far. There is almost no case where procreation causes less harm than the harm due to not having children.
Quoting Pinprick
I don’t think these questions are productive. I don’t put a number on it if that’s what you’re asking. I just compare alternatives.
I don’t have many of those. Outside of having to try and make up to someone after harming them you don’t really have to do anything morally speaking outside of just not harm people in my view.
Quoting Echarmion
Not for me. For me virtue is doing more good than the system demands without expecting any compensation for it. Quoting Echarmion
Agreed
As I have noted before, society can be conceptualised as a net of obligations to one another, from being obliged to protect the life of your children to being at least expected to give strangers directions if they ask. The idea that you're an island whose only duty is to not interfere with other islands unless in a transaction is not only counterfactual, it's downright distopian.
And also not my idea. Where did I say "Whose only duty is not to interfere". You can help if you want, you just don't have to. I don't understand why whenever I share this view people worry that it will somehow suddenly make people cold and uncaring towards each other. The idea that I don't have a moral obligation to save a drowning person doesn't mean I won't.
Also, counterfactual? Since when are we talking about facts?
I'd like to ask about your view then. Do you think that people are obligated to donate to charity? And if not why do you think people are obligated to save others from drowning when they can but are not obligated to donate to charity?
Obviously your question is rhetorical and it leaves little room to move, because you put donating and saving someone from drowning on the same footing. In donating money your taking part in a slow process. The effect is not immediate. The money is managed and spent without you really knowing how it was spent. It’s a very abstract action. You may decide your money is better spent in other ways, you may feel the charity is not very effective or doubt it will change things. No one feels obliged to do it. Society asks for the money as a donation. It’s a gift.
Society also functions on people looking out for each other. That society regards your assistance to someone in immediate need as an obligation. It doesn’t ask you to risk your life, it just asks you to do what you can. This sense of obligation means that you will receive it if in need yourself. But more importantly it’s an impulse to help someone in immediate need. Many have lost their life trying to help someone in trouble in the water. Obviously that’s a powerful emotion and it’s an emotion or feeling that binds communities. If you live within a community and receive benefits from that community in the way that communities function then you are obliged to live according to the mores of that community.
My goal was more to point out exactly the difference you set out here, which to me looks like a performative contradiction. You're presumably not "cold and uncaring", nor do you act as if you have no duties to help strangers - e.g. help a drowning man. Yet you insist that it isn't your duty. But why shouldn't something we'd all agree to do be a duty? If it's what we should do, then it is our moral duty.
Quoting khaled
Donating to charity is an impersonal process. There are
also manyy different kinds of charity. So "donating to charity" is too broad to make any singular moral judgement about. Helping a specific drowning person is a concrete situation you can judge.
We could use a more direct example instead of donating to charity, like giving money to a beggar on the street. There are obvious moral complications, like whether you are supporting a drug addiction or somesuch, but I think one can establish a moral duty to give to people in need. The more pressing moral concern though would be to support systematic changes to ensure less people are in need.
If someone drowns and there are 20 people watching, do they get incarcerated? No. So I don't think society sees this as an obligation.
Quoting Brett
How come you can find countless videos of people asking for help to no avail and everyone just walking by? How often do you see beggars without anyone donating anything to them?
Quoting Brett
Agreed. However you have yet to show that part of these obligations is that one must save a drowning person.
Quoting Brett
Again, the question is why. No one has answered this so far. Lets assume we have found the "perfect charity" where you know exactly what your money is getting used for and it directly improves the lives of others. If such a thing existed would people be obligated to donate now? Your only gripe against saying that people are obligated to donate seems to be that they are unsure how their money will be used, so it should follow that if they were sure, then they would be obligated to donate no?
What do you mean "agree on"? All we've established is that we would both save a drowning person. That says nothing about the morality of it. If we both happen to be video game enthusiasts and we both buy a particular game, how does it make it a moral duty for us to buy said game? I don't think morality should be deduced from what we all would do.
Quoting Echarmion
It's not what I should do if "should" implies that I would be wrong not to do it.
Quoting Echarmion
By that standard our society is totally morally bankrupt. If helping homeless people was a duty, there would be no homeless people.
Quoting Echarmion
So Quoting khaled
How else could it be deduced, other than by asking, in some form, what rules we would want everyone to follow?
Quoting khaled
What use would morality be if it didn't tell you right from wrong?
Quoting khaled
Perhaps it is. There are certainly problems with exploitation, both of other humans and of nature in general.
Quoting khaled
This doesn't follow, since even if everyone agrees to a single moral philosophy, not everyone would always act in accordance with it.
Quoting khaled
Yes, provided you have the means. Though this is essentially a circular argument, because by saying it's the "perfect charity" in this context we're basically already starting that it would be moral to give to it.
Quoting khaled
I don’t see how you connect a moral obligation to law.
Quoting khaled
Exactly. This is the consequence of refusing their obligation to others. See how it ends up?
Quoting khaled
Okay. Then you fail to understand the idea of community and so you are part of the problem.
Right. But "what rules would we want everyone to follow" is not answered by "What does everyone usually do" (in this case save drowning person).
Quoting khaled
because I don't see a connection between what we would do and what we should do.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't see how that follows form what I said. Morality tells you what's wrong, what's neutral and what's good.
Quoting Echarmion
Yes but I find it easier to believe that people do not agree on a single moral philosophy than that we do agree, but are just morally bankrupt.
Quoting Echarmion
For you maybe. I always said that giving to charity is optional, never an obligation.
I'm implying that if everyone agreed on a moral obligation to save drowning people, it is very likely that there would be a law incarcerating people who were able to help but didn't.
Quoting Brett
As I said to echarmion, I find it easier to believe that people do not share the same sense of moral obligations than to believe that they do (what are the odds of that?) and that they are just morally bankrupt.
Quoting Brett
I am part of the problem even though I would save the drowning person? What "problem" exactly?
Quoting khaled
That you do not see an obligation to assist someone who needs help.
I'm more so surprised by people who must make it a duty to help. Is that to imply that if it wasn't a duty you wouldn't do it?
Quoting khaled
Why would you?
Quoting khaled
What is community then?
Quoting Brett
A group of people living in a place.
Quoting khaled
What does that mean?
Edit: by the way, this is getting way off topic.
Quoting khaled
They don’t make it a duty. It’s something that’s evolved with and contributed towards the strength and structure of communities.
Quoting khaled
It’s a bit more than that.
“In a seminal 1986 study, McMillan and Chavis[8] identify four elements of "sense of community":
membership: feeling of belonging or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness,
influence: mattering, making a difference to a group and of the group mattering to its members
reinforcement: integration and fulfillment of needs,
shared emotional connection.” Wikipedia
Quoting khaled
I did. I said it’s regarded as a gift.
Exactly what it says. Why would I not save a drowning person if I can?
Quoting Brett
Quoting Brett
Make up your mind please. Is it or is it not a duty?
Quoting Brett
That's not an answer. Why is it that charity is a gift but saving drowning people is a duty? I ask "Why is one obligatory and the other not". You answer "Because one is a gift and one is a duty". How is that an answer? That's begging the question.
Quoting Brett
I don't see: "Being morally obligated to save drowning people" there either...
For example, how would not being obligated to help the drowning person be applied for AN?
I can see not interfering with someone else of course, so that part makes sense in the context.
So I would say that charity is only a moral obligation for the obscenely rich but in most cases for most people only a moral act for various reasons that are particular to the giver and the recipient.
No, but it's still weird to insist it cannot be an obligation even though you'd not expect anyone to object to doing it.
Quoting khaled
But do you not also consider having children "morally bankrupt", to use your words?
Benkei, do you have an answer to the objections I had earler? Specifically:
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don’t think it’s weird. Everybody eats. Doesn’t make it moral or immoral.
Quoting Echarmion
I think it’s wrong yes, but I don’t see how that has to do with what I’ve said so far. I’m just saying that not everyone thinks they have this moral obligation to help with problems they didn’t cause.
Got it. If I reformulate that, let me know if this is similar:
It may be the case you are obligated to prevent unnecessary harm.
It may be the case you are not obligated to provide benefit for someone else.
It certainly is the case that causing unnecessary harm is wrong, especially if one is doing so to promote a benefit to that same person(s) in doing so.
Would that be another way to put it?
See, I think the case of AN is unique here because it is trying to benefit someone while at the same time providing impositions and harms for that person as well. That is a little different, even than the drowning person. But maybe you can make a case they are all connected.
I tend not to aggregate harms and benefits to any net. I think that is using individuals for some weird aggregated principle. Rather, individuals are the ones bearing the brunt of the harms and benefits. They are living it out as individuals, not as an aggregated mass. Thus, that is the locus of ethics. However, I think you are on the same page as that too, so it really is just a matter of connecting the very unique case of AN where the intention to benefit someone else, is also causing harm/impositions.
Yes, obviously. Of course people tend to underestimate the problems they do cause.
Quoting khaled
I get it, you're no longer interested in this conversation.
Boy, that can be said of procreating itself! Sorry... life's well-trodden harms are just such an unknown, because everyone has that much of an individualized experience, we cannot generalize the known harms that almost everyone incurs :roll:.
I think it's interesting that an Anti-Natlist has a very strong individualist, classical-liberal bend. I wonder if you share it. After all, you do also make your argument around the idea of imposition without consent.
It's interesting because one of the things that's most significant about having children is that you take up some of the strongest obligations possible.
It's not about what the parent incurs. Even if it makes someone have to work harder, that doesn't negate the principle of not causing an imposition on someone else, even with the intention to benefit. Having to work harder doesn't make a principle more moral.
Instead of rehashing the same arguments made on this forum a dozen times before, I'd like to look more at the underpinnings of your view. Why is it a principle "not to cause an imposition"? Aren't impositions a right and proper part about being human?
So are pain and heartbreak. Yet we agree you shouldn’t cause those.
Quoting Echarmion
I don’t know where you get that. I’m just saying you can’t derive a should from a would.
Without any qualification? If you're in an abusive relationship, surely you should cause heartbreak. It'd be just as easy to come up with situations where you should cause pain.
But this wasn't really where I way going with the argument. I was wondering what's so bad about having obligations, impositions, being in relationships with others, in the abstract.
Quoting khaled
I wasn't deriving any shoulds. That would look very different. I was talking about your differentiation between "things that I think are virtous and that I would do" and "thinks I should do, in the sense that I am morally obliged to", which I cannot make much sense of.
Because this is different than other impositions.
One is about inter-wordly affairs (should we impose existence, and the harms and challenges to overcome that come with a usual life)
One is about intra-wordly affairs (we already exist.. do you want to die? Do you want to go it alone? No? Okay, here are societal impositions to survive, gain comfort, and find entertainment).
In the inter-wordly scenario, it is an absolute case. That is to say, it is completely unnecessary to start/initiate the conditions for unnecessary suffering/impositions on someone else.
In the intra-worldly scenario, it is an instrumental case. Survival, comfort, entertainment is necessary, and when the child becomes an adult has no other choice (unless they are okay with death or somehow finding a remote wilderness to hack it alone) to follow the impositions of a given society.
But none where you cause more pain than you alleviate. When I talk of “harm” I mean causing more than you alleviate. So vaccinating a child isn’t harm, even though it hurts and is against their wishes.
Quoting Echarmion
It’s not bad in itself. But forcing it on others is wrong. Take forced labor for example.
Quoting Echarmion
Why not?
I agree with this.
Quoting Benkei
But how come birth isn't the cause?
Quoting Benkei
This I believe I gave a sufficient response. You make it seem like we don't know the contingent harms that usually befall people. We know very well the impositions and sufferings that will occur and can prevent all of those. I also mentioned that even more reason to prevent harm, is that there are also unknown impositions and sufferings that may befall, and can be prevented those too.. We are a self-aware and deliberative being. We can gather what types of harms can befall someone in the future. We can prevent those harms. Also, unnecessarily imposing challenges to overcome for other people, even if "for their benefit", is wrong. Unlike being born already, where impositions are a necessity to live in a society (unless you want to die or hack it alone in some wilderness), the case of birth is one where one would be imposing unnecessarily these harms in an absolute sense. To deny that harms will ensue seems a disingenuous claim knowing what we know about harms. Knowing, and preventing harms as well as imposing a set of known challenges on someone unnecessary is what counts.
As I think I stated this most clearly in that post, I will leave it again for you to answer if you decide to engage with the actual rebuttal:
Quoting schopenhauer1
I wasn't aware we were traveling between worlds in a literal sense.
Quoting schopenhauer1
See, here is the negative framing again. That the only reason anyone would accept having obligations imposed on them, or having to endure suffering, is if they were forced to in order to survive. This seems to me a very reductive view of human sociality. As I have alluded above, if that were true, noone would be having children in the first place, since having children comes with both obligations and suffering attached, and it certainly is not necessary for survival nowadays.
But it really applies beyond that, to all forms of human community. Engaging with others always comes with impositions and the possibility of suffering. Beyond anti-natalism, your view seems to imply that the best way to live is as an individual detached from all obligations, and therefore all relationships.
Quoting khaled
In other words, there are qualifications. So it would really come down to your personal assessment of whether life is worth living.
Quoting khaled
What about being forced to do the dishes every other day?
Quoting khaled
There doesn't seem to be any practical difference.
Yes, then you would be correct. Different states.
Quoting Echarmion
But these are also different cases. These are self-imposed. I have nothing against that. It is creating unnecessary harm and impositions, in an absolute sense for someone else. This is the height of paternalism (and again, not in a literal sense.. which it is too, but meaning that someone knows better for someone.. and worse knows better to the point that suffering and impositions have to be overcome by the person born due to someone else's decision.. even if intentions are good that it is for the child's "benefit"). There are some choices, but certainly not the choice to not have these choices in the first place. That can never be when born.
Like which ones?
Quoting schopenhauer1
So, to leave the boundaries of accustomed debate a bit: Why does it matter whether it's self-imposed? If it's about avoiding suffering, it's not necessarily obvious why we care about concepts of choice or consent. Why aren't we paternalistic and just make sure no one suffers, regardless of choice?
Quoting schopenhauer1
So is having choices good or bad now?
I've already been through this with @schopenhauer1 in a previous thread. He can give no answer as to why avoiding the imposition of inconvenience and trials has been glorified into a goal so worthy as to outweigh the extinction of the human race (or all sentient life).
If I had a plan to avoid all headaches, then decapitating everyone would be a fine way to achieve it, but why anyone would take such a plan seriously to the exclusion of all other considerations is beyond me.
No it wouldn't though. My personal assessment of whether life is worth living should be applied for myself, not for others. Just because I find life worth living doesn't mean my child will, and so my assessments are unimportant.
Quoting Echarmion
Still wrong to force people to do it. Much less so than slave labor, but still bad.
Quoting Echarmion
There is a practical difference. I don't have to donate to charity if I don't want to for instance, whereas by your standards you have to. You would also have to volunteer, etc as long as you're capable.
What could 'have to' possibly mean here? I don't understand your use of the term when discussing 'practical differences'.
Just what it means anywhere else. Be obligated to.
Aren't you directly contradicting your earlier example about vaccinating children here? And apart from that, how are you going to assess whether there is "more harm then good" in general if you're not allowed to generalise your own judgement?
Quoting khaled
What other assessment could possibly apply?
Quoting khaled
Which once again brings us back to the issue that your standards could only possibly be upheld by living as a hermit somewhere.
Quoting khaled
I'll second @Isaac here. You don't somehow loose your ability to act differently if you recognise a moral obligation.
You know for a fact that a vaccine doesn't harm. That's non-negotiable. And children are a bit of a special case where doing harm now to alleviate harm later is required (since one of your duties as a parent is to make sure your kid doesn't suffer as much as possible)
Quoting Echarmion
You don't. Both are subjective. Some are having a blast with life, some hate it.
Quoting Echarmion
The child's assessment which is obviously not available. That would require a time machine.
Quoting Echarmion
Not really. If I count myself as part of the calculation then I don't have to live as a hermit somewhere. Could you give an example as to why it would lead to me living as a hermit? What harm am I inflicting by being in society that is so bad I must instead suffer myself so as not to cause it?
Quoting Echarmion
Fair enough, but that doesn't mean that there are no practical differences. For instance, if donating to charity was a duty as it is seen in muslim communities for example (zakat), there would be far fewer homeless people. It is a fact of the matter that if you don't consider something a duty you will be less likely to do it (which is why I call doing it anyways virtue)
I think we might be getting bogged down by the word “obliged”. You may be regarding it being used in the same way as a “rule”. That it’s the rule in society that you must help the drowning man and that the only reason people help is because they are coerced by the rule. Hence the idea that there would be a law incarcerating people if they didn’t help.
That's simply not true. Most vaccines can potentially cause serious side effects, and you always gamble the long term benefits outweigh the short-term risk and the pain. It may be a very one-sided assessment, but you're certainly putting your own assessment in place of the child's.
Quoting khaled
So what you wrote earlier was just made up BS you don't actually apply in practice? I am confused as to what your actual position is.
Quoting khaled
So, again, you realise your standards cannot possibly work but you still insist they're correct?
Quoting khaled
For one, I don't see how you could possibly live together with anyone else if you find having to do additional chores as a result fundamentally immoral. That is unless you genuinely like menial work so much you actually want to do it for it's own sake.
To say nothing about things like taxes.
Quoting khaled
I can see how this works if we're looking at someone else's decision from the outside. If they do something I consider a moral duty, but they don't, I could say they're being virtuous.
I don't see the internal monologue if you're considering your own actions though. What would it mean to conclude that something is virtuous, but you "don't have to do it"? The entire point of figuring out what is and isn't right/virtuous/moral is to tell yourself what you have to do.
But being obligated to has no practical consequences, and you said it was a 'practical difference'.
Yea that’s how I use it. I don’t like there being a word “obligated” in the limbo between “not a rule” and “is a rule”.
Sounds pretty ridiculous. It would be a different world if there was a law that incarcerated people who do not donate to the poor. Being obligated to do something significantly increases your chances of doing it. That is a practical consequence.
As I said: Children are a special case because it’s your job as a parent to make sure they don’t do something stupid. You don’t do that for adults or strangers’ children do you?
Quoting Echarmion
Which part precisely? When did I ever say life had “more harm than good”? Please quote me this supposed BS.
Quoting Echarmion
First off, I don’t understand how they’re not working in this scenario. And secondly there was no previous occurrence of them not working.
Quoting Echarmion
Your mischaracterizations are getting tiring. My objection was clearly not against chores. My objection was against forcing people to do things. If I am choosing to live with someone else I’m not actually being forced to do anything am I? I am choosing to live there so naturally I take on part of the responsibility.
Quoting Echarmion
Good
Quoting Echarmion
Why are you conflating the 3 terms. I define each of them differently.
:100: :up:
A state of E (existing itself) vs. N (not existing), rather than default already existing E (where x, y, z intra-worldly affairs happen within it). All other moral decisions are of the latter, only pertaining to what is within E where this one is about E vs. N. So, before you jump to the obvious move to then say why isn't death different? Look at what I said about unnecessary impositions on another person's behalf.
Quoting Echarmion
Oh can we make no one suffer? Please tell me how? But since we obviously can't, simply not procreating is sufficient to prevent all harm to a future person, and it is sufficient to not impose unnecessarily challenges to be overcome on someone else's behalf.
Quoting Echarmion
No rather, the fact that the happy natalists/optimists cruel next move is to just say something like "Oh well you always have the choice to kill yourself or find a piece of wilderness to slowly die" or something like that. But what a shitty choice.. Either be imposed by the things that you need to live or kill yourself. But where did this choice come from? Being born in the first place.
There are not laws enforcing all moral duties. Notwithstanding which, the existence of a law does not make it that one 'has to' do something. One could try and get away with it.
What I'm getting at is that you're creating a hard line where there is none. That feeling you have 'obliges' you to certain kind acts. Even so much as an unimpressed sniff from a social group member creates a small incentive. And to suggest that the reason you'd do the kindnesses you do is not almost entirely a consequence of the influences of the community you grew up in would be naïve in the extreme.
So community censure and encouragement is what creates the fact that you would perform these acts of kindness. You may not be legally forced to, but that's not what we're talking about with morality anyway.
That something is a moral duty just means that your community will censure or ostracise you if you don't do it. It's exactly that environment during development which causes your (now independent) desire to do kind acts. That plus a hefty dose of biological priming.
So it's mistaken to assume that because you now would act kindly even without the censure of your community that you would have reached that point without it.
You've just dodged the question. The question was "why does it matter whether it's self-imposed?", which goes to the heart of the issue. Why is autonomy of choice so monumentally important that it trumps all other considerations? You keep coming back to the same trope that you shouldn't impose inconveniences on others without ever justifying why this is such an important (indeed singular)axiom for you.
Are we referring to inherent or contingent? If inherent then, being born is the direct reason why someone is alive which, if inherent suffering exists, is a directly entailed with being alive. What brought about this inherent suffering? Birth. I see inherit suffering as similar to the Eastern version I discussed several posts ago.
Contingent suffering is contextual. It technically is not entailed in being alive, but mine as well be based on the material circumstances. For example, almost everyone will get sick, and that's just a basic example. Then there are just daily challenges great or small to overcome. Somehow this is seen as "justified" by the paternalistic types that think people should be born, to overcome challenges so they can experience the higher "meaning" in overcoming them.
With either example, a future person can be prevented from going through this. Why, someone might ask, would we not just end humanity? And my response, for the thousandth time, is that consent is a huge factor. I give the example usually of veganism. Maybe veganism is correct. Maybe it is best not to eat or use animal products. However, to force this on people would violate that consent idea.
We could say exactly the same about your obsessive liberalism...
Somehow this is seen as "justified" by the neo-liberal types that think people should be completely unimposed upon, to experience the higher "meaning" in being completely independent.
Just paraphrasing your opponent's position using emotive terminology doesn't constitute a counter-argument.
Why should 'paternalistic types' not think people should be born, to overcome challenges so they can experience the higher "meaning" in overcoming them? You've yet to provide anything more than your personal distaste for the idea.
Not necessarily. It depends on if they actually want to have children. If I don’t want to have kids, I don’t suffer by not having any.
Quoting khaled
You might be right, but I’m not as sure as you seem to be. If you look at couples who have fertility issues you will find that the inability to have children can cause serious emotional/psychological harm, and that harm can be spread out to include the couple, their parents, siblings, etc.
This is why I was asking about how you determine which harm is worse. In some cases, by sparing one person from potentially significant harm, you actually cause some, possibly less significant, harm that is felt by maybe 5 or 6 individuals. Ultimately it is unknown how much a person being born will suffer, and it’s also unknown how much a family will suffer by not having children.
Not only this, but if the justification for not having children is that it causes harm, then it contradicts itself because not having children also causes harm.
You don't usually apply your own judgement in place of others, no. But the reasons why matter. Note that we got here from this:
Quoting Echarmion
via this:
Quoting khaled
So is harm different for children and adults? Or is harm really only relevant when dealing with children or other dependents, and the general rule is actually about choice or consent or freedom?
Quoting khaled
As per above, does it matter whether life is, overall, harmful or not?
Quoting khaled
You're asking for something that's impossible ("you'd need a time machine"), but instead of concluding that, therefore, the standard cannot be applied, you apply it anyways and then claim it's actually violated.
Quoting khaled
It's theoretically possible that you literally choose all the consequences, but chances are you don't. There are probably going to be things you end up doing just because you don't want to damage the relationship (and I don't necessarily refer to a romantic relationship here). This gets more obvious the farther out from your inner circle you get. It's at least plausible you can hash things our precisely with your flatmate, your spouse or your nuclear family. It's essentially impossible to have this kind of control over a political entity of any size.
Now you could say you also choose those outcomes, either by virtue of the original decision or by some kind of democratic process. But how far does that justification hold? After all, even in extremely oppressive circumstances, there is usually some kind of choice you could make. It seems to me to avoid any of the extreme outcomes (immoral impositions are either everywhere or nowhere) we need a more nuanced standard for when an imposition is moral and when it is not.
Quoting khaled
Well, perhaps it was just a misunderstanding then. What are virtuous or right actions?
Quoting schopenhauer1
This implies something that doesn't exist can still have properties, which seems weird. Is everyone who doesn't exist nevertheless hanging around as some kind of disembodied soul?
Quoting schopenhauer1
This doesn't really relate to the question. I was wondering whether it's the suffering that matters or the lack of choice.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So can I take from this that bad choices are worse than not having a choice at all?
Quoting Echarmion
It's both. If you want to self-impose your own suffering, go ahead. Once you impose it for someone else, it's not good. Please don't make the move comparing E v. N vs. E only scenarios as I addressed that. Otherwise, we will keep talking in circles.
So, can I impose things that aren't suffering on others?
Also your request to "not compare E v N vs. E scenarios" just seems impossible. Since there is only a single "E v N scenario" no comparisons are possible at all, and hence the entire argument begins and ends with a claim. You're not even following this request yourself, since "self-imposed suffering" clearly is only possible once you already exist, so it ought to be entirely irrelevant.
Let me clarify cause I am using impose in two ways that should be more clearly explained:
1) Imposing suffering.. used in conjunction
2) Imposition in general.. as in for example, if I said you have this game where you make many choices, but you cannot escape except through death. That can be an imposition. It is de facto imposition as there is no escape without death or making the choices the game's conditions imposes. These more generally, are the challenges of life.
Certainly one should not unnecessarily impose suffering on others no matter what. But it also stands to reason, which I will just call Argument Against Paternalism, is to try to benefit someone else by imposing on them challenges to overcome which they could not consent.
Quoting Echarmion
Yeah, well it is a special scenario. What do you want me to say. That is the point. It is a special scenario that is hard to analogize without making a false analogy.
Quoting Echarmion
I'll answer in two ways:
1) Fine, ditch it. Self-imposed suffering is also not analogous. Doesn't hurt my argument, just shows how using analogies like these aren't great anyways in this very unique scenario, and hence my highlighting how unique it is.
2) It can be kept because, self-imposed suffering, or suffering on others who consent are examples of being able to consent. The only example where one would unnecessarily cause suffering (because it's not in order to prevent a greater harm as they don't exist obviously), and where there is no consent that can be obtained is the case of E v. N.
But this really just sounds like the suffering isn't actually what matters. The argument really only refers to suffering as something that exists. But what changes some behaviour from permissible to impermissible or vice versa isn't some quantification of suffering, but really only whether or not there is consent.
So, where does the consent get it's moral weight from? What is it that makes consent "good"?
Quoting schopenhauer1
But you also realize the problem with that is that this almost legitimizes special pleading?
Quoting schopenhauer1
But to me, the logical thing to do in a situation where the very concept of consent is unintelligible (because whatever could it possiblý mean for a nothing to consent?), is to drop consent from my test or system. It seems a bit like asking whether green is heavier than red, or whether nights are colder than forests.
Negative states/suffering/causing impositions on others to overcome.. these are things which deal with the dignity of the individual person. That is the locus of ethics because the individual is who bears the burdens of life. Not recognizing suffering in another is not recognizing them as moral agents. We can say it is we are discounting their dignity as people who will be the ones who will bear the brunt of these decisions made on their behalf.
The very fact that you think deliberating upon a moral framework right now, implies that people should be able to make decisions on what affects them. I'll answer your obvious next move which is to explain "affects" for non-existing person, yadayada.. See below where you ask about non-existing persons.
Quoting Echarmion
It's unique, but not special pleading. This is a unique situation and I explained the difference. I explained how the situation is sufficiently different and is not comparable other cases. Perhaps one of the interesting aspects of antinatalism in general vs. almost all other moral quandaries. It is at the core of existence itself. It is the start of it all and perhaps the most important moral question because it gets to the core of the existential "Why?". Other questions are almost pragmatics of living in an intra-worldly reality.
Quoting Echarmion
If you can't get consent for being imposed upon and harmed, are you saying it is okay to to do for someone else? That's what you are implying here. Someone doesn't exist NOW so it is okay to allow impositions for them in the future. Doesn't make sense and while you are trying to claim my claim is nonsensical, that definitely flies in the face of how most people view impositions.
An aside about meta-ethics.. At the end of the day neither you nor me can open up the universe and show an objective principle. At some point, it is about how the individual views the the principle. Is it emotionally or intuitively appealing? That's pretty much it at the end. But ironically, in a sort of Kantian way, the very fact that we are deliberating and trying to choose which system makes sense to us intuitively, emotionally, etc. means that we are using the very ability to deliberate which cannot be had by the person who will have suffering and impositions initiated for them. So there is a contradiction in the very act of deliberating here admitting that this is the very thing, not quite "denied" the person that will be affected, but simply incapable of even doing so from the very nature of the non-existence.
Yes, precisely. That is the contradiction. So what is your answer?
Because if this is so:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Then how can you support denying people any decision whatsoever by denying them existence itself?
So if you cannot get consent, you should be able to impose suffering and impositions on someone unnecessarily? In other words, there is no reason to do it other than you want to.. you are not saving them from a greater harm, but simply to initiate it. That is what I meant by absolute imposition vs. instrumental and why this is different than other things.
However, if I was to indulge this as if it was a symmetry rather than an asymmetry, then I don't want to be around you at all because your default position is you are allowed to cause impositions if you cannot get consent.
But if consent is something that matters, then the imposition is necessary, because its the conditio sine qua non for consent. If the core of morality is people deciding their own destiny, then it seems to follow that it's a moral good to create that ability.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I mean obviously I do think it's permissible to cause impositions if you cannot get consent. Else we'd not be allowed to operate on unconscious patients etc.
Yea I said X as in it can take on whatever value.
Quoting Pinprick
Fair enough. And I would actually agree that in cases where X is large enough having children is moral. Problem is that's going to be a miniscule portion anyways.
Quoting Pinprick
The principle is to cause the least harm. Not to cause no harm. That's impossible.
When did I claim that?
Calling it an argument doesn't make it into one. Where is the 'Argument Against Paternalism'? All we've read so far is the 'Assertion Against Paternalism'.
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting Echarmion
In an abusive relationship you could cause harm by breaking up because doing so will alleviate more form yourself.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't know what you mean by "harm is different", I don't know what I said to make you think that in any way. But regardless, even applying this "general rule" when do we have consent to give birth to people?
Quoting Echarmion
I asked you to quote me when I said "life had more harm than good" as I don't think that sentence makes sense. You failed at doing so. And I already told you that life is not "overall" objectively more harmful or good. So why are you now still trying to get me to make a claim that I never made for a reason?
Quoting Echarmion
It is not uncommon for consent to be impossible to obtain. For instance, we don't pull the plug on comatose patients. The whole POINT of consent is that the default value for any request is "no" until that request is actually made and answered positively.
Quoting Echarmion
I already said "virtuous" is doing more good than the system demands.
"right" is the best possible outcome (donating to charity/saving the drowning person/ etc)
"moral" is the outcome that is not bad. So not donating to charity is moral in my view. Because you are not obligated to do so. "moral" is basically the least you have to do.
Quoting Echarmion
Well if I were to take this to the extreme, then you have an abusive relationship. And I am pretty sure we can agree that the abusers in an abusive relationship are being immoral.
Quoting Echarmion
What do you mean?
All those quotes imply that you would act kindly toward the victim, and that there is therefore no need for censure in order to reach that point. I'm saying that you can't know this to be the case because you don't know what role censure played in forming those feelings which you now apply without need for such rules.
The alternative interpretation is that you see it as unimportant to society that there are people like you - who would act kindly.
If you think it's important to society that such people exist, then it is important to know how to mould such people. If it is unimportant then why the defensiveness in "I don't understand why whenever I share this view people worry that it will somehow suddenly make people cold and uncaring towards each other."
So I suppose I skipped a stage in my assessment. Do you think it's important to a society that at least a large proportion of it's members are kind? Or do you just not care what we do to each other?
Where was this implied exactly?
Quoting Isaac
It'd be much better if that were the case. But the most important is for the members to not harm each other. Acting kindly is an added bonus on top of that.
As I said, I assumed you'd prefer a world in which there were kind people. If I'm wrong about that, and you just simply don't care whether we're kind to each other or not, then let me know.
You're correct and so would anybody. Now, where did I imply that there was no need for societal pressure to make me act kindly?
Quoting Isaac
Quoting khaled
You are arguing that moral obligations to, say, give to charity, are unnecessary. Part of that argument relies on the fact that society would not stop doing kind acts (like giving to charity) if it were not a moral duty to do so. I'm saying you have no justification for that assumptions because the mere fact that adults now don't require a moral duty to perform acts of kindness does not mean that a world in which such moral duty did not exist would continue to behave that way.
But I see from your other posts that a lot of this hinges on your idiosyncratic conflation of 'moral duty' with 'law'. If you're going to make up your own meanings for terms it's going to be very difficult to have a conversation using them.
This assumes that at some point in time there was a moral duty to be kind. I don't think there was. This is not to say that there is no social pressure to be kind. You seem to be conflating "moral duty" with "social censure".
Quoting Isaac
I didn't conflate them. I was arguing that if everybody agreed that there was a moral duty to donate to charity, then there would be a law forcing people to do it. It's not that laws are moral duties, it's that moral duties typically lead to laws.
If we can agree that forcing individuals to do things without their consent is inherently problematic, then this raises a lot of questions regarding the act of having children.
Quoting khaled
Where are you getting this stuff from?
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Because you are using them interchangeably.
And the second I thought was common sense.
I meant to ask where you're getting the assumption that they're not interchangeable.
Quoting khaled
Right. Well that's the source if a lot of confusion. I don't think any if the other commentators here are using the term in that way, but more in the manner it's used in moral philosophy.
It's not an assumption it's a definition. I think most here would agree that social censure and moral duty are different things. For instance, if I grew up in a neighbourhood where theft and murder are the norm, and I was reprimanded for not participating, I think most people would say that I do NOT have a moral duty to steal and murder.
But those doing the reprimanding would consider it your moral duty to participate (gang loyalty, or whatever).
Not that I'm saying all social censure is in the form if moral duties - something like etiquette would be an example - but the expression of a communities moral duties largely takes the form of social censure, not legal recourse.
So not all social censure is a form of a moral duty.
Quoting Isaac
And not all moral duties are expressed in the form of social censure.
Therefore the "assumption" that they're not interchangeable is warranted.
It is when we're talking about morality in general. There, assumptions about the general case are entirely appropriate.
But this is all getting very much besides the point as my synonymous use was very specific and need not be generalised. The point is that you cannot assume people would act as they do in isolation from the social pressures around them and some of those social pressures are the expression of what society considers to be moral duties.
Creating situations for suffering so you can get to consent.. This is honestly why I rarely form the argument around consent and just keep it at unnecessary suffering because at the end of the day, you are creating the suffering so you can ask consent. That is why I brought up the idea of let's say you know that a baby will get tortured if it is born. But it doesn't exist yet, so does this consideration matter? I mean according to your view nope, there is no thing to give consent, so who cares right? Fine, at that point the original AN argument stands.. causing unnecessary suffering onto another is wrong. You can make an argument combining both too. Unless you get consent, you shouldn't put someone into a negative state without knowing what the person wants. Why would the assumption be that this is okay?
Surely this goes back to something about suffering itself which makes its imposition on someone else wrong. That is not something intuitive or relevant to your judgements? If not, I'd like to know why you think you can just do that on behalf of someone else other than rhetoric for the sake of argument. Cause I doubt you really do, other than this case of procreation. I can't find out if this guy wants to be put in a state of negative situations.. so I'll go ahead and proceed. Wrong.
Quoting Echarmion
And here's why in my first formulation in the post I said unnecessarily and absolute not instrumental.
Agreed. I didn't say people would act as they do in isolation from social pressures. However I think it's important to note that these "social pressures" are not shared. For example: When was the last time people censured you for not donating to charity? I find it likely that has never even happened (at least it's never happened to me). So we cannot say that donating to charity is obligatory by "social morality".
I don't see much point in talking about what "society considers moral" in the first place if by that you mean what we are socially pressured to do. As that is not constant across a society, much less across the world, so why should we care?
The thread is about antinatalism, which makes a moral claim. So we're talking about morality in some form. Since no moral claims are constant (shared across a society or the world), then antinatalism has to either demonstrate the source of its objectivity, or make arguments from within the relativistic framework, or just stop.
The question that needs answering first here is [I]why[/I] consent is important. If it's because we care about some notion of "choosing your destiny", the conclusion doesn't seem to be to not have children, but the opposite.
Quoting khaled
But how does this work if you're at the same time saying I am not allowed to assess harm for others?
Quoting khaled
The question was essentially when we are allowed to cause harm on the basis of our assessment that doing so is better than the alternative.
Quoting khaled
What would it mean to have consent from nonexistence?
Quoting khaled
I was asking you whether the question is relevant I'm your view.
Quoting khaled
We're not asking comatose patients for their consent. That'd be a pointless exercise. We ask what their interest is, according to our best guesses.
And saying "the default answer is no" doesn't help, because you can arbitrarily change the wording of the question to fit any result.
Quoting khaled
How can you have a moral system that doesn't demand the best possible outcome? If you know a better outcome is possible, why would you not demand that outcome?
Quoting khaled
As I said, it seems that there is some kind of scale between everything being completely voluntary and everything being forced.
Quoting khaled
You usually have the theoretical choice to not comply. Oppression doesn't take away your ability to make choices, it takes away your ability to make those choices operative by imposing consequences.
I don't remember anyone making arguments from objectivity. But regardless you haven't said what is accomplished by talking about "societal morality" in this case.
I have explained this countless times now. You are part of the calculation. You are part of these "others". Harming others is fine if it either you or them (again, because you are part of the calculation).
Edit: I misread. I never actually claimed that you are not allowed to assess harm for others though.
Quoting Echarmion
When it is our job to minimize the other party's suffering AND when we know that our choice is actually minimizng suffering (vaccines for example). Which only really happens with dependents.
Quoting Echarmion
What would it mean to have consent from an unconscious person? In both cases: Meaningless question. Point is, you need consent, and you don't have it. Doesn't matter why you don't have it.
Quoting Echarmion
It isn't because life isn't objectively good or bad.
Quoting Echarmion
Not really. We don't pull the plug. Period. You don't "guess" you only look at the amount of harm done in both cases and pick the one with least harm. You take the conservative approach. I challenge you to come up with a situation where you pick the option that does more harm when consent is not available.
Quoting Echarmion
What's wrong with having such a moral system? Why would you demand?
Quoting Echarmion
Yes but when non compliance results in severe harm that's not really a choice. That scenario is what people call "an imposition". For instance: You theoretically could kill someone in public, you'll just be executed for it. In this scenario, while techincally there is a choice, practically there isn't. That is what impositions do, practically remove choices.
Because without it one risks causing harm or distress against an individual's will, regardless of one's intention.
It's a misunderstanding to think law is about morality. It's not. It's about economics first. Just claims have statutory limitations and lapse into moral claims that aren't legally enforceable. Crimes have statutory limitations too. The obligation to account based on IFRS or GAAP or to drive left instead of right aren't moral rules themselves. The majority of laws regulate, they don't enforce morality.
:100: :up:
Yes, people fail to recognize de facto forced choices. For example, we can follow the impositions that are demanded of life or die. That is a de facto forced choice.
It's not about getting consent from some individual after they have been born. That'd be ridiculous. The point is realizing that consent is based on respect for an individuals freedom. It'd be entirely backwards to protect freedom by taking it away.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So your approach to this discussion is to just use whatever argument is convenient? What's the point is you're putting the conclusion first and select arguments according to happenstance?
Can you name the first principles you base your view on?
Quoting schopenhauer1
You cannot simply combine utilitarian and deontological approaches to the problem. The assumptions underlying them are fundamentally incompatible. If you're talking about suffering, you are talking about some kind of state of affairs. Something that exists "out there". If you're talking about consent, you're talking about a relationship between subjects, an idea.
If it is "something about suffering itself" then how does it then matter about how it's imposed? Suffering is either bad in and of itself or it isn't.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We put people in jail against their will, do we not? The justification is that putting them in jail is necessary to preserve the freedom of everyone.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And who judges what is and isn't necessary? Whose goals define instrumentality?
Quoting khaled
Why isn't it always our job to minimize suffering?
Quoting khaled
If you admit the question is meaningless, you cannot then go ahead and require it answered.
Quoting khaled
I don't know where you live, but where I live we absolutely do pull the plug if there is sufficient evidence that this would be what the person wanted.
Quoting khaled
So if consent is not available, we then default to least harm? Then why do antinatalists bring up consent? Anyways this is basically what I said: When consent is not avialable, we don't default to "no". We default to figuring out what the person would want, their interest, which is the same as asking what is the least harm to them.
Quoting khaled
It just seem absurd. You have figured out what the best thing to do would be, but then you go out and do something else, because why pick the best option?
Quoting khaled
Ok, I guess we ultimately agree on this point. But I would go from this and conclude that therefore, being born is not an imposition, because it doesn't practically remove any choice. In fact it does the opposite: Create any and all choice.
Quoting Tzeentch
And I think this puts an anti-natalist in a bind, because they would now need to argue that we must protect your will by preventing you from having a will, which just seem absurd.
Why would it be? You keep asking these questions that seem to imply a "default position" where there is none.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't require it answered. You're the one asking "What does it mean to have consent from from non-existence", not me. Why would I require that answered?
Quoting Echarmion
Same here. More importantly, what do you do if you have no idea that that is what the person wanted or didn't want? You don't pull the plug do you? If you already knew the person would want the plug pulled then you DO have consent.
Quoting Echarmion
To say that it is unavailable. Therefore the conservative course should be taken. Which is not to have kids.
Quoting Echarmion
I wouldn't conflate what a person wants with what's least harmful to them. For example, the comatose patient may have wanted people to pull the plug if he went comatose but never told anybody.
But regardless, if this is what we do, why would having kids be ethical when we know for a fact that not being born is less harm than being born?
Quoting Echarmion
Because the best option is too difficult to be expected regularly.
There have been, but that's not the point. I said that there either needs to be such arguments, or there needs to be an acceptance of the relativistic framework. It's one or the other. What we actually have is equivocation between the two when it suits the argument. It starts with "you wouldn't do X would you?", as if a moral naturalist, then when we say "we wouldn't end the human race either" it turns to "well, your feelings are wrong here, paternalism and/or humanity are not allowable moral goals now". Either we're moral naturalists, or deontologists, or moral relativists, but we can be whatever suits the argument at the time.
You've argued strongly that you should not impose a chore or trial on another without their consent, yet doing so (for the purposes of continuing the human race, among other things) is considered morally acceptable by most moral systems. So if you're going to argue for a moral principle which is not upheld as such by any moral system you need to argue from moral objectivity (all those systems have made some mistake), or else you're just writing the equivalent of your favourite flavour of ice-cream, which is pointless on a public philosophy forum.
There is. And I've repeatedly said there is. On multiple threads.
Quoting Isaac
The intention is not to seem like a moral naturalist, but to see if you share the same relativistic framework.
How would one argue as a moral relativist in your book if "you wouldn't do X would you?" is somehow indicating moral naturalism. I would think a moral naturalist would say "You shouldn't do X". He won't ask what you think because that is irrelevant to him, within his framework he already knows he's right.
I don't think there is anything that implies that the speaker there is a moral naturalist. I think you have a bad habit of reading what you want into what others write.
Quoting Isaac
Great, you have a premise I don't. That the continuation of the human race has anything to do with morality. Whereas I think it has to come out of the morality. As I said on the other thread: You're welcome to your view, but I don't share it. And that is the extent to which I care to talk about this topic with you provided you don't keep replying claiming I said things I didn't say.
Quoting Isaac
Or maybe it's not so binary. Maybe despite being relativistic, I am trying to see whether or not there are people who share the same premises but don't end up with the same conclusion, and if so how they do it, just out of personal interest.
There's no protection of another's will. It's the prevention of violating another's will.
As to suffering entailed by life, see the OP. I'm not going to repeat myself.
As to sickness, that's mostly caused by bacteria or viruses. Not life.
I don't see how there could be a "violation" if there is nothing protected.
Quoting khaled
I am asking to find out what your "default positions" are, because it seems to me that you want to minimize suffering in one situation, and then in another you say that the important question is consent, and suffering is only relevant as a proxy.
Quoting khaled
If it's not answered, you have no idea what you actually demand.
Quoting khaled
Yes, if you have no idea you keep the person alive (so long as the effort is reasonable, you wouldn't do CPR forever), on the off chance that they might wake up again. The principle here is again to preserve the possibility for choice.
I don't think you have consent even if you have a written declaration for medical procedures. It's always possible they changed their mind since writing it.
Quoting khaled
What's conservative about it? You're not conserving anything.
Quoting khaled
Well we take an educated guess. But I don't think a meaningful definition of harm that doesn't refer to individual will somewhere is possible.
Quoting khaled
But we don't know that. You said so yourself:
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Doesn't that just mean you'll sometimes fail to live up to your expectations? That's not really a reason not to have expectations.
Protection implies more parties are involved (AKA, parent protects their would-be child from a third party). I am arguing from the viewpoint of the parent in relation to their would-be child. 'Protecting' one's future child from one's own desire of having children can be more easily understood as making the choice not to potentially violate one's would-be child's will.
But this is getting overly fuzzy, while the objection of anti-natalists is very straight forward. What justifies the act of forcing an individual to experience life without knowing whether they want to or not?
It's not a complicated matter at all.
Let's say I had the power to make you experience something that you may or may not enjoy. Why should or shouldn't I use that power without your consent?
From whom?
Quoting Echarmion
It's always been do not cause unnecessary suffering on behalf of someone else. I will admit I went down a consent rabbit hole with you, but I still think after debate this can also be an principle because I see this is about forcing other people into impositions unnecessarily without consent as well.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't abide to a utilitarian that is aggregate. There is a mix because it is causing suffering unto an individual, not how much aggregated suffering in the abstract. I see the locus of ethics at the individual level. Most utilitarian principles try to look at some aggregate abstract notion.
Quoting Echarmion
Absolute vs. instrumental. Already born, vs. no need to impose at all, period.
Quoting Echarmion
If people should not be exposed to suffering or imposed upon unnecessarily, that principle is the judge. If you don't believe in it, see my idea about how meta-ethics works.
Yet it's something which almost all people born experience.
You do not have to minimize anyone else's suffering unless they're dependents. But what you must not do is act in such a manner that they suffer more due to your actions as opposed to if you just weren't around then.
Quoting Echarmion
I know what consent is. And I know I don't have it in this case.
What does "consent from an unconscious person" mean?
And yet you talk of consent.
Quoting Echarmion
At that point it's their fault. They should have changed the declaration if they changed their mind.
Quoting Echarmion
Agreed. But I don't think the principle is "maximization of choice". I think the principle is simply: You can't kill people without their consent
Quoting Echarmion
If you have a child you risk someone getting harmed. If you don't, no one gets harmed. Therefore the latter is obviously more conservative.
Quoting Echarmion
Agreed. I define harm as simply "Doing something they don't want done".
Quoting Echarmion
Even IF their life is overall good, they definitely had more harm due to being born than they would have had they not been born (because then they would have had NO harm).
Exactly. Well-stated and concise. It isn't that hard. I called it the Argument Against Paternalism. At base, the answers here is that the parent thinks that it is best for the child, even if it is causing suffering, which is why I say, it is still wrong to cause unnecessary suffering unto another even if one has good intentions to do so.
Actually, those are exactly the de facto impositions I am talking about. So, when you project things about life, are these not things that factor in?
Edit : Or to put it more clearly, life is not a sufficient condition for any of these situations. Without tiredness, there would be no sleep. Without hunger, no eating. It's always something else and that something else is always the proximate cause of suffering. Nobody using "cause" in any sensible way, will blame this on life. I stubbed my toe today and it hurt like hell. It was carelessness that caused it.
I don't think such a philosophy would ever be strong enough to convince every human to stop having babies right? But it would stop the people that believe not having babies is the right thing to do thus removing them from the gene pool. Boom, problem solved.
So in fact you should probably be trying to promote antinatalism to get any people unsure of their stance to make sure you get rid of as many people as possible that are not into being baby makers.
It's a long term win. Everyone will be happy.
Boom.
I don't see how this is the case. Parents can also protect their children from objects.
Quoting Tzeentch
But this implies that the child that doesn't yet exist already has a will we are protecting.
Quoting Tzeentch
What individual is being forced? You're only an individual after you have already experienced life.
Quoting Tzeentch
You should use your power if doing so follows a maxim that you can will to be universalised. Usually, asking if you yourself would want to experience it is a good first approximation. But the details depend on the experience and the relationship we're in.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The same person we're otherwise imposing life on.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The word "unnecessary" seems to do all the work here. I already argued above that suffering that's necessary to exist in the first place cannot reasonably be called unnecessary.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You were asking about what I do in general, so this answer seems out of context.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Principles cannot judge, on account of not having minds.
Quoting khaled
Ok, thanks. I'll just take this as given for now.
Quoting khaled
I specifically said there is no such thing as consent from someone who isn't conscious, so I think you misremember. Anyways you have already admitted that you can't answer the question, so your claim to know now seems rather flimsy.
Quoting khaled
Regardless of fault, the possibility means it's not the same as actually having consent.
Quoting khaled
"Maximisation of choice" is the answer to the question: [I]why[/I] can you not kill people without their consent.
Quoting khaled
I still do not see what is being conserved, the word "obviously" notwithstanding.
Quoting khaled
I don't quite see what "having more harm" means if harm is "doing something to someone they don't want done". Grammatically, you can't have more doing.
You have defined harm from the perspective of the subject, the part that acts. But you're now using it in a passive sentence from the perspective of the object that is acted upon.
And yet we act as if consent is required.
Quoting Echarmion
Fair enough but it's as close as we'll get. If a written document doesn't imply consent then idk what will.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't think any more justification is necessary. You cannot kill people without their consent. Period. And if further justification was needed I'd hesitate to say it was because of "maximization of choice".
Quoting Echarmion
What do you mean what is being conserved? That is not how the word is used clearly. "Conservative" just means less likely to do harm.
Option A: Can cause harm
Option B: Cannot cause harm
Option B is more conservative.
Quoting Echarmion
Cmon now I'm sure you can guess. People have more things they don't want done unto them when they exist than when they don't exist. This is trivially true since when people don't exist there is nothing that can be done to them nor is there anything that they don't want done.
Quoting Echarmion
No I'm not. Explanation above.
Quoting Echarmion
Let's say one lives in absolutely dire poverty and there is no doubt that any offspring one may bring forth will also lead a short and miserable life.
The line of reasoning you present would see no issue with birthing children in such conditions, since there's no individual whose well-being we need to take into account preceding the birth.
Quoting Echarmion
If it is acceptable to use one's power at one's own subjective discretion to force one's will onto others, we enter a slippery slope that inevitably leads to "might makes right."
I think this is mostly down to interpretation.
Quoting khaled
I mean if you don't care about whether rules like "you cannot kill people" can be derived from more basic principles, that's fine. But it is kinda the point of moral philosophy.
Quoting khaled
I only really associate "conservative" with a political movement and an approach to social questions. In that sense it's very much associated with the root "to conserve". I don't know where you take your usage of the word from, but if that's the definition you wanna go with, I am not going to argue.
Quoting khaled
It's trivially true only if you suppose that people that don't exist nevertheless exist, because otherwise the comparison doesn't work. You can also say "grass is greener than freedom", but while it's true that grass is (often) green, I have no idea what it would mean for freedom to be green.
Quoting Tzeentch
My line of reasoning would only say that the interests of the child are not the issue. There may be other reasons why doing so is immoral. For example, it might be immoral on the side of the parents to enter into obligations that they know they cannot fulfill.
This kind of question is actually something I have been wondering about, more in regard to how to deal with the (possible) interests of generations far in the future. Questions like "does it matter if the planet dies after everyone currently living is gone?" I haven't found a satisfactory conclusion yet. But I don't think it can be found by attributing a will and interests to nonexistance.
Quoting Tzeentch
Whose discretion do you suppose I apply? I only have access to my own.
If the interests of the child aren't important, then whose interests are? The desires of the parents?
And doesn't your mention of obligations imply that the interests of the future child should be taken into account preceding the act of putting it into existence?
Quoting Echarmion
I'd take it a step back and argue that one should avoid forcing one's will upon others against their will altogether. Voluntary and consensual interaction seems to me the basis of moral conduct.
They're not so much unimportant as they are nonexistent. Apart from that, you just apply whatever moral principles you would otherwise. If you think desires have moral weight, then yes the desires of the parents would be relevant.
Quoting Tzeentch
No, because the obligation of the parents is one sided. It applies regardless of the interests of the child, so there is no need to try to divine their interests before they can have any, much less ascribe some kind of will to nonexistence.
Quoting Tzeentch
But even if I grant that for the sake of discussion, it'd still be the case that I need to decide, for myself, whether or not an interaction is voluntary on the other side. Even if I am being told directly, that only ever constitutes a certain amount of evidence for or against an underlying will.
So are they important or not?
You seem to be beating around the bush here.
Quoting Echarmion
If not the interests of the child, from where do these obligations stem?
And if we cannot divine what the child's feelings are about being forced to live, isn't that a great reason to refrain from forcing it to?
Quoting Echarmion
Sure.
Seems like all the more reason to be extremely careful when interacting forcefully with others, even more so when it concerns (literally) life-changing matters.
You're missing the point. There is no "they". You're asking whether nothing is important and pretending that something exists that doesn't exist.
I just don't buy this move you are claiming. You deny two things that humans can do very easily:
1) Project future outcomes. We know what life's sufferings can be and can predict that others can also experience this. Thus all the sufferings known to man are at our finger tips.
2) We can generalize. We can look at all instances of suffering in a life and generalize them to suffering that will most likely happen to someone born. We don't need to know every case to know suffering will occur.
So you are now saying we are taking freedom away from the thing that does not exist yet? "Who" is being deprived of this freedom? Here's the move you miss: once born, the freedom was by default taken away... now it is de facto live (via usual means, hack in wilderness, or die slowly), or kill yourself. Prior to this there was no person with impositions, there was no freedoms to be taken away. At instant X when that person is born, there was a decision made that affected it, that it could not possibly make. Yep.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't know what that means.. suffering that's necessary in the first place. Again, no one "needs" to exist just so they can realize suffering exists. If a baby is 99% sure to get tortured if born, we don't need it to be born to have torture, so that torture exists so that we can then say it is wrong. Clearly all cases of suffering can be prevented, but were not if procreation occurs. Same odd thinking as Benkei to not be able to generalize all instances of suffering and then realize that this can be prevented, and not initiated on someone else's behalf.
Quoting Echarmion
Clearly I meant if you believe that you should follow it. Yes, very good.
Yep, similar example to what I had.
This is the ridiculous move Benkei also makes.. You don't believe in future outcomes. There is no actual person now, but there will be in the future. It is the person who will be in the future that has the suffering you are preventing. Stop with the sophistry.
Maybe, but I’m not really sure. First, the question of whether or not to have children really only matters to people who feel strongly one way or the other. If you’re indifferent, then you don’t care enough either way to make the issue a moral one. It isn’t like everyone that procreates carefully deliberated one whether or not to use birth control. So I toss out the people who don’t seem to care one way or the other (which I presume to be the majority of people since most people don’t seem to put much thought into it). So I would assume we’re dealing with a minority to begin with; antinatalist’s and those who feel having children is a major purpose in life. I don’t think it’s clear that the former outnumbers the latter.
The question is meaningless.
Quoting Tzeentch
Good question. Perhaps the obligation is also self-contradictory. But on the other hand we could say that the obligation rests on the abstract needs of children, not on any personal interest.
Quoting Tzeentch
This implies that there is a child with feelings, floating around as a disembodied soul or something, before the decision to even have a child is made.
Otherwise, the sequence of events doesn't work out, because by the time there is a child, it's already living, and the relevant decision is in the past.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's the implication of following your logic.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What decision is made "at the instant a person is born"?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Everyone needs to exist. If you don't exist, you're not part of everyone.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Torture already exists. It's the individual child that does not.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This isn't the same argument though. This goes back to what I said earlier. You can avoid the problem of causality and attributing a will to nonexistence by committing to just eradicating suffering as a phenomenon. The problem is that you then have to answer why we're not nuking the planet into oblivion.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But then it's me who gets to judge, isn't it?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I do believe in future outcomes. The problem is that you want us to act as if the outcome has simultaneously happened and not happened.
Agreed.
Quoting Echarmion
Well whatever "more basic principles" you find from which "you cannot kill people" derives I can still ask that question about. As in "where do these more basic principles derive from". You have to stop at some point. And I don't really care to dig 50 layers in for no reason. A handful will do.
Quoting Echarmion
Definition of conservative by marriam webster: 2-b: Marked by moderation or caution.
Quoting Echarmion
That's just false.
Grass is greener than freedom. Because freedom has no color.
Quoting Echarmion
Because that hurts people, and Antinatalists are striving to eradicate all suffering. I don't understand why people keep using this ridiculous argument. It's tiring.
Quoting Echarmion
It doesn't imply that. It implies precisely what it says. That by taking this course of action you can have a child that hates life. And that is reason enough to not have them.
"The relevant decision is in the past" so what? Doesn't say anything about whether or not the decision was right to take.
That doesn't make it not a moral issue. Gangsters are indifferent to your suffering. Doesn't mean they can go around shooting people.
Not putting much thought into an action doesn't make it okay to do...
Then we arrive at the problem already presented:
Quoting Tzeentch
This is a straw man by the way. Nobody argues this.
You're presented your premise. I've presented you with an implication of that premise. If you accept one, you accept the other.
It won't hurt if you use enough bombs. And anyways, what is the very brief suffering of a few billion compared to the unfathomable suffering of billions upon billions of future generations?
Quoting khaled
Well then, nothing else needs to be said. Your argument ultimately rests on nonsense, in the most literal sense of the word.
Quoting Tzeentch
I'm not sure I see this as a problem. There are other ways that the situation can be avoided without establishing a moral injunction against "irresponsible parents".
What I'm referring to is when you say...
Quoting khaled
...you imply there's a moral duty beyond that which any community merely 'think' is a moral duty. Again, basic equivocation is all that carries this argument. When we say people consider social censure to be equivalent to moral duties you play the objectivist and point to negative examples. When we say that morality is about more than just consent and harm reduction you play the relativist and say "not for me it isn't". It's disingenuous to keep switching as it suits your argument. @schopenhauer1 is far worse than you, but it's nonetheless a feature of antinatalist argument it seems.
Quoting khaled
Anything which attempts to work forward from some premise to undermine an already held position is a form of moral realism.
We have a moral intuition that we should not cause unnecessary harm without consent. We also have a moral intuition that ending the human race would be wrong. The task of any moral relativist might be to document and maybe explain both those sentiments. It is only the task of a moral realist to attempt to show one to e 'wrong' by use of the other.
Quoting khaled
Fair enough, but your comments often bely this approach.
So then, do you accept the implication of your premise?
Quoting Echarmion
The problem is simple. If one accepts the premise that children do not have a well-being to take into account before they are born, this implies that it is perfectly acceptable to have children even when one is fully aware that they are causing them a life-time of suffering.
To me this contradicts any conceivable notion of parenting and morality.
The way I define harm is doing something to someone that they don't want done. People don't want to die. Simple.
Quoting Echarmion
I wouldn't be so sure. Your main problem is that you cannot compare the suffering of someone to the "suffering of nothing". Maybe that's true. But that would imply some nasty things I'll start with one.
Malicious genetic engineering is fine. Even if your next child would have been born healthy. Because there is no actual harm being done when you genetically engineer a child to be blind and deaf for example. There was not a child that was harmed, as once the child is born they are already blind and deaf, the relevant decision is in the past.
I am sure you don't agree. But how do you justify it? There is no one being harmed here, and so no comparison can be made. You cannot compare the non-existent "potential" unmodified child with the one you genetically modified. Because one of those doesn't exist.
This is why I think the comparison is legitimate. I don't see another way you can have malicious genetic engineering be wrong without it.
Incorrect. Look at my wording:
Quoting khaled
Had I been a moral objectivist I wouldn't have included the bolded area. I would have just outright said that you have a moral duty not to steal and murder.
I never play the objectivist, I operate within premises I think we agree on.
Quoting Isaac
Incorrect. I could work from a commonly held premise to undermine a conclusion that does not follow from it by showing inconsistencies, or connections people have not noticed. Or I could show that some commonly held premises lead to contradictory conclusions.
Quoting Isaac
You*. As I said, we don't agree here. So by your own words:
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Agreed. Which is why I don't do it.
I've noticed that these implications have been pointed out on several occasions by you, and I, and none of us have received much response.
What premisse and what implication?
Premise: The interests of a future child do not exist.
Implication: Actions that willfully undermine said child's non-existent interests are acceptable.
You noted it was "dealt with" and "not a problem".
Quoting khaled
Both these problems stem from looking at morality as a set of injunctions against specific outcomes, like a criminal law code listing a bunch of injuries you are not allowed to cause. And if a victim cannot be found and thus a prohibition not established, it then follows whatever you do is moral.
The alternative view is to ask what reasons we have for doing something, and whether those reasons are "good". Should I follow these reasons in other circumstance? Shoud everyone? Creating suffering for the sake of suffering is not an acceptable motivation regardless of the outcome. It doesn't matter if I apply it by genetically engineering beings that suffer, or whether I punch my neighbor in the face for fun.
So, I'm not going to bother with the previous comments, because this answers your supposed problems with the metaphysics of no existing person prior to their birth.
Quoting Echarmion
So how many times does consent and the individual matters do I have to say? How is nuking someone who already exists respecting the individual? Now that they exist, indeed they do have thoughts, desires, fears, preferences, etc. Ironically, this is back to making a decision for someone else again.
I am absolutely NOT an aggregate utilitarian. That is to say, it should be based on individual's decisions as to their own state's of being (which obviously, cannot even in theory be had prior to birth).
Also, another thing to consider is there is a difference between starting existence and continuing it. As I said many times earlier, prior to birth, there is no person who could be harmed by not being born. There is no person also who has any interests that would like to be preserved. Once born, people often fear death, have their own interests thy want to pursue. This doesn't negate being better off not existing, it only means that there are interests and values held once born that would be taken away. So it is not a symmetry, it is not the same preventing birth and discontinuing already existing life. So both from a consent issue, respecting the individual, and from the perspective of a person with interests vs. a person who never existed to have interests, this would be incomparable.
Quoting Echarmion
Yes. You can follow principles I disagree with. It's like veganism. Maybe veganism is right, but it shouldn't be forced.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't see why you say that. We know suffering exists, with almost 100% certainty. We know of the varieties and kinds that could happen. We also know there is unknown sufferings we didn't even think of. All these things can be prevented. Doesn't seem hard to me.
The latter must include the former. When looking at reasons to do something, some of those reasons will be "bad" and therefore the action should not be done. For example malicious genetic engineering. I am asking why that is bad.
Quoting Echarmion
What is the reason that makes creating suffering acceptable in the case of having children then?
Yet, perhaps inadvertently you seem to be arguing this.
Let's go back. I am essentially saying that you do not account for a future child who will exist and you do not seem to like the idea of generalizing the idea that suffering exists and a child will be born that will almost certainly suffer. You don't like taking instances of suffering and summing it up and then applying it for the future child. These are perfectly in the realm of human reasoning. We can take specific instances and group them as instances of the same category. We can project these instances in the future.
If you think these indeed are legitimate moves, then your argument about proximate causes and metaphysical limitations are moot.
Not quite.
My premise started with an analysis of what child birth is; forcing an individual to experience life without their consent.
Your objection was that an individual that does not yet exist, has no will or well-being to take into account, thus no consent is required.
What I sought to point out is that your objection implies that actions that undermine the well-being of a future child cannot be considered wrong or immoral under your premise, which goes against all notions that I am able to conceive of what is considered "good".
Quoting Echarmion
If you wish to shift morality from being about outcomes to being about intentions, I'll take the next step and state that "good" behavior requires both intention and outcome.
Either way I do not see how this deals with the problem I have presented.
We'd need to know the reason why we're doing it thoug. For example, if we're creating some sort of slave caste, because we'd like others to serve us as slaves, this seems like "bad" motivation regardless of the fact that no slaves are yet around. Should we act with the intention to make other sentient being serve us? I'd say no.
Quoting khaled
For example, you may want children so you can help create a new generation of compassionate and capable humans.
Quoting Tzeentch
As I already said, it doesn't imply that such actions cannot be considered wrong or immoral. Only that the moral weight cannot come from the will or interest of the non-existent child. We haven't actually excluded that there is an overarching moral principle hat says to not have children when you cannot adequately support them.
Quoting Tzeentch
You don't control the outcomes though.
Quoting Tzeentch
I don't have a problem with admitting that there are some things I still need to figure out regarding the moral weight of future people. But I nevertheless feel very confident that tying yourself into knots trying to somehow attribute personhood to unborn children while maintaining that they don't exist is the solution.
Then it follows that necessarily there is also no person who could be harmed by being born.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You're ignoring the context of my comment. As I said over and over, you can either focus on consent, but then run into the problems discussed at length, or you focus on eliminating on suffeirng, but then you run into the question of why bother with consent if it's ultimately suffering we care about.
Both legs of the argument fail on their own terms. Stitching them together to form an inorganic whole doesn't help.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure they can be prevented. By nuking everyone, like I said. But you don't want to do that, because you care about consent. But when I bring up that consent cannot possibly apply, you go back and say that this doesn't matter because it's about preventing suffering, and so round and round we go.
You have chosen to use two fundamentally incompatible principles, and switch between them as the defense of your position requires.
No that does not follow.
Quoting Echarmion
I think you can combine them as the locus of ethics is at the individual level, and one of the most important implications here is what people decide to do with their own lives, especially something like ending their own state of existence. However, even suffering taken in its own accord, there is an asymmetry between starting and continuing an existence. Starting existence, there is no person to be harmed. If born, they will be harmed. As for discontinuing someone born, most people would say death is a great harm to them. And yes, you can have it such that suffering is sufficiently bad enough to never have been, but life sufficiently good enough that once born, would not want one's interests obliterated.
Quoting Echarmion
It can work on both fronts, and both fronts combined. My position has always had the element that ethics is at the locus of the individual and not for some cause. Killing someone to stop suffering would bypass the individual would not be respecting the individual as a person with dignity. Perhaps the very basis why issues of harm/suffering/causing unnecessary impositions on another should be the basis of ethics.
Here you seem to be placing the child's wellbeing ABOVE the desire of the parents. So creating a slave caste is wrong because everyone in said caste will hate it, even if its creators will love it.
Quoting Echarmion
But here you place the parent's desire above any consideration for the child's wellbeing (as you don't mention it). Why is that? Where is this "hard line" coming from?
What if for example, you knew your next child was going to be severely disabled, would it still be ethical to have them? They WOULD contribute to making a generation of compassionate humans in all likelyhood, but does that justify the harm they will go through? Why or why not?
But I do and have accounted for that. It's literally in the OP.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I have no problems with this either. I'm fact I've said that everybody suffers at some point in their lives. This isn't relevant though because it's no proof for life being a sufficient condition for suffering.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes. And? You already know how I treat both types (intrinsic and contingent) of suffering so I don't need to repeat myself do I?
Quoting schopenhauer1
It does. It cannot be both no person and a person at the same time. That's the principle of non-contradiction, the most basic principle of logic.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, exactly. Case closed.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Contradiction in terms. You just said there is no person, so there cannot be a "they" here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't see how this could be the case. Run me through the thought process of some hypothetical soul about to be incarnated, and arrives at your conclusion here.
Quoting khaled
It'd be wrong even if we also genetically engineer the slaves to like it, on the basis that the motivation is immoral.
Quoting khaled
So long as you could honestly judge having the child is in line with the maxim, having it would be ethical.
What are such overarching moral principles based on, other than the well-being of would-be children?
Quoting Echarmion
Indeed. Isn't that a great reason to think twice before having children?
Quoting Echarmion
I'm not trying to attribute personhood. There's no need for it.
I'm challenging your suggestion that because a child is not yet born, one can do whatever they please in regards to its future.
Isn't it as simple as taking into account the consequences of one's actions prior to carrying them out?
It seems we're playing dumb, pretending that individuals decide to have children and when the child is born and has a will and well-being, we scratch our heads and wonder where all that came from?
So the motivation is the only determining factor?
So someone who is millions in debt with no home, who has a drinking problem, and 15 inheritable genetic disease should have children in his current state as long as he intends to try his best to raise them?
Sounds disgusting and backwards to me. Something akin to letting anyone perform surgery because they intend to do their best, without actually caring about whether or not they're qualified and without caring about the person being operated on.
If the motivation is not the only factor, then what else is?
Quoting Echarmion
So as long as I can judge that the child will fulfill my arbitrary desire of them (in your case to create the next generation of compassionate people) then having them is ethical? Might as well say it's ethical in every situation, which I strongly disagree with, and you don't even have to be an AN to disagree with that one.
This is attributing personhood. A thing that doesn't exist, isn't a "child" and does not have the capacity of being "born" and it certainly doesn't have a future. Your "its" refers to nothing.
It is not.
It is taking into account what will logically come about as a consequence of one's actions.
But you used it in a line of argument. If you believe it has no normative value, then I'm afraid I'm at a loss to understand what point you were trying to make.
Quoting khaled
That is a form of moral realism. To say that you can 'work out' what you 'ought' to believe with a few logical steps. It makes no sense otherwise, to have a premise which is entirely arbitrary and then strictly stick to logical conclusions which stem from it.
Quoting khaled
By 'we' I was (presumptively?) referring to those of us arguing against antinatalism, not all humanity.
Not that it detracts from the point. If you agree that moral intuitions have no necessary external source, then they are arbitrary (or multiply sourced). Given that, a project attempting to undermine one on the basis of logical inconsistencies with another makes no sense.
Taking into account what will logically come about as a consequence of one's actions is insufficient to carry your case though. Doing that alone one could weigh the happiness one could create against the suffering and decide one has overall made the world a happier place.
To carry your case you need for these consequences to be considered as impositions right now (at point of conception) on a non-existent entity.
If it were just a matter of considering the consequences of one's actions then one would be allowed to weigh in every positive effect too, they are no less 'consequences'.
Why? Since inaction can have no less of a consequence in a dynamic environment, I don't see why you'd favour it over action in the face of uncertainty.
Notwithstanding that, hasn't your argument previously been exactly that we can satisfactorily predict the consequences of our actions?
Ultimately in your recognition of yourself as a free subject in interaction with other subjects.
Quoting Tzeentch
I am not arguing against "thinking twice".
Quoting Tzeentch
I have never suggested one can do whatever one pleases. What I am saying is that unborn children cannot have standing as moral subjects.
Quoting Tzeentch
No, because we're deciding whether to bring about the consequence in the first place. You cannot decide by predicting what you will decide.
What you can - indeed must - do is to predict the consequences of possible decisions. In this sense, you can also predict that the child will have a will and interests. It'd just be a mistake to treat this prediction as current fact.
This is why I earlier wrote that the obligations parents have can feature in the decision. Because those are a predictable consequence. But it'd be false to then apply these obligations to the current decision as if they were already operative.
Quoting khaled
"Intending to" isn't enough. You also need to be able to actually being the goal about. Which includes considering other outcomes.
Quoting khaled
Nothing I said had anything to do with "arbitrary desire". I said your reasons need to be moral. That's the opposite of allowing your arbitrary desire to rule.
Not only is one forcing an individual to do something that has great consequences without their consent, but one is also incapable of estimating the outcome.
Quoting Isaac
Some things can be satisfactorily predicted. Other things cannot. I think the possible quality of life of an unborn child belongs to the latter category.
Fair enough.
Quoting Echarmion
So just like Isaac, the only reason inflicting harm by having children is acceptable for you is because there is some "more worthy" goal which apparently justifies causing unwarranted harm. And just like Isaac, if that's your conclusion then fine, though it is completely unsatisfactory to me. I do not see how you justify causing suffering on a third party for your own desire, knowing full well they may not share your goal of creating the next generation of caring and capable humans, and knowing full well that they may come to despise their existence.
Are there many other situations where you impose harm on an innocent party for your own goals? This is not some moral condemnation, I'm just curious what your conditions are. We both just agreed that punching your neighbor in the face for fun isn't allowed but you've just shown that some forms of harm are okay to inflict, as long as your goal is "good enough" (and "for fun" isn't good enough). Where else do you employ that reaonsing? What makes a goal "moral" in other words?
Where is this individual who's being forced?
Quoting Tzeentch
You're all over the place. This whole argument arose from you claiming that issues over consent were unnecessary. Here you are back to consent again. Consent cannot possibly be given, there's no entity capable of consent. In all other situations where consent cannot possibly be given we make an assessment based on a weighing of the consequences. Why are you advocating a different course of action here?
Quoting Tzeentch
Then how do we know that it will contain any meaningful degree of suffering?
This is not what I have argued.
Quoting Echarmion
An unborn child developing into an individual with a will and well-being is (generally speaking) a logical consequence once one makes the decision to have children, thus should be taken into account prior to this decision. I don't see why this is controversial.
Who knows?
Quoting Isaac
That is not something I have claimed. Consent has been the core issue.
Quoting Isaac
Indeed. That is exactly the issue.
Quoting Isaac
If I have to make a decision on someone else's behalf without their consent, my first question would be whether there is some dire need that would justify it. In the case of childbirth, I don't see that dire need.
Quoting Isaac
We don't. We know next to nothing about the quality of their life. It'd be nothing less than an experiment.
Because we live in a community of generally like-minded people who rely intrinsically on each other for our mutual survival. So...
1) we do not function as individuals. As individuals we all die.
2) it's a reasonable presumption in the face of uncertainty that any new individual within that group will also feel that way (if anything like even a significant minority didn't we'd never have survived this long). If ever this is not the case it is the fault of the society, not the act of having children.
3) a tiny proportion of people end up despising their existence simply by virtue of being alive. Suicide is virtually unheard of in low-contact hunter-gatherers. The chances of such a situation are tiny compared with the chances of them generally getting something positive out of life. If ever this is not the case, again, it is the fault of the society, not the act of having children.
Quoting khaled
It depends what you mean by 'harm'. Some really trivial things have been listed as 'harms' by antinatalists. At the lower end simple social rules are impositions on innocent parties. We impose all sorts of harms on children for the sake of wider community goals. The criminal justice system denies people certain liberties (which they might otherwise feel they have a right to), again for the sake of wider community goals. Anything from social censure to full on imprisonment imposes harms on parties who may consider themselves innocent for the sake of the community. Seems to me it happens all the time.
The key thing is that because it happens all the time most people don't mind. It's worth it. It's a reasonable assumption any new life will come to feel that way to.
If they don't (en masse) then there's something wrong with the community we've made, not the act of procreation.
What kind of answer is that? You said an individual was being forced into something. Now you're saying you don't even know where they are?
Quoting Tzeentch
Then an assumption that they'd absolutely love it is as reasonable as an assumption that they'd hate it. Since we're in a position where we're uniquely unable to ask, what's wrong with taking a guess?
You said
Quoting Tzeentch
So your own answer to that question would be "no - it's not that simple because the central issue is consent, not consequences"?
What's unwarranted about harm that results from following a "worthy goal"?
Quoting khaled
I justify it by making the assumption that other humans are like me, are capable of reasons, and thus if I use my reason sufficiently well I will reach the same conclusions they would.
Quoting khaled
Any kind of punishment would seem to fit that bill. Like putting people in prison I judge to have violated the law (if I have that power), or boycotting a business I judge to be unethical.
Quoting Tzeentch
What's controversial is treating this prediction as if it was the state of affairs. To use another analogy: Let's say I developed a new flavor of ice-cream. Any given selection of ingredients will taste good to some people and bad to others. These are predictable consequences. But if I hand out my ice-cream to random customers, I cannot possibly attempt to only give my ice-cream to people that will like it.
I'm just being honest. Obviously, I don't know where they are. But I can say beyond a reasonable doubt that no one is born voluntarily.
Quoting Isaac
Would you jump out of a plane knowing there's a 25% chance your parachute wouldn't work? If not, what's wrong with taking a gamble? 75% chance for a positive experience.
Quoting Isaac
No.
What I sought to point out with that comment is that the question whether a child's will, well-being and ability to consent should be taken into account prior to the decision of having children, is a matter of considering the logical consequences of childbirth, which are them coming to be as an individual with those faculties.
You don't force people to eat your ice cream.
The analogy isn't about consent. It's about predictions and decisions.
Not being able to get consent for an important decision that is made on someone else's behalf would greatly impact how I would weigh predictions and make a decision, if I choose to make a decision at all.
If I come to the conclusion the decision is too important to be made without consent, then I have no issue with choosing non-action.
No one breathes voluntarily either. Is that a problem you feel we need to address?
Quoting Tzeentch
Basic risk assessment. The experience would have to be really good. And yes, people who find the experience really good do take that risk for exactly those reasons so I'm not sure what you think that example shows.
Quoting Tzeentch
So we go back in time or what? How do we take into account a child's will and ability to consent when both of those things only come to exist after the decision we're supposed to be taking them into account in?
No one forces you to breathe, so I don't think this is a good comparison.
Quoting Isaac
Well, everyone is free to make such an assessment for themselves. Things get complicated when we force someone else to jump out of a plane with those odds, no?
Quoting Isaac
You cannot, which is exactly the issue.
No one forces you to be born either. It's the involuntary action of oxytocin on the mother's physiology.
Quoting Tzeentch
At those odds yes. You'd previously admitted you have no idea what the odds actually are in life so why would you think such a comparison relevant.
Quoting Tzeentch
Why is it an 'issue'. It doesn't seem to present any problem as far as I can see. We can't, so we don't. Seems simple.
At what odds would it be acceptable to force someone to jump from a plane?
Quoting Isaac
One would be forcing an individual to experience life, without being able to ensure whether they want to. An anti-natalist would say this is sufficient reason to refrain from doing so.
Denying it doesn't make it so.
Quoting Tzeentch
What does "its" refer to here?
How does it impact it, exactly? How do you change the weights around?
And if you make no decision, that also has consequences, right?
Quoting Tzeentch
Why non-action? There are still consequences attached to this.
Quoting Echarmion
Sure.
The reason is simple; even if one intends to do good by birthing a child, the ends (odds for a happy life) do not justify the means (forcing someone without consent).
You're not actually engaging with any of my questions. You just keep repeating that we're "forcing someone without consent", but don't explain who that "someone" is supposed to be, or how the decision-making process you envision would function.
Because it's at the core of the issue. By your use of the word "we" I'm assuming you are a parent?
Quoting Echarmion
The individual one is considering forcing into existence.
Quoting Echarmion
Forcing others to do things without their consent needs to be avoided.
I am just using "we" as a term for any potential parent.
Quoting Tzeentch
Can you describe to me how an individual is forced into existence? Where are they before the process starts, what forces act on them etc.
Quoting Tzeentch
Every "other" I ever met existed at the time, and therefore had, by your logic, already been forced. So it seems like it's unavoidable, even necessary.
That is unless you can point to some other who was ever not forced?
For example people claim things like that we should "save the planet" so it is inhabitable for future generations. It wouldn't make sense to ruin the environment just because you thought the currently non-existent generations should have no input into your actions. It would be implausible to claim you could not predict the effects of your behaviour on currently non existent situations and people.
All the time we refer to non existent things which feature in our mental life as ideas and possibilities.
It seems completely necessary to function so that we imagine and predict the future is we head into it.
It seems very arrogant to me to assume you should be able to create someone else and they should desire you as a parent. Most people don't feel entitled to snatch a baby if they see it left unintended but parents subconsciously have this entitlement. They want a baby so they create one and come to possess it.
It is one of an array of things which are normally thought to be unethical in moral systems. We are not supposed to use others as an object or means to our ends. We are not supposed to do things that effect others without their consent. We are not supposed to expose other people to harm
Antinatalism is less of an argument and more an empirically based claim about the harms of and nature of life. It is like telling someone not to enter a building because it is on fire.
I would expect the person being harmed to also share the goal at least. Or else I can just say go around killing people because I find my own enjoyment a “worthy goal” and I’d be innocent then.
Quoting Echarmion
You do not reach the conclusion that the next generation of humans is something worth striving for by employing reason. That’s a premise, not a reasoned conclusion. One your child may not share.
Quoting Echarmion
INNOCENT party.
Quoting Echarmion
INNOCENT party. Also, you don’t owe businesses your money so you don’t have to give it to them. Boycotting is perfectly within your rights.
You haven’t answered the main question. What makes a goal “morally worthy” or not?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I presume you’re meaning a woman giving birth to a baby. But I’m not sure if we’re fully aware of all the reasons behind a woman having a baby.
I would say this is justification not to risk harming people for your own desires. That tends to break down the community if everyone does it.
Quoting Isaac
Highly doubt this. What’s your evidence?
Quoting Isaac
It is both. The fault of society for causing harm, and the fault of the parents for making it possible. Blaming it only on one is like blaming society for your child getting corona, even though you were the one that told him to go shopping for you (not the best example, I know). Putting someone in imperfect conditions, and them getting harmed as a result is your fault, not just the conditions.
Quoting Isaac
Not really. We impose them for the children’s own sakes. What you’ve described is brainwashing. I think it’s unethical for example, to push religious beliefs on children too strongly. Even though often those beliefs would benefit the community greatly if everyone shared them.
Quoting Isaac
It doesn’t matter whether or not they feel innocent. It matters whether or not they are. And we take very good care not to imprison or socially censure innocent people, even if it would be for the benefit of the community to do so. We don’t imprison people who claim to be anarchists for example, until they do something illegal, even though getting rid of subversive beliefs is in the interests of the community.
I think you ascribe way too much of what we do in the name of the community. We tend to value the individual more than the community in most cases.
The problem isn't predicting the future. The problem is acting as if future humans already float around as disembodied souls, which we then snatch to force into some body.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It seems odd and uncharitable to assume people have children because they want to possess them.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I don't think this works as a principle. "Harm ethics" seems to run into the problem of how to quantify harm, and to define it in a non-circular way.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
The odd thing though is that literally everyone is in the building, and noone can be outside of it. So one wonders who the anti-natalist are advocating for.
I think that would depend on the person doing the pushing - presuming we're in a situation where consent cannot, under any circumstances, be obtained. A relatively high gain, low risk. For example a soldier at war who's too nervous to make the jump where every person is needed to defend the area against something demonstrably bad (say Nazism), and I'd personally checked his parachute was OK. Something like that.
Quoting Tzeentch
That's not the 'issue' we're talking about. You're not following the conversation. You said...
Quoting Tzeentch
That's the issue in question. I'm asking you why it is an issue. We cannot possibly take a will into account which does not yet exists, so we don't. I'm asking why that's a moral problem. We can't morally be required to do something which it is impossible to do. Your answer doesn't address this, it just repeats the same refrain we're trying to analyse. Just repeating it doesn't help.
You'd have to be correct, too.
Quoting khaled
Premises can also be conclusions, those aren't ontological categories.
Quoting khaled
What's innocence in this context?
Quoting khaled
That you can will it be universalised.
Quoting khaled
We can both play that game.
For my part...
I suggest "Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing" Edited by Noa Lavi & David E. Friesem. I've found a few chapters are online if you Google it.
This paper goes through the current theories with regards to the evolution of food sharing.
This one broadens out to social networks in general.
But for a better grasp of the issues I recommend "Foundations of Human Sociality" by Joseph Henrich.
So do you have a citation for me for your assertion?
Quoting khaled
That would depend on the net gains you foresee. If you can see net gains, then you have no choice but to pursue them in the environment you have available.
Quoting khaled
Why?
Quoting khaled
How could you determine this from your position of moral relativity?
Quoting Echarmion
What do you mean “will it be universalized”? I can conceive of a world where personal pleasure is a worthy moral goal and people go around doing whatever they want.
Quoting Echarmion
I know. But you didn’t present any reasoning behind your premise that having the next generation is a worthy goal. So until then it’s an unreasoned premise.
Quoting Echarmion
An innocent party would be one that didn’t inflict any harm on you. A murderer did clearly, so is not innocent.
Net gains for who? You or them?
Quoting Isaac
Social contracts. Laws and such.
Quoting Isaac
That if everyone in a community harms for their own desire that the community would break down? No.
Your citations seem irrelevant to me from a skim. But maybe they’re not, I’ll check later. I’ll take it as a given for now.
Quoting Isaac
People should come to their own conclusions rather than be forced to accept what would be good for the community to accept. Why? That’s just a premise of mine. No further explanation.
The community. You and them. It's telling of this neo-liberal infection that you don't even consider that possibility.
Quoting khaled
Why would they be relevant to the moral case?
Quoting khaled
Then why mention it in the same post as you seemed to imply that evidence was required for such claims?
Quoting khaled
Fair enough then.
Quoting khaled
What sort of community do you envisage existing according to this premise?
Because you said that if a sizeable minority of the population doesn’t see the whole community project as worthwhile we wouldn’t have survived. That seems way less obvious with how common it is for everyone to bash their own governments and communities, and how prevalent depression is. And I’m not seeing how studies about food sharing solve the issue.
Quoting Isaac
Why would it not? Premises.
Quoting Isaac
But in the case of having children there is no “them” or did you forget? That was your whole point. If no one is harmed by being brought into the world then no one is benefited either. So it’s you and the community in that case, but definitely not them. That I find problematic.
One much like the current one. We don’t really all have a “unifying ideology” today. And yet we have communities.
The post of yours about people coming to their own conclusions seems to me to suggest that those decisions would be more pure than those forced on people by community norms. Does that mean that it would create or contribute to a better community?
Ok, it's been a couple pages since I answered so I'm just going address the trends I see in "What's wrong with natalism".
1) The essential nonsense that we cannot consider the future person being born because there is no person currently existing. I've seen uses of "potential parent" in the mix. Yet, "potential child" is also a consideration of course. Someone will exist, and it is that person who will exist that we are preventing either the suffering or non-consent, or the "not being used for means to an end" result.
Essentially what this comes down to is the themes I have seen here regarding community vs. the individual. The community may be ordinarily needed for the individual to survive, but it is not the community that lives out life.
2) Rather "community" is an abstract concept of interactions between individuals composed of institutions, historical knowledge, location, etc. However, it would be using an individual for an abstract cause that isn't any actual person to then determine that people need to be born to feed the community's needs.
3) The locus of ethics is the individual, not the community. The community is not bearing the brunt of what it means to live out a life. It is simply a notion in the head of the actual people living out life. It is the individuals which are what are being prevented from suffering.
4) There seems to be an underlying Paternalism in the natalist's thought. Other people must be affected greatly because I deem it good. This is the height of hubris to think other people should affected greatly in a negative way by what you deem is good for them. In doing so of course, many other negative things have been imposed/violated. Suffering, consent, using people as a means for your/community's ends. There are a number of reasons this paternalism argument is simply license to use do these negative things on behalf of other people.
I still like @khaled's analogy of being kidnapped for a game regarding this paternalism. If I was to kidnap you into a game where this structurally meant to be many challenges to overcome, and there is also sufficient room for contingent harms to also affect the player, and the only way to escape is death, so you are de facto forced into playing the game or commit suicide, being harmed along the way, is the a good thing to do?
The only defense people are going to give for this is going back to the nonsensical argument that in the birth scenario there is no "one" to be kidnapped. Yet antinatalist arguments keep repeating that there will be someone born, and this "kidnapped" in the future. By being born this becomes the case, even if at the moment one decides, there is no actual person yet.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But malicious genetic engineering is wrong because it causes harm. Also being born itself doesn’t. Idk how they pull off the mental gymnastics there.
Yes, exactly. It gets pushed to either, "Well they don't exist when making the decision, so that's fine" or "It's for the community" or something like that. Or again, it's that paternalism, "I know what's best for others to endure".
Quoting schopenhauer1
That’s a very interesting point. Which suggests that collective decisions, I.e. the community, are made for some abstract reason for some abstract idea. So how can anything be justified “for the community”?
In the Darwinian sense we are here because of the benefits our mutations gave us as a leg up. Those that gave no advantage, or found no conditions to benefit from, got no furtherer, falling away with the death of the doomed individual. The biological features contributed to the survival of those who had them.
Obviously giving birth is the key to a species surviving. Those that could not carry a child full term or were susceptible to conditions that harmed the newborn failed to pass on their genes. Evolution favoured healthy births. Why it was necessary I don’t know, but it seems that all life seems compelled to reproduce.
Those things that are beneficial remain. Theoretically only that which is beneficial succeeds, they’re things that are “good” for human life.
You mentioned that you’re not concerned with animals in relation to the OP. Which I take to mean that not being sentient beings they do not suffer in the sense we do. Suffering as human is a specific sort of suffering, so bad for some that they chose suicide over life.
Presumably there was a period in human history where we did not suffer in this way, being a little better than animals, but still operating on our instincts.
At some point that changed. And at some point the reason for reproducing changed. It may be that children being the result of sex brought an adult couple closer and strengthened the bond, or contributed towards ideas of community.
At some point people were born into conscious suffering because it served a purpose or a number of purposes. The fact that people suffered was explained away through religion or cultural myths and stories.
I can’t help thinking that this being born into suffering is a mistake carried-over from the past and 1: creates suffering for the individual and 2: as a consequence creates communities and societies that no longer function properly because of the traumatised members. Consequently we are now forced to live in a dysfunctional society that can never work because we are traumatised creatures.
But this is clearly impossible. You cannot prevent either suffering, or non-consent, for anyone. Everyone has these imposed, by necessity.
You do not wish for a world of happy and free people. You wish for silence.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It does seem that the anti-natalist position is, at some basic level, connected to some deep distrust of community, of any kind of relationship to others.
To be in relationships with others always comes with obligations, and this is seen as a fundamental opprobrium. Any kind of common good is paternalistic in nature, hubris, even. Noone can know what is good for anyone else, and so we must all live as isolated eremites, to avoid causing impositions on one another as much as possible until, thankfully, we have all finally died.
Perhaps non-existence is the ultimate form of "being left alone", and this is what's ultimately wished for here. Self-destruction as the ultimate assertion of the ego.
I stopped reading because it's apparent you don't read what I write. Once again, read the OP. I specifically raise the issue of future persons. The problem is some posters keep insisting on issues of consent. That results in metaphysical mumbo jumbo because nothing doesn't have a will.
Fuck this is tiresome.
Quoting Benkei
You recognize that people shoulnd't have children in some circumstances. This conclusion is arrived at by comparing the (non existent) "potential person" with lives that have actually been lived.
But what I don't buy is this:
Quoting Benkei
They seem like the same kind of comparison to me. In the first case, you look into the future and predict that the child will likely suffer too much (be more unhappy than happy), and based on that conclude that you shouldn't have a child in poverty. In the latter, you look into the future and predict that the child could suffer too much (be more unhappy than happy) and based on that conclude that you shouldn't have a child, period. The only difference is the probability.
I don't see why poverty had to be introduced. Isn't the goal merely to determine whether or not the child will be likely to be more unhappy than happy? The former case (poverty) is much more likely to cause a negative outcome (more unhappy than happy) and so you find that having a child in that case is wrong. But that doesn't justify taking a risk in the first place at all. Where do you draw the line? What justifies putting it anywhere above 0% chance of a bad outcome?
The anti-natalist viewpoint as I have seen it expressed in this thread is based on A: the idea that voluntariness and consensuality form the basis for moral conduct in regards to others, and B: that childbirth does not fit these criteria.
It has nothing to do with distrust of others, a desire to be left alone, the assertion of ego or self-destruction.
No, the difference is that I can pretend "as if" a child would exist and attribute qualities and states to it and compare that what I know about lives lived by those around me.
I can't pretend "as if" a non-existent child (eg. nothing) is better off because I don't know how nothing feels because it can't have feelings. They're not the same comparison. This point seems rather obvious.
No one is doing this. Antinatalists are not trying to improve life for anyone. There is no one to be better off. It's a very common misconception.
Quoting Benkei
Agreed. So for the next child to be born in this world let's do this. Let's call him Billy. Billy will NOT be born in poverty or have severe disabilities. However despite this, after countless calculations we find that there is a 6% chance Billy becomes more unhappy than happy. Should Billy be born?
You already gave an example of a situation where you shouldn't have a child (poverty and disability). But the only difference between that pretend person (Let's call her Sarah) and Billy is that Sarah has a higher chance of becoming more unhappy than happy due to the circumstances she would be born under. Let's say 60%.
On what basis do you say Sarah should not be born but Billy should be born?
Yes exactly. I am not sure if this is a rhetorical move that @Benkei is making. Antinatalists are using the same "as if the child existed" model as well. As I stated over and over, it all about someone who could exist in the future. That person X (you called him Billy or Sarah as a placeholder), would prevented from suffering.
Denying that future person would exist when the decision to procreate is made and that this future person, is what is being prevented, and denying that we can generalize instances of suffering seem to be going on here. However, at the same time, it is recognized as something to keep in mind when discussing the outcomes of poverty and disability.
Also, Benkei I know you have a preference for semantic preciseness here. I can respect that, but I also think this actually gets in the way as to obfuscate the argument at hand. For example, it really doesn't matter if I say: "There will be a state of affairs where a person will be born in the future and by not procreating this state of affairs will not occur", or if you say "preventing a potential child" because those two things are pragmatically the same thing.
But would you will such a world into existence? Rawls' veil of ignorance provides a good analogy here: Imagine you're going to end up in this society as an inhabitant, but your socio-economic position is chosen at random. Would you want to live in a world where people go around doing whatever they want?
Quoting khaled
So far, I only wanted to point out that such an argument might exist, given a moral framework different from the one you seem to be applying.
Making the argument properly would require really fleshing out the basics of the moral system first, which would take a lot of text. I am going to try to do a rough sketch.
I have already stated that what morality is ultimately based on recognizing yourself as a subject interacting with other subjects. From this stems the realisation that free will is at the core of morality - it's what turns one into a subject. So moral rules must be that which are conductive of free will.
One obvious conclusion of that is that it's immoral to destroy freedom of will. The direct way to do this is to destroy subjects - kill them. But in a less absolute way, there are lots of other ways the will can turn out unfree. Such as if you only act according to your desires (the extreme case here is addiction) or if you act in a way that subjects other to your desires, since this impinges on their subjectivity.
If this sounds very similar to the arguments you and other have made consent, it's because it's ultimately the reason why consent is important.
Now if we think about having children, what do we have to consider? Should you just have children because you feel a biological urge to procreate? No, because that isn't a free will, it's an urge. The same would be true if you feel lonely, or feel like you need a child to fix your relationship, or help on the family farm. All of these are clearly just you reacting your circumstance. But, having children in order to continue a society of free subjects is different. There is no outside reason for this to exist - the universe doesn't care. The subjects are an end in an of itself, and having a further presence of subjects furthers free will by creating it's necessary preconditions. It does not necessarily follow from this that not having children is immoral - freedom isn't quantified, so there being more subjects doesn't equal more freedom.
Oh. I thought you meant "will" as in actually bring it about.
Quoting Echarmion
Really? Well:
Quoting Echarmion
The universe doesn't care about your relationship or your farm either.
Quoting Echarmion
This has not been shown to be good in what you have highlighted. You have shown that maximizing PEOPLE'S ability to choose is good (or rather, that limiting it is bad, same thing). You have not shown that producing more people so that those people can go around making choices is good. Those are 2 different things.
Quoting Echarmion
But whenever having more children would equal more freedom, then not having children does in fact become immoral. Are you comitted to that view? Because it follows if we are to accept that you must work to maximize freedom.
This is why I have categories of "moral" and "good" be different. I think what you mean is closer to "reduce freedom is immoral", "maximize freedom is good". As in you must not do the former but you don't have to do the latter.
Or else everyone who can support kids who doesn't have kids is being immoral, a position I find very few people commit to outside of hardcore christians.
I think he goes on to generalize form this that we mean to HELP Billy or Sarah. We don't. That makes no sense. We are using the same model, we just set the "Acceptable chance of bad outcome" to 0%.
He has given 2 cases where it is above 0% and procreation is acceptable in one and not the other. Yet there is no indicator as to why one is fine and the other not.
Quoting khaled
Yes, I also think he might be thinking that there is an airtight case around consent. He thinks that because at the time the decision was made, there was no child that could be denied consent, that this is an airtight case against the consent argument. However, at the time the child is born, that is when the violation occurred. Just because there is a displacement from the decision that affects the child (procreation decision) and the actual consequence of the decision (birth) doesn't mean that at the time of birth consent was had (or not needed). I just don't see it as a big deal as he does and find it to be semantic nonsense really.
So I think on both the negative outcomes and consent case he is wrong.
Well, is it accurate in your case? Do you place a strong emphasis on the individual, as per e.g. classical liberalism?
Quoting Tzeentch
Wouldn't you say that a view that ultimately seeks to create a universe devoid of subjects that can experience it is self-destructive? It seems hard to ignore this ultimate conclusion of the anti-natalist argument.
But you don't necessarily seem to disagree with me here. Anti-natalists place a strong emphasis on voluntariness and conensuality. That is in line with what I said. I merely placed the spotlight on the more negative aspects of this emphasis. All relationships with others have an element of involuntariness, which is inherent with sharing a universe which is causally connected. You cannot ever be truely an island in this cosmos, and this inability is forced on everyone who lives here. And maybe that's ultimately what the anti-natalist view takes issue with - that once we enter the world, we cannot escape the laws that bind us all together in it.
Quoting khaled
There isn't much point in responding to the same thing over and over again.
Quoting khaled
I don't claim that there is a moral duty to produce more people, as I already wrote. Just that there is a motivation for having children which is in accordance with free will, and as such moral.
Neither is there much point in psychoanalyzing.
Quoting Echarmion
Sounds to me like: "It is good to have children, but you don't have to". Even though you kept asking me why I distinguish between things that are good to do and things that you must do, you seem to be doing it.
Quoting Echarmion
This seems like a contradiction to me. One sentence you're saying "furthers free will" and the next you're saying "free will is not quantified". Wtf does "furthers free will" mean?
I was referring to the nature of the empirical evidence used in Antinatalism which distinguishes it from a purely theoretical or logical argument.
If you want to dissuade someone from entering a burning building it is usually sufficient to point out that there is a fire going on.
But you are right we are all in the building, which is what puzzles antinatalists. We point out past present and future suffering like the holocaust , world wars, slavery, cancer, depression and nuclear proliferation and damage to the environment, none of which is apparently enough to dissuade people from having children.
And yet it continually happens in this thread and I've already pointed it out several times. The last time was here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/480046
So no, @schopenhauer1 it's not a rhetorical move it's an actual philosophical point. For example, you agree here with Tzeentch:
It's not well-stated at all because consent cannot play a role here because this is once again personifying non-existence as if it has thought processes and a will. And consent isn't even necessarily important for moral questions. Actions can be moral or immoral without another person being involved. Unnecessarily cutting down trees because I like destroying stuff isn't right either. Gluttony isn't right either. Lusting after your girlfriend even when nobody in the world is aware of it, isn't right either.
Quoting khaled
Small quibble: I gave "abject poverty" as a reason, which is something different than just poverty. People can be poor and happy, abject poverty and happiness usually don't go together.
For the rest, I'm hesistant to answer this question because it doesn't pertain to reality which as a moral question makes it useless. We can't calculate if someone is going to be happy or not so the question to me is for all intents and purposes moot and so would be my answer. Even so, I'll answer to give you insight about how I think about these issues.
For me, the first thing is that intrinsic suffering, like the capacity to feel pain and therefore the certainty you will feel pain at some point, are not caused by life the same way that water doesn't cause itself to be wet. So there's no moral question there.
That leaves contingent suffering. Here the likelihood isn't important. What's important is whether we can intervene in the circumstances leading to suffering. If I can intervene in the causal chain because there's a proximate cause that I can affect, then there's a moral duty on me to do so and avoid another person's suffering. If the proximate cause is certain but unavoidable, only then would I consider intervening earlier in the causal chain as a moral obligation.
Which reminds me, I might have missed it but if you don't recognise moral obligations to save drowning people why a moral obligation not to have kids?
Someone asked me that on another forum. "Why do you say every child is harmed by being born" I responded..
"How is a child not harmed?
The most prominent thing is that we have to face our own mortality and die.
The next and biggest category is an array of illnesses from the common cold to migraines and including nausea, an array of cancers, arthritis, dementia, depression and anxiety, schizophrenia and so on.
Then there is work which a lot of people do not enjoy.
Unemployment is also unpleasant linked to things like poverty increased risk of physical and mental illnesses. Poverty is also a hazard for those in work.
Next we have loss and bereavement, relationship breakdowns, bullying and social problems.
Then there is the unpleasant sides of embodiment like feeling too hot or too cold, sweating, itching, general aches and pains, blisters and other irritants.
Then there is existential worry, including fear of death, meaninglessness, and other cognitive sources of anxiety.
There are lots more examples if you need them."
Ok maybe. But I'm not doing this.
Quoting Benkei
"Abject" means extreme. People can be extremely poor and happy.
Quoting Benkei
And yet you did exactly such a calculation to conclude that people in abject poverty will in all likelyhood suffer and so one shouldn't have kids in abject poverty.
Quoting Benkei
So here you are making a calculation about how likely it is that all your child's suffering will be such that you can intervene and stop it. And yet you have a problem with making calculations about whether or not someone is more likely to be happy than not happy? If anything the former is way harder to calculate.
Point is: You cannot know whether or not you will be able to intervene in the circumstances leading up to the suffering, and there is a very real chance you won't be able to. In fact, I'm willing to say it is almost impossible that there will no occasion where your child suffers due to circumstances you couldn't have stopped. So shouldn't intervening earlier be a moral obligation?
Quoting Benkei
You are not obligated to help, you are only obligated not to harm in my view. Helping is good though again, not obligatory.
I don't know, so far everyone has shied away from basing suffering on any empirical basis. The consensus of the antinatalists in this thread, so far, seems to be that suffering results from an imposition without consent, and that it is not necessary to list individual instances of suffering or quantify some overall value of suffering for a given life.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
To me, this is merely evidence (insofar as one can apply the principle to philosophy) that suffering is an insufficient basis for a moral philosophy. Despite assertions to the contrary, people don't seem to act as if avoiding suffering was actually their overriding concern.
And since, as you pointed out, suffering is can hardly be avoided, perhaps that is an entirely rational thing to do.
So, regarding this:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What's the point of listing all the negative aspects of life, apart from trying to eliminate or ameliorate them? It's not as if we have an option to not be born. That choice is entirely imaginary. It's almost like imagining that one might not have been born is an escapist fantasy.
What puzzled me is the person I was responding to did not seem to think a parent could cause a child any suffering simply by creating them. If you were going to create a child why not consider the suffering that already exists. Like I said in my initial posts we do this predicting the future all the time.
For example if you were going to a shop and someone said that there was an active shooter on the loose would you want to know this before you started out on your journey?
I am concerned that most people do not seem to make the link between creating a child and the reason there is suffering and inequality etc. The first post I made on the Old Philosophy forums was about this. The only reason we do philosophy is because our parents created us and that is the reason we exist and why we asks all the questions we do and few people question why we were made to exist on the first place.
Creating a new sentience (deliberately) is profound and has profound implications. (Compare this to being the first person to create a sentient robot) If you create the first sentient robot it would make international headlines and you would be considered a genius yet people are creating sentient beings everyday as if it was the product of a fast food chain.
Nope. As you indicate yourself this is all surrounded by unknowns. All I do know is that these types of suffering aren't caused by living because being alive is not a sufficient condition for suffering, only a necessary condition. This is why when I "calculate" this borders on certainty. I'm not concerned with heartbreak of my daughter because I don't cause it.
Quoting khaled
This is rather perplexing to me. Your choice not to intervene causes the person to drown and die because if it hadn't been for your choice the person would still be alive. So your choice is a conditio sine que non for the drowning. If you aren't supposed to cause harm, you have to intervene.
My take on this: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/479032
What you cause and what you are responsible for are different. If the bad outcome would have happened without you being there you are not responsible for fixing it. You are only responsible for not causing bad outcomes by being there. So don't drown people.
Quoting Benkei
I have no clue how this relates to what I said. No one brought up sufficient and necessary conditions. I'm just looking at the conditions under which having children would be unethical rn. You made the claim that if you can reasonably expect your child to suffer too much, it would be unethical to have them. Yet you do not specify what "too much" means.
Also, another point, I wouldn't have kids under these circumstances, it's not a universal rule. Maybe someone with a different outlook on life, different skillset etc. would.
Quoting khaled
Yeah, we're lightyears apart on our ethical frameworks. I get where you're coming from though. I'm not trying to convince you but for you to understand where I'm coming from: to me the outcome comes about precisely because you are there and don't do anything. The world where you wouldn't be there doesn't exist so pretending it does exist, doesn't have any relevance to this world, where this happened.
How about a doctor, who can treat a life-threatening condition, and he just decides not to treat a patient? That would be a serious breach of his duties and promises but since the patient would die any way, no responsibility based on the above.
Quoting khaled
What thread have you been reading? it's in the OP and has been discussed several times in these pages. And, no I don't specify what "too much" is, because it depends on the circumstances, so I can't.
Well, what puzzles me is why we're treating existence as a choice, which we might able to weigh according to the risks and benefits. It's not a choice. Treating it as one is, at best, wishful thinking and at worst evidence of some serious confusion.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
But we weren't "made to exist". We're made to do a lot of things, but existing isn't one of them. In a sense, even parenty don't "create" new humans because however it is that we end up as conscious subjects, our parents certainly didn't control that process. They merely initiated it and perhaos gave their input.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It would certainly be better if people considered whether they actually should have children more thoroughly in general, but it is also the case that no-one really knows beforehand whether the resulting life will be particularly happy or sad.
Oh I agree. If you let a man drown you caused his death. But that is not immoral. That's my view.
Quoting Benkei
You said it yourself. Quoting Benkei
So in that case he does actually have to treat them, because that's his responsibility.
Quoting Benkei
No one brought it up in our conversation so far. I have read the OP, and still wonder why Billy should be born but Sarah shouldn't. And what do you mean "depends on the circumstances"? It is these circumstances that I'm asking about. What makes procreation ethical in one (billy) and not the other (sarah)
But you just said you're not responsible if a thing would happen if you weren't there. Why is the doctor responsible for something that would occur even if he wasn't there and yet you're not when someone is drowning?
Quoting khaled
But giving random percentages isn't "circumstances".
When I said that I assumed it is not your job to save the drowning person, aka it is not your responsibility. A doctor already has a responsibility to save patients. Or else he wouldn't be a doctor.
You are responsible for what happens if you not being there would have resulted in the better outcome. But you can also be responsible in other ways, like jobs or parenthood, to prevent suffering that would have occured even if you weren't there.
Quoting Benkei
I was just using it as an example. You refuse to give any indication of what the circumstances would be in order for procreation to be become unethical. You gave a single example (Sarah) where it would be unethical but did not make any effort to generalize from that what makes it ethical or unethical. That's what I'm asking for.
What if society agrees it's everybody's responsibility to intervene, so it's everybody's "job" to save drowning people?
So generally it's perfectly fine to have babies but sometimes it isn't.
But we can still generalize there. I'm not asking for hard rules, just any indication at all. Murderers get different sentences or are sometimes excused due to the murderer's mental state, history with the victim, among other factors. You've given an example where the "risk of bad outcome" is high and one where it is lower and said that in one procreation is ethical and in the other unethical. You have given 0 factors or explanation. That wouldn't be a problem if you weren't at the same time claiming that setting the "acceptable risk of bad outcome" to 0% (Antinatalism) is wrong. You can only say it is wrong according to this or that factor, but you've provided none.
Quoting Benkei
What a great society that would be! It's not the one we live in though. If society agrees about something there is generally a law to enforce it. This isn't a hard rule, but it is generally applicable. For example: When doctors refuse to treat they get charged with misconduct and their licence gets revoked. We don't punish bystandars. Because we don't all agree they should be punished.
Quoting Benkei
But if asked to come up with reasons why killing in self defence is okay but killing for pleasure is not, I would provide a reason. You refuse to, or cannot, do that for your claims. Which again, wouldn't be a problem if you weren't at the same time claiming that a certain way of defining "acceptale circumstances" is wrong.
I'm going to sleep now, have a think on it, or don't. Good night.
But I have. I don't account for intrinsic suffering because those aren't caused by living. For proximate causes, if it's a near certainty the proximate cause will exist and cannot be avoided or alleviated then it makes sense to move up the causal chain.
Views are not actors, but to follow the spirit of your comment I would say no.
I don't seek to create such a universe. I haven't seen anyone here expressing that they do.
As far as I have seen, the anti-natalist argument as shared in this thread consists of observations and questions to which there do not seem to be any good answers. Every individual can draw their own conclusions and make their own choices based on that.
But yes, if every person on earth were to conclude at once that the questions and observations of the anti-natalist argument are sufficient reason not to have children, humanity would eventually cease to exist. If that is a result of people's voluntary choice not to have children, then what business is that of mine?
You inject half way in discussions between other people and take things out of context.
What you quoted wasn't about improving life. It was an attempt to show the absurdity of the earlier premise, by pointing out the absurdity of the implication.
Quoting Benkei
If one plans to put an individual into existence, shouldn't one take into account their well-being beforehand, regardless of whether they already exist or not? One knows that it is going to happen, so one acts accordingly. Isn't that how common sense works and how every parent operates?
@khaled
So I don't believe @Tzeentch was doing that.
Quoting Benkei
He said as a hypothetical analogy. You are still not getting what I stated about a future person who will be affected. And that was what he is getting at. All you have to do is agree that you can make a decision that affects someone later that that person later could not possibly (by way of not existing), be a part of.
And impersonal stuff like the environment should not be miscategorized as if it is affecting only one individual. One is an abstract public good. The other is affecting an individual.
The benefits of a religious or supernatural morality is that it could be enforced in the afterlife by some kind of afterlife justice.
So for example I think it is pointless saying The Holocaust was wrong after it has happened in the sense the it does not prevent the Holocaust and the tremendous suffering. But with an afterlife justice or Karma we can believe the victims will have another chance and the perpetrators will be held accountable.
But without the scenario people can just do things that nature allows regardless of the force of moral arguments. So I don't think having a child resolves the moral arguments.
Justifying actions seems to be an after the fact superficial add on that becomes irrelevant after the action has taken place.
I think not doing something because of moral concerns is the probably most effective form of morality in the sense that you didn't cause anything to happen.
That said not intervening could be seen as unethical however I think causing harm is more problematic than not intervening in it.
I don't know what you are saying here. Are you saying parents don't have freewill or that consciousness can be created regardless of whether people reproduce?
Even if there were souls in another realm wanting to be birthed there is no evidence of them forcing parents to reproduce.
Quoting Echarmion
I think one of the key arguments or concerns from antinatalists is that people should make more careful parenting decisions but if people do not acknowledge the degree of suffering, exploitation, responsibility and other things in existence then they are going to make ill informed decisions. I think most antinatalists would be very pleased if people simply made better reproductive decisions. The problem is the current lack of real effort to question the ethics and ramifications of having children.
Except he made the mistake several times and even if it was a hypothetical analogy it's shitty one because of it.
You inject in my thread so whatever. I call out nonsense when I see it. What did "its" refer to again? You never answered but since everybody can read an understand sentences we already know.
Funny, you should say that. We do live in such a society and even have laws enforcing it even though I disagree law had much to do with morality.
Look op negligence. But good to know you have no intrinsic moral compass and are easily swayed by what others expect from you. :rofl:
This strikes me as a pretty dishonest way of summarizing the thread. @schopenhauer1 in particular is one of the most offensively proselytizing users on this forum.
Quoting Tzeentch
It's weird that you make this question about you, personally. My "observation" is that an anti-natalist position, ulitmately seeks to end humanity. Whether or not it will persuade enough people to succeed is irrelevant.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What I am saying is that it's not as if parents make a conscious decision to turn their children into subjects so that they can then suffer. It's simply that when humans reproduce, we also reproduce subjectivity.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I am not sure where you get this from. I get the impression that this one of the areas where there is a lot of discussion.
Oh. It was controversial?
Well, nothing I have read here suggests proselytizing, but maybe I am wrong.
What I have described is the way I look at the matter, at least.
Quoting Echarmion
How so? And why would it be weird?
Quoting Echarmion
I don't think that's inherent to the position, but rather inherent to some individuals' desire to impose their views on others. That's a flaw in those individuals, and not in the position.
The fact that I cannot find sufficient justification to force individuals to exist doesn't mean it is the same for others.
More metaphysical mumbo jumbo. The ability to exercise force on something presupposes its existence. Existence isn't a property. Sounds like a God complex to think you can create something out of nothing.
And isn't it great that the view you have actively argued and defended in this thread is the one "just asking the hard questions" that the other side just "cannot answer".
I just wonder who these theatrics are for? Presumably, the only people still reading are the 6 regular posters, and they won't be fooled by airy declarations of socratic ideals.
Quoting Tzeentch
See, I asked you earlier whether you tend towards an individualistic philosophy / worldview. Doesn't seem like my armchair psychoanalysis was that far off the mark.
Quoting Tzeentch
So, to clarify, you don't think the anti-natalist position is true in an intersubjective sense, that it should convince people? You just like it for entirely personal reasons?
Can you give an example?
There is a difference between criticizing or discussing individual parents or categories of parents and critiquing the ethics of parenting for every parent.
People don't have a child in a bubble we are all part of an interconnected world community where our choices effect other people. Most people you raise antinatalism with are quick to talk about how happy and successful their children are. I am concerned about all children and all people not just the successful ones.
Here in the UK recently actor "Christopher Eccleston has said lockdown made him realise how 'privileged' he is as he pledged to help the homeless by becoming a Big Issue Ambassador."
I think this is an example of the problem, that people don't really realise the extent of other people problems despite paying lip service to them but when they have first person evidence they have to commit to real intervention.
It is what it is.
Quoting Echarmion
Good.
Quoting Echarmion
It's not about truth or liking.
All I know is that it raises questions I cannot answer, and, judging by the tone of our conversation, you cannot either.
That's a contradiction in terms. There are not any humans that are not, so you cannot force humans to be.
Quoting Albero
This also seems to be an obvious contradiction.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Maybe it's a question of social circles, but I know a lot of people who consider whether it's ethical to have children given e.g. climate change and the disproportionate amount of resources inhabitants of industrialised countries use.
Though I suppose you are also right in that a lot of people will still feel children are a necessary part of a full life and ultimately don't follow up on these worries. People do exhibit the same behaviour concerning other questionable behaviours as well, so I am not sure that's really a problem with having children, specifically.
Quoting Tzeentch
So far as I am aware, I have answered all your questions, at least.
Quoting Tzeentch
If you answered it, I must've missed it.
Apparently you have.
Quoting Albero
Why formulate the problem with the phrase "birthing people affects then, which is both imprecise on the part of the "affect" and vague as to who is meant?
Why not use the simple, common terms: having children creates children, and those in turn affect other people?
Quoting Albero
Not just one someone. The person you create is going to affect a lot of people. But discussing this would be a vary different kind of discussion. It'd be about resource use, parenting, education etc.
Because I think it's confused. Just because we can make a grammatically correct sentence doesn't mean we have a meaningful sentence. What am I exercising force on? Not a person. So the sentence has no meaning.
Literally the first element of negligence claims: Duty. And the fact that we do not sue bystandards for negligence claims shows that we do not believe they have a duty to help. Unless it's their actual job, like firefighters or doctors. Try suing bystanders in a car accident for negligence, you won't get very far.
Quoting Benkei
I would advise you to try to understand what others are saying before spouting nonsense. What in what I said leads you to believe that I have no moral compass, and only act in accordance with what others expect? I already said I would save a drowning person, but that I don't have to. Your inability to understand the difference between a personal moral compass, and a shared moral responsibility (don't harm) is showing. I've outlined the latter, and it is based on a social contract. That says nothing about the former.
But even IF I only act in accordance to social contract, what use is it pointing that out? Engage with the arguments or don't respond. Talking about the guy making the arguments, rather than the arguments just shows you have nothing to say.
Quoting Benkei
Now is the question. Why must it be a near certainty? And more importantly, why is it wrong to claim that if there is any chance the proximate cause will exist and cannot be avoided, then it makes sense to move up the causal chain (Antinatalism)?
Stop dodging the question.
And you are obligated to help because that duty is recognised in several places. An example for continental Europe (most countries have an equivalent).
translation: He who, witnessing the immediate threat to life that another experiences, fails to act to provide such help or assistance that he can provide, without unreasonable danger to himself or others, will be punished with imprisonment of no more than three months or a penalty of the second category, if the death of the needy follows.
In the US Minnesota, Rhode Island and Vermont recognise a duty to rescue. Hawaii, Wisconsin and Washington require you to report crimes.
See, what I consider funny about all this is that first you confuse law with morality, they are not the same and second that you let your morality depend on what others think is right with the lovely result that your morality will change by crossing a border. That, my friend, is the result of your position and results in me "spouting nonsense" because that's what your moral framework amounts to.
Quoting Benkei
When did I do that?
Quoting Benkei
No. I let my morality depend on my responsibilities. Those are partially assigned by others. Wouldn't say that's unusual.
For instance, if you move to a country where it is considered disrespectful to do something that was not the case where you came from, shouldn't you respect the tradition and not do that thing? Changing morality based on the community you're in isn't that unusual I would think. If anything it's common sense.
Seriously though stop dodging the question.
Quoting khaled
You claim that the "chance of bad outcome" needs to be near 100% for having children to start to be considered wrong. And you claim at the same time that putting the bar at >0% is wrong. On what basis?
I see where you're coming from. I am probably not expressing this very well. Essentially, what I want to say is that it's possible that you should have children, because there is a principle that allows for this possibility and is in line with freedom. And if you should have children, you should have children. There is no other result here, you either should or you should not.
But having children isn't the end here, and neither is having exactly one or two or three children. So it's possible you never end up in a situation where you should have children, and that is fine too. You don't have to go out and create a specific situation just so you can then have children.
Quoting khaled
You're right, that wasn't the right wording. It should simply be "in accordance with freedom".
Have no clue what that means either.
Quoting Echarmion
So there ARE situations where it's wrong not to have kids.
Quoting Echarmion
I would think that this is "in accordance to freedom" whatever that means. Then again, I have no clue what it means.
Quoting Echarmion
You have objected to the question. You have not answered it.
But enough slithering and crawling. Since you seem so hung up on semantics I'll rephrase my question;
How does one reconcile the fact that when making the decision to have a child, one does not know A: whether the child wants to live in the first place, and B: whether the child will have a good life, even by one's own standards (let alone those of the child)?
By recognizing that:
A: Noone gets to decide whether they want to live in the first place, and wishing for this choice is fundamentally irrational. It can only really be understood as the faulty expression of another wish, such as the wish to decide how one wants to live.
B: There is no such thing as a good life. There are good acts, but these are possible for everyone. There is pain and suffering, and there is also joy and happyness. Neither of these things alone constitute "good" or "bad". They're states of affairs. A life filled with pleasure may be very desirable, but it is not by that token necessarily good.
Indeed, the parent gets to decide. And what justification do they have for making that decision? Because the parent was born involuntarily, so should their child? Why? Notice we're talking from the perspective of the decisionmaker, not the (would-be) child.
Quoting Echarmion
Then why decide that an individual should involuntarily partake in one?
Well, a) I'm not sure how what seems to you to be the case has any bearing on what actually is the case in the light of a disagreement, and b) if you're not sure how it relates, then I'm not sure how to help beyond your actually reading the material I've provided.
Quoting khaled
So it is a moral premise of yours that whatever is the law or social norm is morally relevant? How, in your world, do laws and social norms get changed?
Quoting khaled
No. Some might be making that point, but it's not mine. I'm quite comfortable with imagining a future child and acting in what I imagine to be it's best interests.
No, they don't. The parents don't go around thinking "my child wants to live, therefore I am going to create it". That's not a decision that actually happens.
Both individuality and suffering are just notions in certain heads too, so I don't see how this is anything concrete to work with.
Clearly a parent gets to decide whether they want to create children.
Quoting Echarmion
Indeed. They want a child and therefore they will create one. So what justification is there to make this decision despite being unable to foresee the consequences and being unable to verify in advance whether the child actually wants to experience life?
You've just answered your own question.
The justification is... being able to foresee the consequences (life is really good - love, sunsets, adventure etc) and we can't possibly check in advance whether they want these things, so there's obviously no moral obligation to do so (to have a moral obligation to do something impossible is stupid).
They are unable. They may believe life is worth living, but there's no way of knowing whether their child will.
Quoting Isaac
Indeed. Sounds like a fantastic reason not to force those things upon someone.
Exactly. We can't have a moral obligation to consider data which it is impossible to gather. That would make no sense at all.
Quoting Tzeentch
There is no someone.
The premise is that you have an obligation to uphold social contracts you are a part of. So if you work as a doctor for instance, you cannot refuse to treat a patient (unless you can't), because treating patients is what you "signed up for". Society has you "sign up for" a lot of things, depending on the society (Just today I discovered you can actually get sued in the Netherlands if you don't help someone as best you can to survive an accident @Benkei)
How do social contracts change? I don't know, I'm not a political theorist or sociologist. You seem to be implying that my premise implies that they don't change, but I don't see how.
Quoting Isaac
Sounds backwards to me. Something that doesn't exist doesn't have future interests in existing. Making a prediction about another's future and acting to help them is one thing. So you can say something like "I will vaccinate my child because it is in their interests not to die to a rusty nail". But you cannot claim to have a child "for the child's sake". There is no child who has a sake, whereas in the first case there was.
Quoting Isaac
You say "life is really good- love, sunsets, adventure" as if the quality of life is not determined by the child. I would say that since you can't check in advance whether or not the child will actually think life is good, it would be unethical to have them.
Usually you say something like "Oh sure, risking harming the child is bad, but it is offset by the survival of the human race" but here you seem to be switching to "Sure, there is a risk the child hates life, but that doesn't matter". And I don't see a convincing reason why it shouldn't matter.
Quoting Isaac
Cmon now.....
Yes. But that's not the same as deciding that those children want to live.
Quoting Tzeentch
The same justification there is for anything else that you do that has consequences you can't fully control (i.e. everything). There is nothing unusual about this, you do it when you drive your car to the store. What justification could you possibly have to drive to the store while being unable to foresee the consequences and unable to verify in advance whether anyone wants to take the risk of sharing the road today with you?
This keeps being repeated, and it seems to be the last wall to hide behind, but you build your walls flimsy indeed.
Tell me then, for who is it we seek to preserve the planet?
I would say that anyone who feels they cannot guarantee the safety of others while driving should not get behind the wheel.
Well, then noone should get behind the wheel.
Well don't you think that looking into it might be relevant, if you're going to make claims about it?
Quoting khaled
Correct.
Quoting khaled
That's not the claim. The claim is merely that there will be a child whose existence might well be quite enjoyable. That in itself is a perfectly reasonable thing to aspire to.
Quoting khaled
Why? The vast majority of people broadly agree about stuff that's good, so it can't be a case of making a poor prediction. It's not reasonable to deny action in cases where we cannot obtain all potentially relevant data (we'd literally do nothing if that were the case). So I'm lost as to why you think this particular inaccessible bit of data prohibits action.Quoting khaled
I didn't say it doesn't matter. It simply can't be ascertained. You then make the move to say we can't act, in the basis of that lack. We act in the absence of complete data all the time, I don't see why this is an exception.
The future someone. The children who will exist.
But we are not forcing anything on these children. They exist already (in our possible world we're investigating). We can imagine what type of world they'd like, but only after assuming they already exist to hold an opinion on it. What we cannot coherently do is wonder if they'd prefer to exist or not because nothing which has that choice is capable of forming an opinion on the matter.
One only needs to conclude there is no way of knowing, and make decisions based on that.
Some may want to risk it. Others may not.
I lean towards the latter, but I don't consider the former to be unreasonable. It simply makes me wonder what the justificiation is to take such a risk.
I have not made claims about the rate of change of laws. So I don't need to look at how they change. I have set out a moral framework where socially placed responsibilities play a role.
Quoting Isaac
Not having complete data always makes us pick the conservative option, unless we have consent to do otherwise. Exceptions include when we have dependents that require us to make sure we maximize the other's wellbeing even if they don't want that (vaccines, surger, etc).
If I don't know that you're going to like a certain suit, I won't buy it for you with your money. Because if I turn out to be wrong, I will have caused harm. My decision should not depend at all on how much I personally like the suit, but simply on whether or not I can be sure you will like it. If I cannot be, then I don't take the risk with your money.
I'm curious why you think this is a special case actually. I cannot think of many cases where we take risks with others' wellbeing without permission.
I guess what it boils down to is the claim that at the point of decision there is no individual whose well-being can be violated, foregoing the fact that we already know such an individual will come about as a direct result of our actions.
It's an odd wall to hide behind.
For Isaac he usually goes to the "The human race is worth preserving" wall. I'm curious why he's trying this one for a change this time. At least the former is unassailable. This one can be smashed by the malicious genetic engineering argument. If there being no one whose well-being can be violated leads to the conclusion that you can have kids whenever wherever, then it will also lead to the conclusion that it is fine to genetically engineer kids to be crippled, which is a very hard one to swallow.
No. It's not that there's no way of knowing. It's not a data point which exists but is not 'knowable'. The data point doesn't even exist. To ask if one prefers A or B is to ask whether A or B produce greater positive feelings. A non-existent entity does not have feelings, so cannot 'prefer' anything. Where A or B are 'non-existence'. The question is meaningless, and, more importantly, has no answer.
Quoting Tzeentch
The benefit. Same as the justification for any risk. Why would you think this one any different?
If your moral framework includes a feature which you cannot even predict changes in, it would seem little better than just throwing your hands up and saying "I'll just do whatever everyone else is doing". If the law said you must murder Jews would you do so? No, obviously not. So something judges laws, they are not simply accepted at face value.
Quoting khaled
Maybe. What's the most conservative option? Having children could lead to an entire generation of resentful malcontents (but it hasn't done so yet, so seems unlikely). Not having children leads to the extinction of the human race. What on earth kind of heterodox definition of 'conservative' are you using which allows the extinction of the human race to fall under it?
Quoting khaled
You will have caused harm if it turns out you're right too. I'll have no suit. I don't see how the consequences of being wrong have any bearing here.
Quoting khaled
Every time you drive anywhere, for example.
Enough with the semantic games. We are talking about the same thing. You have acknowledged that birthing a child is taking a risk in regards to its future, implying we do not have all the information. Whether that information is unknown or unknowable is irrelevant, because the basis (or lack thereof) for our decision remains the same.
Quoting Isaac
Because one is taking a risk on someone else's behalf, obviously. What necessity is there to make such a decision?
"Does no harm". Last I checked "the human race" was not a person. On the other hand, a generation of resentful malcontents comprises of many people.
Quoting Isaac
If I was right, and I didn't buy a suit, you would just be where you started. I wouldn't have worsened the situation. So unless by "caused harm" you mean "Did not bring about the absolute best outcome" then I did not cause harm.
The question is what happens if I do buy the suit. I could be wrong: In which case I make the situation worse (you have a useless suit and less money) or I could be right and make it better: In whichcase you got a brand new suit you like. Given these chances, I think we can both agree that buying the suit is wrong, without asking first.
Maybe a suit is too small, what about a house?
Quoting Isaac
If I cannot reasonably expect not to hurt others while driving, I shouldn't be driving, you're right. But since I can, I can drive. Because not driving harms me, since I won't be able to go to work, and harm done to me is part of this calculation.
Disclaimer: I don't actually drive, I am speaking hypothetically.
Quoting Isaac
I don't use law and responsibility interchangeably. It is just often the case that if the law think I have a responsibility to do something, I do. So if I am a doctor, I can be sued for refusing to treat a patient. This does not logically lead to the conclusion that I had a responsibility to help said patient, but oftentimes the two coincide. In the case of killing jews, even if the law thinks I have that responsibility, I do not.
Quoting schopenhauer1
As far as I'm concerned the failings of natalist arguments were encapsulated in this post. I haven't seen much progress from them since either.
Addressing the conversations I am seeing now:
@Tzeentch @Albero@Andrew4HandelYou are getting a complete runaround. The interlocutors are trying to say that they can make decisions based on how it will affect the child in the future and then keep contradicting themselves by saying that you cannot make decisions based on how it will affect the child. All instances of suffering that the future child might experience are being prevented by not bringing about a state of affairs where said child will be born. Don't fall for the very obvious contradiction they are claiming they are not making. Your case is good. You see it too, as I can see from your posts, I just wanted to mention I see it too.
Also, as stated above, they are trying to find a loophole in the consent thing, but it's not working. One cannot get consent from something that does not exist and therefore the consent thing cannot matter because there is no referent that it is talking about. That's their claim. However, they fail to recognize the decision that they are making at time X affects someone who will exist. So there is a displacement of time. Just because there is a displacement of time between the decision and the person it affects, does not make it invalid that a decision is being made on someone else's behalf. If there is a state of affairs that a person is born, there is a person affected by someone else's decision. However, if there is a state of affairs with no person born, then there is a state of affairs where no person was affected by the decision, thus no violation, and no new individual who suffers will take place. All of this is encompassed with colloquial terms like "potential child" etc.
@khaled The interlocutors are going to claim that we make risky decisions all the time when we do X, what makes procreation different? But procreation is an example of a decision where one can indeed prevent all suffering from incurring if one simply does not procreate. This is why I make a distinction between inter-wordly and intra-wordly affairs. It's not special pleading when the circumstances are actually different by de facto circumstances. Once born, indeed almost any action that one needs to take to live (presumably the normal course of a society for humans), would incur risk. Not so in inter-wordly affairs where one is deciding on new life. One can prevent all risk for a future person, period.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, one cannot, period.
There's too many similar conversations. Best to summarize at this point if I don't have time to hit each and every point, and again, they are similar in nature. Best in one bigger post. And it's addressed to them because I see what you and others are doing in your arguments that's flawed and just wanted them to know that they are not crazy, I see it too. Didn't want them to be gasllighted :D.
Quoting Echarmion
And you keep doing it.
That is not the information I'm referring to. I really don't want to have to walk you through what has already been written. Just read it again more carefully. The data point in question is not about the rusk of harm in general (which is the only rusk I've spoken about considering). It about the rusk of consent violation or displeasure over the matter of existence.
Quoting Tzeentch
The benefit. Same as any other risk. I've just answered that question, why are you asking it again?
I keep reaffirming logic, yes. It's gaslighting only if your view is so muddled that it feels the need to undercut the principles of logic, like the principle of non-contradiction. Future persons cannot both exist and not exist at the same time, and yet you claim they do again and again.
Displacement of when decision is made to when person is affected doesn't negate that a decision was made that affects a person.
Conservatism does not restrict itself to individual harms. As I said, if you want to use a term in a particularly unusual manner you'll need to explain it first, or preferably pick a term that more commonly covers you use.
Quoting khaled
Right. Which is a harm if what I wanted was a suit.
Quoting khaled
No. We don't both agree at all. You've still not given anything close to an explanation of why you think non-action has some moral strength over action when faced with uncertainty about outcomes and the impossibility of consent. Either could equally bring about a negative consequence, or lack virtue, or defy a duty... whichever moral framework you subscribe to, inaction does not just magically trump action.
Quoting khaled
How can you reasonably expect not to hurt others while driving? Are you a uniquely brilliant driver. Since road deaths are one of the highest causes of death who's causing all these accidents if everyone can reasonably expect not to hurt others while driving?
Quoting khaled
So how do you work out when it does and when it does not?
Quoting Tzeentch
Any type of information that is lacking only affirms the lack of a basis for our decision.
Quoting Isaac
And what if your judgement on what constitutes benefit may drastically differ from that of the individual one is making decisions for?
As noted, it's like buying a suit with someone else's money, while not having the slightest idea of what type of suit they may like.
Shifting the problem so we now have a decision that is both made (becasue a person exists, which can only happen as a result of said decision) and not made (because we act as if we can still prevent that person from ever existing, which we can only do before the decision) doesn't help.
The core problem remains that all humans necessarily exist. There are no humans that do not exist, and thus there are no humans who do not have existence (and all it entails) "imposed" on them. This logical necessity cannot be changed by semantic games, displaced decisions etc.
Then we have no basis on which to make any decisions at all, since all lack millions upon millions of theoretical data points which are impossible to know.
Quoting Tzeentch
That doesn't change things. Presuming I cannot possibly access that person's judgement I have nothing else to go on. As I said to khaled, no one has yet offered an argument beyond naive neo-liberalism as to why inaction suddenly trumps action. I don't even see.much if an argument in the case where consent cannot be acquired. I certainly see no coherent argument in the case where consent isn't even logically possible.
Quoting Tzeentch
No it isn't, because asking that other person whether they'd like a suit is almost always possible and never logically incoherent. Our intuition in it is affected by the context, which is different from deciding whether to have children.
But you are the one making semantic games here. I stated earlier:
Quoting schopenhauer1
He would say "but how do you know there aren't, why take the risk? It's not worth it". It seems a similar delusion is happening here, imagining the souls of yet-to-be children looking down on the world thinking "please don't put me there, I prefer it here".
"How do you know there aren't, why take the risk? It's not worth it"
Sure, all you'd need to argue now is that being affected by this decision is equivalent to a violation.
Quoting khaled
Quoting Isaac
Whenever I use harm I mean it in the sense that I strictly made the situation worse. If I do not buy you the suit, I do not harm you. Even though it is not the best possible outcome. Because had I not been around you still wouldn't have your suit.
Now tearing your suit apart, that's a harm. Because had I not been around your suit would have been fine.
And I find this is a much more common use, so I would tell you:
Quoting Isaac
If I had access to your credit card for some reason and did NOT buy you a suit, and you happened to want a suit but didn't tell me, I doubt you would say "You harmed me". If you want to use "harm" to mean "Did not bring about the absolute best outcome" then the word could be used for everything ever.
Quoting Isaac
There is no such thing as inaction first of all. Any action can be rephrased as an action and vice versa. "Did not save the drowning person" and "let the person drown" for instance (inaction in the first action in the second). It's not about action vs inaction it's about harm, defined as strictly making the situation worse.
The rule is: If I am thinking of doing something that could make the situation worse than if I wasn't even around there at all, don't do that thing. And that is the only rule I propose. Note: I am also part of this calculation of "worse situation".
Quoting Isaac
By being a good driver. Not being drunk. Etc. There is a difference between "reasonably expect" and "guarantee". I can't do the latter.
Only because you don't understand the argument. At the very least, that's not what I'm doing, don't know about the others.
What were you saying earlier about Socratic ideals?
Quoting Isaac
Then the argument for inaction seems obvious; by your own words you claim to have no idea what you're getting that person into.
Quoting Isaac
You miss the point. Why would one feel entitled to make that decision for someone else in the first place, especially considering the fact that the decision is irreversible and can result in a life-time of misery.
You really think it so strange to choose to err on the side of caution here?
How is it not? A decision was made. This affected the individual being born. The individual being born could not possibly be a part of the decision affecting him/her. Similarly regarding harm..True no one at the time of the decision to procreate was harmed. However in the future, a person will be harmed from that very decision. This could be prevented. At this point I am just re-explaining what I have explained in more precise language using "state's of affairs" so refer back to that if you need to.
Edit: The violation occurs because a decision was made affecting someone else, even if the affect for the person is displaced from the time the decision was made and there was no person there previously. It doesn't matter if the decision and the affect happen at the same time or displaced by several months, the violation took place nonetheless.
Yup. That's my personal moral intuition. I've also stated that other people may decide differently. A survival expert could decide to have kids in abject poverty and be able to provide for a stable and happy upbringing. I can't, so I wouldn't in that event and I assume most people in similar societies and positions as mine would as well. So the example serves as something that is probably true for a lot of people.
I never said that. I said the question doesn't pertain to reality and as such the question is moot, because we cannot calculate the likelihood of an unhappy life. Even more so because I'm not a utilitarian so I don't even weigh ethical questions on the basis of their consequences.
If I would be a consequentialist I could use a proxy for the Netherlands the happiness figures of the World Happiness Report, which exceed 7.4 out of 10. And our own social and cultural planning bureau researched it and Dutch people on average gave their lives a 7.9 out of 10. 73% of employed people are (very) happy. Among the self-employed this is even higher.
So on average it makes perfect sense to have kids in the Netherlands as it's extremely likely they will be happy.
EDIT: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2018/27/one-in-five-dutch-adults-very-happy
Only 2.6% is unhappy. Those are excellent odds.
Stanford has quite a good article on the philosophical use of 'harm' if you want to read up about it. So what would you call some negative outcome of your failure to act?
But you said earlier that you'd also include failing to meet a responsibility as a harm (or at least equally morally relevant, we can quibble over terms). When pressed you said that some moral intuition guides you as to what these responsibilities are (you're not persuaded simply by its status as law).
So definitions aside, I don't see what difference there is. It might well be your responsibility to ensure I'm suited, in which case, absent of any ability to ask my consent, you would have no less behaved immorally by failing to act as you have by acting.
It all turns on what you consider your moral responsibility to your community, rather than any more fundamental argument about default choices when acting without consent.
Quoting khaled
Is absolutely evidently insufficient. Driving is a risky undertaking. You risk harming others in doing so, that much is unarguable. Again, this seems to alk turn on the figures rather than anything more fundamental. And as @Benkei has pointed out, the odds of causing net harm to a future person are pretty low.
Why is it everyone couches disagreement as the other side not 'understanding'? Have you considered the possibility that it's you who don't understand the counter-arguments?
That's a description of the various parts of the sentence, it's not an argument. It doesn't tell me what is bad about affecting others if they haven't been part of the decision.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But this again only tells me that affecting others is a violation, not why this is so. It's not obvious why any influence I have on anyone should be considered a violation.
That doesn't follow at all. Not having access to their judgement is not the same as having no idea what it might be. We can have a very good idea what it might be, humans are not radically different from one another in fundamental preferences.
Quoting Tzeentch
Yes, absolutely. Making decisions for others (making decisions that will affect future others - I still don't agree with your incoherent wording), is something that humanity has been doing in this context for several million years and overall happiness ratings for the people who have later been affected by these decisions have been consistently quite high. I'd even argue that they were even higher for much of our past. There seems to be a very low chance of resulting in a lifetime of misery. The alternative seems utterly pointless (a world without suffering which no one exists to enjoy).
So yes, it seems utterly stupid to wipe out humanity to avoid a risk which we've been taking by the billions without any noticeable issue.
Disagreed.
Quoting Isaac
I don't buy this argument. This seems to be based on a severely cherry-picked version of history. There are many things humanity has been doing for much of history, where some have suffered and others and have profited, which we now consider inhuman.
At any rate, regardless of what the ratio might be between happy and unhappy people (it seems silly to reduce one's choice to have children to generalizations and statistics, but this aside), it seems we're arriving at a "ends justify the means" type of situation, where forcing individuals into existence is a "necessary evil" to produce a net-positive outcome. This fails to take into account those individuals who must suffer as a result of it. It is easy for an outsider to say they find the suffering of those individuals an acceptable sacrifice.
Most of the countries with the highest reports of happiness are wealthy democratic western countries. This wealth is partly or even largely based on exploiting people in poorer and less democratic countries.
I don't think one persons happiness justifies another persons unhappiness or hardship. There are on average 800,000 suicides a year. Billions of people live in poverty.
There are around 140 million orphans in the world.
"According to UNICEF, almost 10,000 children become orphans every day. According to internationally accepted figures, there are at least 140 million orphans in the world. Given the fact that there is so much compelling evidence showing that there are millions of more orphans not included in official statistics, there is no doubt that this number is actually much higher."
https://insamer.com/en/2020-orphan-report_2928.html#:~:text=According%20to%20UNICEF%2C%20almost%2010%2C000,million%20orphans%20in%20the%20world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
I think happiness is inappropriate given these kind of facts and I don't want to coexist with suffering people or be involved in their exploitation.
Odd, because when talking about the suffering intrinsic to life you reach for rather a familiar list - disease, work, war, poverty, disability... You never seem to list friends, love, comfort, peace...
Quoting Tzeentch
Of course. All of which have been vigorously complained about by the aggrieved parties. Until Benetar almost no one complained about being born and even now it's restricted to whiny teenagers and niche philosophers. So where's the evidence of widespread regret having been caused (in the opinion of those to whom it has supposedly been caused)?
Quoting Tzeentch
Weren't you only recently citing exactly such generalisations in our ability to predict harms?
Quoting Tzeentch
We've just established the very low rate at which people consider life a necessary evil.
I think the conclusion is wrong though. Because other people are unhappy, I should be too, thereby increasing unhappiness? Seems to be the wrong way to go about it. Moreover poverty is in decline across the world and there's plenty we can do (and I think should do) to improve things. You might look into my thread on the "politics of responsibility".
Seems to be fundamentally different.
What?
I know from my own experience of human embodiment that there are significant burdens involved. For example, the ever-present need for warmth, protection, safety, water, food, etc - not to mention the near endless list of other needs a human has (eg, social, sexual, entertainment, existential). The majority of our lives are spent striving to meet these needs, which burden us.
It is precisely because there *doesn't* exist the souls of the 'yet-to-be', that one ought not procreate. No child is out there in the aether, crying out for embodiment, being deprived of having a stomach that needs to be fed. People do not pre-exist the harm that comes about from being embodied. So why create another human body with perpetual needs that must endlessly be strove against, and only for this person to die in the end regardless? A pronatalist might perhaps point to the good or joys of eating to justify procreation, for example. But the joys of eating are predicated upon having a stomach - on being a human perpetual caloric/nutritional needs, not to mention the source of this food is rooted in harm (eg, someone must labour to produce the food, bring it to market, in many cases horrific animal harm and cruelty being involved). To justify creating a body with a stomach, by pointing out how good it is to feed it, strikes me as absurd. You created the very deficiency that eating solves, and call that good. Better to just not create the deficiency in the first place, to not create a body with a need for food.
But in my personal experience, when you actually ask those with children why they procreated, the reasons they give tend to relate to their desires in some way or another anyway (eg, "I wanted a family", "babies are cute", "it just happened", "my mother wanted grandchildren", "I thought I'd make a good mother/father", "I wanted someone to take care of me when I'm older", or some some other reason relating to fulfilling social/cultural/religious expectations, etc). It's mindless.
This seems to be an unwarranted value judgement, arbitrarily describing one physical process as a "deficiency". The kind of processes involved predate humans, and would still be around if humans were not.
Without reference to the important part - the mind - the argument can go nowhere.
I should really qualify "affecting" as imposing and causing conditions of harm on another person.
That it predates humanity doesn't counter what @Inyenzi saying. And it is precisely the human mind that often amplifies this type of suffering. We not only lack, but know we lack and can perseverate all the more on it. He brings up the much deeper structural forms of suffering I mentioned towards the beginning. Once born, we are almost always in a state of lack that we are trying to fulfill, and this overcoming of lack is its own form of suffering that is often talked about in Eastern circles, and which philosophers like Schopenhauer have expounded upon in World as Will and Representation and his essays. If you take away any contingent forms of contextual suffering (which is actually common enough to be structural anyways), this form of lack is always there churning away in the psyche, all the more compounded by self-awareness of this very situation that we lack.
I do agree with you that it's not the issue necessarily but will point out the problem when it occurs. I also say this earlier :
It's not well-stated at all because consent cannot play a role here because this is once again personifying non-existence as if it has thought processes and a will. And consent isn't even necessarily important for moral questions. Actions can be moral or immoral without another person being involved. Unnecessarily cutting down trees because I like destroying stuff isn't right either. Gluttony isn't right either. Lusting after your girlfriend even when nobody in the world is aware of it, isn't right either.
Yeah, but then we're right back to square one. Affecting is a very broad term, which is why the claim that creating someone "affects" them is plausible. This is no longer the case when we use more concrete terms like imposing or causing conditions of harm. The whole causation argument has been done to death, as has the imposition one.
Quoting schopenhauer1
As I have alluded to earlier, it seems, for lack of a better word, childish to respond to this by wishing to end self-awareness itself. Not that childish necessarily equals "bad", but the wish to avoid existence rests on magical thinking.
I can understand the apparent paradoxes here. We want to fulfill our desires, but fulfilling them only ever leads to more desire. We want to realize ourselves, but can only do so through others, which requires limiting ourselves.
These are, like all paradoxes, caused by modes of thinking, which can be rejected. But the anti-natalist solution seems to be to instead find the one who is responsible for the paradox, and ask them to fix it. Blaming your parents for something they did not do - indeed cannot do.
I'm not sure what you are saying here. I am qualifying affecting because you seemed to be saying affecting was too broad. You already know what kind of affecting I mean, but I still wanted to answer your question about consent by qualifying it. At that particular post you weren't arguing the non-person argument anymore (as I already answered that with how the displacement in time of the decision and affect on the person the decision is about doesn't mater) but rather why "affect" would be a violation. I'm defining that there is harm and impositions on another person, and in this argument about consent (rather than just suffering itself which is a related but different argument), that negative affect without consent is the violation. Again.. way too many words for something you probably knew.
Quoting Echarmion
It is simply asking not to create this deprivation or deprivation-states.
So?
Quoting Inyenzi
Because life is good, the striving is fun sometimes, there are a lot of great things to enjoy in life. Most people seem to agree, even in today's difficult times. If we make the massive improvements to society which are certainly possible we'd have an even better time.
Quoting Inyenzi
So? What difference does it make what the joys are predicated on?
Quoting Inyenzi
None of which are necessary.
Quoting Inyenzi
Why? Justifying things by how good they are seems pretty standard to me.
Quoting Inyenzi
Why would that be better? You'd miss out on the pleasure of eating that way. By what measure does missing out on pleasure come out as 'better', than having that pleasure?
Yeah, likewise. The arguments have been done to death. The problems with your arguments are very obvious to me, but you either cannot or do not want to see them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But that's such a weird request. Deprivation is a human mental category. It's not a physical description but a value judgement. It's not your parents that think of all life as deprivation. It's you.
I agree, there are enjoyable things in life. But most isn't all, and all is what I would require as a standard before I'd even consider inflicting human embodiment upon another person. I wont respond to your other points because it will just lead to a quibbling debate, but in my opinion the pronatalist/antinatalist position starts and ends with a question of what kind of man/woman one aspires to be. Do I inflict a burden where it need not exist, or don't I? Do I have the self-discipline to deny my biological programming, or don't I? Do I aspire to do what is moral, or to simply indulge my base instincts to breed like every other mammal? What kind of person do I want to be, and what kind of self-discipline is required to achieve it? I imagine the vast majority of antinatalist/pronatalist debates on this forum are in reality debates between those with children and those without.
At a certain point the debate just breaks down. The antinatalist simply requires a higher standard for the creation of life that another human body must deal with - the pronatalist doesn't. It's an impasse.
And of course, I would say likewise to your counterarguments. Just because you characterize my arguments that way, doesn't make it so. But you can keep going with them.
Quoting Echarmion
It doesn't matter what we think, it is the mode of existing as a human being embodied in the world. You don't have to make a judgement as you are being deprived. You are just deprived.
What you said wasn't disagreement, you were refuting a misunderstanding of the argument. I am not arguing that there is a person who is benefited by antinatalism, or that there is someone who is harmed by birth (although suffering does result from it). And yet everyone here just keeps refuting the same 2 arguments, even though I'm not (and no one is really) making them.
Quoting Isaac
In what world? If I was your parent and you had some important interview or something maybe :rofl: But other than that, I don't see why I would have a responsibility to keep a stranger suited. Didn't cross my mind.
Quoting Isaac
Correct. And NOT driving is also very bad because then I can't work. So my job is to get good enough at driving that the harm done to me due to not being able to work starts to be comparable (hopefully less) than the "expected value" of harm I can cause. Again, I am part of this calculation, and me being unable to work is a problem.
If I am a bad driver to the point that I run people over 3 times a week getting to my job, I shouldn't be driving. Because then the harm I alleviate is not comparable to the harm I cause.
Quoting Isaac
The difference is, in the case of a future person, the amount of "harm" I alleviate from myself by having a child is insignificant to the amount I cause by having one. Whereas in driving they become comparable when I'm a good driver.
So it's not so much that there is anything wrong with antinatalism then is there?
Quoting Benkei
Quoting Benkei
Why is it moot in the second case but not the first? We're just talking about where to put the bar.
You can't inflict human embodiment on a person. If the thing you're imagining is not already embodied, it's not a person.
Quoting Inyenzi
Agreed.
Quoting Inyenzi
How do you determine if a burden 'needs' to exist?
Quoting Inyenzi
Do your desires go around with little labels attached? How are you identifying the ones resulting from 'biological programming'?
Quoting Inyenzi
Why assume it's one or the other?
Quoting Inyenzi
That seems likely, given the topic. So?
Quoting Inyenzi
No. The antinatalist requires a different standard. It is not 'higher'. The argument is that it's incoherent, not that it's excessively high.
At least we're admitting that this is about self-image. But one might wonder whether the wish to not have to deal with life at all is really a sign of superior self-discipline.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think this is avoiding the question. Clearly "deprived" isn't the name of a fundamental force in the universe. Whether one sees all existence as deprivation, or sees individual cases of deprivation that can be solved is a question of perspective.
The Schopenhaurean perspective is that deprivation is akin to the base of an existing animal and human as a phenomenal manifestation individuated in time/space/causility all a flip-side of Will, which is the real noumena beneath the surface.
But I don't necessarily have to subscribe to that kind of metaphysics to get the point. Being alive entails essentially being de facto forced into deprivations of the survival, comfort, entertainment varieties.
I just don't get the idea that we want to make other people deal with any kind of thing. The natalists response is to, again, "deal with it" or "go kill yourself". I just don't find that acceptable.
The analogy wasn't necessarily aimed at you.
Quoting khaled
For fuck's sake, it was an analogy and hopefully you knew perfectly well it was an analogy when you wrote it, otherwise it was mindnumbingly stupid thing to write. To make the analogy correct, we'd have to add that there are situations where it is your responsibility to buy me a suit.
If you're really finding the concept of an analogy difficult to cope with then we can put it in absolute terms. There is some benefit A which carries a risk B to person C. If I'm under no duty to provide benefit A then it might not be appropriate to take risk B if I cannot get the consent of person C to do so. IF, however, I'm under some responsibility to provide benefit A and still can't get the consent of person C, I might well take risk B because failing to provide A would be no less of a risk - be an equally morally relevant outcome.
Quoting khaled
Great. So it seems we agree then. The risk that a person might end up displeased with their life is worth taking because not taking it also causes harms. We weigh the two and come to a conclusion about whether to take the risk or not. It seems we're on the same page after all.
Quoting khaled
Why are you suddenly only taking into account the harm you alleviate from yourself as the only positive in the balance?
It's not rocket science, it just takes the tiniest bit of theory of mind (something most three years olds can muster), but I'll teach you it here and now so that you can get on with your life.
--Not everyone has the same opinion about stuff as you do--
Edit - (in case that wasn't abundantly clear) the fact that you personally find these things difficult to cope with does not in any way mean anyone else finds them difficult to cope with.
You do have to subscribe to ascribe to a particular metaphysics to arrive at the conclusion that there is someone to blame for this in it's entirety. The alternative view is that rather than having one big dragon to fight, we instead all have to make the right decisions everyday, with everything.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Because you want an option where you exist, but don't have to deal with it? Isn't that what heaven is?
I mean.... it was written in response to me. Kind of confusing.
Quoting Isaac
It is, but I'm just saying that nothing in it implied that I have the responsibility of keeping you suited. But yes there are cases where that could be true.
Quoting Isaac
:ok:
Quoting Isaac
Didn't say that. But in general, we do have to look at both outcomes yes, and this case is no exception.
Quoting Isaac
What else is there? And don't tell me "harm you alleviate from others" because I could also easily argue that your child will cause a fair share of harm. And I'm not sure if "others" should come into the calculation at all, so far it's just been you vs the affected party. I'll have to think about that one.
No. It had no notification attached to it, quite deliberately.
Quoting khaled
Right. So it doesn't work as a counter-argument then does it. If there are situations in which the reductio wouldn't work because the factors are different then it becomes about whether the situation in question has those factors.
Quoting khaled
So? You could well make that argument. But then we'd only be exactly where I've been claiming we should be since the start.
1. There are benefits to having children (enjoyed both by the future child and the community into which they're born) and there are harms (suffered both by the child and the community they're born into).
2. Despite the incoherence of the framing given sometimes, we can theoretically consider how the future child might respond to these benefits and harms, we can even imagine how they might feel about the logical impossibility of not having had the opportunity to choose. What we can't do is ask them what their actual view in either case is - we can only guess what it might, in future, be.
3. Since, out of the 7 billion people on the planet at the moment (and the tens of billions who've been born) the proportion who complain that they'd rather not have been born (even if such a claim is incoherent) is absolutely tiny, it's not an unreasonable assumption, then, that this future child will feel equally comfortable with this situation.
3a. We can also add to this that in some moral frameworks, it's not unreasonable to assign a duty to members of a community, and as such we would assume this duty of our imaginary child when predicting their opinion.
4. A world with no-one in it is not a good world because 'good' is an assessment made by people - without them nothing is good. Moral goals make no sense in the absence of people to enjoy the benefits of them.
5. Since it is a perfectly reasonable moral tool to evaluate the failure to meet a duty no less than the causing of a harm, it is incumbent that we weigh the loss of benefits (some of which it might be our duty to provide) against the potential to cause harm to an imagined future child and their community.
6. Since (3) would indicate the chances of severe harm are pretty slim, and (4) would indicate that avoiding those harms via extinction would be self-defeating, the benefits would have to be pretty small indeed to not weigh quite heavily against them. Most people see the benefits of life as weighing quite heavily - we do a lot to preserve it - so the argument seems clear.
Quoting Isaac
Weird, I got one. I've been getting notified by quotes sometimes.
Quoting Isaac
Idk what their duty would have to do with their opinion of life. Don't see what you're trying to say with 3a
Quoting Isaac
I'm not after "good worlds" whatever those are.
Quoting Isaac
Again, I don't care about "good worlds". So what exactly is self-defeating here? The conclusion that we will end up with an empty world doesn't matter to me, I'm only going to consider action by action.
It is a fact of the matter that having children produces more suffering than not. For easy comparison:
Sum of all harm in a world in which adam and eve didn't have kids: Suffering(Adam) + Suffering(Eve)
Sum of all harm in a world in which adam and eve had kids: Inarguably a lot more than that.
Your 5-6 points just sound like handwaving to me. First off you bring in benefits, when this whole time I've exclusively talked about harms (deliberately) and second you try to sneak in the "extinction bad" argument without saying it outright.
It really is quite simple if you apply the framework we agreed on.
Situation 1: Do not have kids: I experience X suffering. You would probably want to add "and the community also misses out" but again, you'll need to prove that your child will not be harmful in the first place to make that argument.
Situation 2: Have kids: I alleviate X suffering from myself and add much more to the kids (in addition to each of them having to deal with their own X now, unless they also have kids, ad infinium)
There will almost never be a situation where X (harm in situation 1) is MORE than the harm in situation 2 (which can be approximated as: numberOfKids * X + each kid's individual suffering. Can't see that ever being less than just X), but that is what would be required by the framework. The only exceptions may include:
1- I know my next child will do something amazing like cure cancer (Again, I don't think even this one works because I have explicitly always made it about harm to you vs harm to the affected party, never "harm to the community". I don't think that should be a factor but I'm going with it for now)
2- I have some condition where X is so large that it is actually comparable to the suffering of an entire lifetime AND this condition is not genetic (or else I'm just pushing it onto someone else)
Those are the only 2 exceptions I can think of.
Notifications on this site are a bit peculiar.
Quoting khaled
Nothing. I worded it all wrong. I meant to say that we could take that into account when weighing their opinion (ie, we don't just take into account how much they like it, but whether they're fulfilling a duty).
Quoting khaled
So if your morality isn't aimed at making the world a better place, then what is it aimed at? What's the point of behaving morally, for you?
Quoting khaled
Agreed.
So why would you want to reduce suffering...above all else...seemingly to the complete exclusion of all other considerations?
We've seen that you don't (in practice) fail to consider other factors when making decisions, so why, with the decision over children, do you keep coming back to this naive oversimplification of moral judgement where the only thing we have to consider is suffering?
Same question here. Why bother? Why reduce suffering?
Behaving morally.
Quoting Isaac
Not all other considerations. But all considerations outside of the considerations we outlined. The ones you summed up really well:
Quoting Isaac
Having kids is like buying the suit with your money when I don't have a responsibility to keep you suited. Just with way higher stakes. There is no factor here that I’ve outlined as important that I’m not considering as far as I see. The fact that you tried to sneak in the “extinction bad” thing again without outright saying it (because you know I don’t see it as a worthy goal, but something that has to come out of the morality naturally) suggests that you know this too.
Those are the de facto conditions. That is the game. I don't like to start games for other people. That is paternalistic. Again, deal with situations or die. Smug assumptions and conclusions to do on behalf of other people if you ask me.
Related, I had another thread that discussed how bad decisions themselves are part of the contingent harms of the games.. Start a game for someone and then say "do better at it".. more smug... Smug, smug, smug, smug...
Quoting Echarmion
IT doesn't matter if the world that is better doesn't actually exist, it's just not this world.
I find the context of the reported happiness problematic.
You mentioned the alleged odds of a child being happy using one country but that is not representative of all countries. Nevertheless I found articles like this on The Netherlands:
https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2018/45/one-in-12-young-people-have-poor-mental-health
You say poverty is decreasing but there is still masses of poverty and homeless children. Even if are going in a positive trajectory that doesn't mitigate the dire problems people face now.
I am not saying people ought to be unhappy but I don't understand how they could be happy and very happy if they saw and heard stories of modern tragedies. There is the phenomena of "depressive realism" which shows that people with depressive symptoms make more accurate judgements.
But also I do not think reports of happiness justify creating a child. Happiness is not a measure of morality. You have to look at the context and nature of the happiness.
I don't think one person should have to suffer to keep the species going. If you believe that why don't you swap lives with someone living on a trash heap in Nigeria?
The child exists solely because of her parents desires and so this is a very unequal one sided relationship.
This is not like adopting a poor child and lavishing them with gifts and affection. You are making someone exist because of your desires and not for their benefit.
I have compared this to a Stockholm syndrome scenario. The child becomes grateful to the parent without realising the nature of the relationship and the imposition.
What you seem to be saying here that the parent-child relationship is somehow bad. That it should not be so. But what's the basis for that?
Quoting schopenhauer1
The whole game thing is an analogy though. Life isn't a game, because games are a part of life. Life just is, no-one decided that this is how human life feels to us.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't know what's smug about it. No-one here is claiming that everyone should be happy about their particular lot. But perhaps it seems smug because it throws a wrench into the fantasy of the "perfect" life.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I just have this theory that anti-natalism is a secularised version of heaven. You see all the pain and suffering in the world and look for a metaphysical way out. Some way to fight all the evils at once, without actually having to figure out a solution for anything in particular.
So this goes back to my analogy of kidnapping someone into a game.. read the post about that. Don't feel like copying it. And for the thousandth time, I get the non-person problem.. so there is no one to be "kidnapped". But, someone is being started in life.. and the analogy is that the "game" is one of life or death. You either live the structural and contingent conditions or you die.
Quoting Echarmion
It's smug to assume people should play the game.. that is to say start the game for other people to play.
Quoting Echarmion
Why do people have to be put in a circumstance where they have to figure out a solution for anything in particular? For someone who poo poos my analogy about a game, you are sure reiterating it. This is again, under the genre of smug natalist responses.. "Deal with shit or die". Yep yep yep. smug smug smug.. I get it. You can reinforce it with more smug responses and I'll entertain it. Keep your greatest hits coming.
That's not really an answer to the question. You've made a clear distinction between desires and moral behaviour so moral behaviour can't simply be one of the things you desire otherwise the distinction breaks down. We only act motivated by desires. You're advocating restraining ourselves in some desire (saying it's immoral to have children). Are you suggesting that what classes as 'moral' is random, arbitrary?
Quoting khaled
This conversation is just getting too weird for me so I think I'll just leave it there. You're basically just saying that you desire noting above the reduction of suffering to zero and there's no reason at all why. Well, fair enough, but there's no point in continuing a conversation with someone so manifestly odd, I don't think we have any common ground on which to base an argument.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Good to hear you avoiding all those ad hominen arguments you dislike so much...
But that's wrong. Because it assumes that when you start the game, you already have something to loose. Hence the "or die" part has significance. This isn't the case though. The supposed "game" is literally all there is. It isn't a game where you either play or die. It's a game where you play, dying is part of playing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What's smug about that? ?
'Arguments' and 'responses' are not smug. People are. It's an ad hominen which just goes the heart of the issue. You're pissed off about your life and looking for someone to blame. This isn't philosophy, it's bad therapy.
If you believed in God, I'd say ask them. In the absence of that, not sure why you're asking.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Uh, I am?
Quoting schopenhauer1
You sound a bit like a teenager, complaining that they have to prepare the dinner before eating it. So smug to point out facts!
That's for damn sure. You prove that all the time.
Yes, die slowly (by playing the game in various ways.. some leading to faster death than others) or kill yourself. Kind of strengthens the argument actually.
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Echarmion
Sounds like a game.. challenges to overcome.. figuring out the key to overcoming the challenges. That's what I mean by you reiterating the game analogy.
Still wrong though. There is no "or" here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So challenges are a game, and death is a game, and I suppose making an argument is also a game, since it's also challenging. Everything is games!
What I wanted to point out that for someone who can't abide smugness, your own position sure is awfully convenient. You get to feel morally superior to everyone else without actually having to address a single real problem. Because you're doing the much more important work of fighting the devil himself
Quoting Isaac
You laid out the common ground. You summed it up very well. Then refused to actually apply it. If if "misapplying" the framework we set out, where exactly am I doing so?
Die through the course of living life (through its challenges) or don't do that, just kill yourself. Don't see the problem with the or.
Quoting Echarmion
No the challenges are a game.. I guess death is a way out of the game. I'm calling it that.. Call it challenges if you want. Discreet things to overcome over a lifetime of surviving, finding comfort, entertainment in a society being exposed/impinged along the way by contingent harms. Stop trying to find "gotchas" and engage and maybe this will go somewhere :roll:. This is getting tiresome, not because the topic isn't endlessly fascinating (I think it's important), it's that this particular dialogue hasn't gained much traction. It would be nice not to do tit for tat responses and actually understand the perspectives at hand. That's difficult on this forum for whatever reason though.. Mainly due to personalities perhaps.
Quoting Echarmion
No, see I never said that. You can certainly address other problems I just focus on this one. It is the originator of all the other problems, so is one place to start. For people already existing, yep there is a shit of challenges to get your hands dirty if you want.
What does seem like moral superiority to me is chastising those who do not want others to live out the challenges but rather default assuming that the challenges are the be all and end all.. But that's just it.. Of course it is, because what else is there if we don't kill ourselves right away or die of starvation? Yep, of course we are going to buy into the challenges thing.. It's a must. Do or die.. I get it.
Of fuck, I used the term "people already existing".. But you know what I meant.. We exist rather than there being a state of affairs of no people..
But see this is the bullshit we all agree on... and we can word it to be semantically proper but now because you are in gotcha mode.. and even though you know I know this because we discussed it a billion times.. you are going to bring it up in another gotcha.. so now I have to waste a post addressing it.
:up: Anti-Natalism is basically a series of grammar mistakes themselves mistaken for substantive philosophy. A position lacking even the dignity of being 'wrong'.
Usual pile on without adding. You know that's not true. If there are grammar mistakes to your filter, then as this thread has shown with people like me and @khaled and @Tzeentch it can easily be re-written to pass through the gotcha filter regarding the the non-person (non-issue) argument.
I am trying to engage in a new direction, but it's perhaps not clear that I do. I think there is an alternative perspective that you're not fully considering. That death isn't actually "a way out", but rather just another part of "the game". That there aren't ways out, and that the idea that there should be is really kind of absurd.
I think it's the same kind of problem that happens when people ask "what's the meaning of life?" The question contains a hidden assumption (that someone imbued life with meaning) that people who ask the question don't realize, and hence they don't realize that the question they're asking is nonsense. To ask for the meaning of life is to give someone else the authority to set that meaning.
The problem I see with your approach isn't the same one, but it's similar. You're trying to conceptualize life in a way that's not compatible with a secular, materialistic worldview. There is a hidden assumption here, something along the line that we're souls trapped in bodies that we could conceivably escape.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Did you have better luck in other forums? Purely text-based conversation has the tendency to get aggressive, probably because it's much easier to be angry at a red bird than at someone actually in front of you.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But why is it "get your hands dirty if you want, but do not, under any circumstance, have children?
Quoting schopenhauer1
But, aren't the challenges the be all and end all? This kinda refers back to my remark about "the meaning of life". If there is no outside, metaphysical reason for any of this - and I assume you'd say there isn't - then why complain about the nature of life itself? There isn't any point of comparison, outside the utopias we can dream up. And dreaming them up of course requires that we exist first.
What do you think about the line of reasoning that life is the universe experiencing itself? Useless drivel or important insight?
Well, first thing's first.. I do think that antinatalism is actually a good insight into general pessimism and big picture questions.. before I get into that though, we do have to resolve at least something..
It seems even @Benkei agrees that there is some threshold in which it is not okay to have a child. He mentioned a few circumstances. So clearly, there is something going on here where we can look at a future where there will be a person who exists and project what might happen to that person. If we can't get past this, then we shouldn't even really be arguing anymore. At that point you would be arguing for argument's sake to argue at least that point and I frankly think we would have no shared ground of anything to discuss.
That being said, if we all can agree that we can project the outcomes of a future person who would be alive if we procreated them, then it becomes a matter of what are the facts, and what is the threshold. The threshold means, at what projected amount of suffering/negativity would you find it AT THE LEAST distasteful to entertain having a child? Now clearly you, Benkei and others a way lower threshold. My view is that ANY form of negativity is wrong. Now, we can go down the stupid rabbit-hole of pinpricked charmed lives, but let's not cause that is just a cul-de-sac. Rather, Let's just agree that at least life has challenges to overcome and harms that we are exposed to. Knowing this, I see it as paternalistic to think that another person should be born, because I deem life's negativity/challenges sufficient to bear the burden of.
So based on the evidence of what living a human life entails, that is where the main disagreement lies. Unlike intra-wordly scenarios where we have to make compromises all the time, this is a unique area where no person will exist to be harmed by a simple inaction of procreation, where there presumably could have been someone if this action was taken. Antintatlists will either take the metaphysical stance that it is a "good state of affairs" (a sort of absolute axiom) that all cases of harm were prevented in one inaction OR, simply that AT LEAST the bad situations of affairs of all/any harm befalling a future person was prevented.
Similarly, antinatalists often view impositions on other people as wrong. Starting someone else's life by having them is seen as an imposition. This is where the facts on the ground are seen as different. Natalists don't see starting someone else's life as an imposition. They see individual instances of challenges to be the impositions. Antinatalists don't understand why these individual instances cannot be summed up as a general category of negativity/harm. Thus instead of 1, 2, 3 instances it is X[1,2,3] that is being prevented.
So it is really a case of the threshold and the facts of what counts as causation of harm.
Quoting Echarmion
Well there is no alternative for us. We exist. However, as long as a capacity exists where someone in the future can be prevented from challenges, then it is incumbent not to start X[1,2,3] challenges for that person (that is to say all harms/challenges that come from existing in the first place, which is caused by procreation of that person).
Quoting Echarmion
It's kind of an anthropic principle argument that we need to exist for the universe to exist. A negative version of this to some extent is Schopenhauer.. The phenomenal world is the playground of the Will but it has no end to its striving, thus causing the misery for the manifestations that arise from it's illusory flip-side of phenomenal existence. I don't necessarily subscribe to this theory, but it's aesthetically intriguing.
I do think that antinatalism has implications for how to act as a community. If you want to discuss that, let me know.
Not quite sure how to take this. Are you implying that moral behaviour has no objective. It's just series of arbitrary rules we follow just because...?
Quoting khaled
You'll have to point me back to where you think I did this.
Here:
Quoting Isaac
A would be the good things in life, B would be the bad things in life, and C would be the child. You are not under any responsibility to provide A. So don't.
Quoting Isaac
The objective of moral behavior is moral behavior. I don't know how many ways I have to restate this. And this isn't some fringe belief either, Kant thought that way. To him, the consequences don't matter, only the behavior does. Same here. The rules are set out because we deem them as good.
Quoting Albero
Really hoping someone will say something interesting one of these days.
It was the refusing to apply it bit I was confused about. Not sure what I've said outside of a principle of weighing harms, benefits and duties.
Quoting khaled
I'm no Kant scholar but the SEP has...
And...
None of that sounds anything like an arbitrary set of rules which are simply followed for their own sake.
What prevents 'maximise my personal wealth' becoming a moral imperative?
In my comment I told you how I apply it to get the conclusion “You shouldn’t have kids”. What do you think of that application? I think yours was hand wavy. Didn’t specify exactly what A B or C were for one.
Quoting Isaac
I didn’t say that. I said Kant didn’t care about consequences. If you had the option to lie to save some innocent’s life from a killer, he would say don’t lie. Period.
Same for me. I don’t care about the consequences. I set my rules and I follow them. If your question is where do these rules come from? Why do you care? That shouldn’t affect what we’re talking about.
I could “embed” them in some sort of “respect of human freedom” or something like that. As in the reason you don’t do things to people without consent (under the conditions we highlighted) is because it “violates the principle of human freedom” or “treats people as ends in themselves”. There are a gajillion things I can embed these rules in. I don’t feel the need to do that though. These rules just seem right to me, that’s why I follow them. I don’t see how “embedding” them in deeper, yet still arbitrary rules helps. Though everybody seems to like that for some reason.
Well, in a sense it is almost the definition of paternalism. Of course if you're a parent, you're going to be involved in paternalism, it's right there in the word. But of course parental guidance isn't usually seen as a negative, whereas paternalism usually is. Adults are supposed to make their own decisions.
But given the scenario we are dealing with, it's not obvious why paternalism should have a negative connotation. We can imagine a fantasy scenario where we time-travel to ask all out future children on their opinion about being born. But then the question is, what more right does any one version of me have to decide on all of my existence with all its consequences? Is some moment of me empowered to make the decision for all moments? And what about the consequences for everyone I have and will meet?
This sounds like a scenario where I'd welcome some paternalism.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But where do you even get the moral weight of harm from? That's a problem for all utilitarian ethics, but it's especially problematic here, because you square absence of harm with absence of existence. But aren't harm and it's absence judgements by existing minds? How then could there be an absence of harm without minds?
Quoting schopenhauer1
My view here is different insofar as I don't even see why impositions are strictly negative in the first place. I am aware the word has negative connotations, but are they warranted in this scenario?
Why though? I can see the argument being made for particular sets of challenges, but what right does the "future person" have to not have challenges "imposed" at all? What rule, based on what philosophy, would be broken?
Quoting schopenhauer1
What I'd be interested in is how you view the relationship between the individual and the community. Does the community only exist to facilitate the purposes of it's individuals or is community a more fundamental element of humanity?
What makes this game so good, other people must play it, instead of worrying about playing it yourself? If no one is born, clearly no one is suffering from not playing the game there. So it seems at the decision, it is only about the parent wanting something.. Their desire leads to tremendous outcomes.. in fact a whole life existential decision made for someone else. Seems a bit odd that you have a notion and someone else is the one that has to be profoundly affected by it.
Quoting Echarmion
I explained that it is just an axiom that preventing harm itself is absolutely good in some views. In other views, it's not about good but about simply activating a principle when a situation arises. So, if someone exists and they have a capacity to make an inter-wordly decision, such as preventing all harm unnecessarily by a certain inaction, then there you go.
Quoting Echarmion
It's just an axiom, no unnecessary harms and challenges are taking place versus they are taking place.
Also just intuition on things like resentment for being kidnapped into a fatal and sometimes harmful game with various tedious, annoying, neutral, (even if interesting or not so bad at times) that have to be played out. It certainly doesn't follow that, since we must exist to know the game in the first place, it is permissible for people to start the game.
Quoting Echarmion
I mean someone might ask the same thing, why is causing harm bad? Why is forcing someone to do something just because you want it bad? I mean you can question anything. At some point it's your intuition. I can provide analogies, emotional appeals, but if you are not convinced so be it. Unlock physics or something, I am not going to reveal to you something where it will convince you by way of working a certain way that happens all the time, etc like a piece of technology derived from a scientific discovery.
Quoting Echarmion
I think that individuals are the locus of experience. Certainly community is a necessary part of being socialized as a human, but the community doesn't feel a knee being scraped, going through this or that experience, an individual does.
However, I think as a community, we can look at each other as fellow-sufferers in life. We can more clearly see the harms that are necessary to stay alive as they are being enacted in real time. This may lead to minimizing our harmful interactions as much as possible. Our desires and needs are necessary parts of our beings and they cause other people to have to work, and us to work for them. I am not talking about compassion or heroics or something, just the everyday entailment of economic existence that needs to take place to maintain the structures for survival, comfort, entertainment.. The expectations that need to be there, the attitudes, the de facto forced behaviors and interactions. We are a species that knows we don't like something but yet know we have to go through with it to. We can contemplate life, see that it isn't ideal even in possibility but still live it out.
That's mainly what I was trying to address in my later comments, but perhaps I didn't relate them clearly enough. It comes down, I think, to the nature of the decision that no amount of benefits constitute an A that you have any moral obligation to consider - hence all the discussion about where moral obligations arise from. I think if you're of the opinion that moral obligations just spring out of nowhere and then must be followed for their own sake, then we are too far from one another to gain anything from a conversation such as this. I don't think that's even close to a definition of what moral obligations are.
Quoting khaled
Isn't the harm future people will suffer a consequence that you care about?
Quoting khaled
It's not that the 'deeper' rules are arbitrary, it's that they're definitional. Obligations which count as 'moral' ones (as opposed to just any obligation) have to be defined, in order to be in that class. The class makes no sense in language unless it has a public definition - even if only a vague one. How do you think we come to learn how to use the word 'moral' unless there's some definitional parameters to it's use we can identify publicly?
For me, I'd say 'moral' obligations we those obligations which related to creating a more harmonious community (we live together with less conflict and suffering if we follow them). That seems to encompass what most people are trying to get at - even Kant.
But the existence of a definition for the class {moral activities} means that not everything can fit in that class. Causing the extinction of the human race, for example, doesn't fit in that class - it doesn't create a more harmonious community - it creates no community at all.
We seem to have come back to the conclusion of our last conversation on anti-natalism. What you have is a plan (eliminate suffering). It's not moral - by definition. It's just a plan.
Finally. This time it only took you sixteen pages to admit the same point we get to every time...
"I have some weird axioms, look what weird consequences arise from following them"
Summarises all these threads in one sentence.
Problem is all you can say about these axioms is that they’re weird. That’s not really important, it’s like saying you don’t like vanilla ice cream. But this thread is an attempt to say they’re wrong. I’ll reply to the rest later I don’t have time right now but just a few thoughts:
Quoting Isaac
Does allowing serial killers to kill innocents by refusing to lie to them create a more harmonious community?
On another occasion, I remember hearing that Kant was asked: If there were 2 people male and female, left alive on earth but one of them was a criminal, should she be executed or should the couple try to rebuild the human race and he answered: Executed for her crimes. I don’t know if this actually happened, I only heard it from a friend. But that was Kant’s philosophy. It doesn’t matter what the impact is on the community, it only matters whether or not the act is right
Not 'wrong', just not moral. 'Moral' has a meaning, and wiping out the human race isn't it. If your axiom happened to be 'kill everyone who annoys me' we'd be in exactly the same situation, but I don't think anyone would object to countering an argument that such an axiom was a 'moral' one.
Quoting khaled
That may well be, I'm no expert on Kant. If true then it just confirms my suspicion that Kant was a sociopath, but as far as I can tell such a view would contradict the CI. I suppose, if not, then I'd have to agree that some uses of the term 'moral' are so far removed from others that one could reasonably define it as 'an arbitrary set of rules one sticks to for no reason at all', but such a definition would be next to useless as no-one would know what you were talking about when you used the term.
Obligations are obligations. Who cares which class they're in? What are "non-moral obligations"?
Quoting Isaac
As I've said, it doesn't need to be arbitrary. But you have to start from some arbitrary point. For example:
Quoting Isaac
"Creating a more harmonious community is moral". Is just as arbitrary as the rules we set out. Only one level deeper. I don't see any need for that "extra level". For me it's: "Acting as follows
Quoting Isaac
is moral". Arbitrary? Yes, but not any more than alternatives.
You're missing the point. 'Moral' is a word in our shared language. It has to have a public meaning in order to be able to carry out this function. It can't be a term which you apply to describe absolutely anything, otherwise it has no meaning, I'm none the wiser if you say "X is immoral", than if you just say "X is". The word has no function whatsoever.
In order for words to function in a language they have to have some shared meaning, we can't just go around saying any old thing counts as 'moral'.
As to where those shared meanings come from in the first place, I'm generally in favour of some biological origin with a significant history of cultural modifications. Which means that the deep driver of morality is not arbitrary at all, it's not something you even get to choose.
Quoting Isaac
Well considering how many debates we have about it, maybe its meaning isn't as "shared" as, say, "dog". It has some flexibility.
Quoting Isaac
Agreed, which is why I don't apply it to absolutely anything.
Yeah, I think that's right. So what kind of evidence would one bring to bear if one were to make an argument about the parameters? Say if we were talking about 'dog', you might argue some new creature was a type of dog by pointing to similarities with other dogs (physiology, genetics etc). You might argue that my toaster isn't a 'dog' by the opposite method.
Whatever the evidence is, it is not hard and fast. The line gets blurry at foxes and wolves. But you seem to me to be asking for hard and fast.
What makes "Moral acts are for the benefit of the community" so incredibly different than the moral rule we outlined that the former works as a definition and the latter becomes "arbitrary rules followed for no reason"? They seem to be at similar levels of arbitrariness for me.
Agreed.
Quoting khaled
No, just within the ballpark.
Quoting khaled
I don't see them as two examples of the same thing. One's an attempt to summarise the purpose of the rules, the other is a rule itself (and so, without purpose, is arbitrary). The equivalent for the antinatalist would be something like "Moral acts are to minimise suffering".
I can raise evolutionary, cultural, linguistic, psychological and sociological reasons why moral acts might be those which benefit the community. I'm asking what equivalent type of evidence you can bring to support your idea that moral acts are those which minimise suffering.
Sure let's go for that one. As if that takes away from any of the arbitrariness. The natural next question then becomes "Why pick that premise instead of 'moral acts are fo the benefit of the community'?" which would bring it all back again.
Quoting Isaac
This sounds to me like a natrualistic fallacy at best and a type error at worst. If by this statement you mean that we should follow this or that moral intuition because they are culturally and biologically evolved that would be a natrualistic fallacy. And last I checked we have an intuition both not to harm people AND to help the community thrive. Are you asking me to provide evolutionary, cultural, linguistic, psychological and sociological reasons why we try not to harm others in general?
If by it you mean that an explanation of the factors causing us to have this or that moral premise suffices as a moral premise then that's a type error. Why we came to have this or that moral premise, and the moral premise itself, are very different things.
So I'm not exactly sure what evolutionary, cultural, lingustic, psychological and sociological reasons qualify as "evidence" for exactly? What are you trying to prove by citing these?
No it wouldn't. Maybe to a moral absolutist it would, but I thought you and I were past that. Anyone not absolutist about morals, these ideas have arrived in our heads by some natural means, they are not given by God and they are not us getting in touch with some platonic realm of moral values... So, given we both agree that they have not arrived in our heads by divine force, then their origin is natural, hence it is not a naturalistic fallacy. There is no 'should'. We simply will or will not according to our mental states. The relevant task is only to try to describe and predict that process.
A naturalistic fallacy is when you say "We should do this because it's natrual". For example: "People naturally want to steal therefore they should". That seems to me what you're doing.
Quoting Isaac
Bit late for that.
Quoting Isaac
That's psychology and sociology. Not ethics. Ethics is precisely concerned with what you should and should not do.
Tell me what you have in mind. Cite these sociological, biological, cultural "evidences" and tell me exactly what you mean to prove by them. Then maybe we'll get on the same wavelength.
If there was a rape you wouldn't ask the perpetrator what they thought about the ethics of their action as measure of its morality.
We can all judge what we feel about our parents in bringing us into existence here. And you can't refute this analysis because the individual is the final arbiter of their moral stance.
If you don't respect the sanctity of the individual then there is no reason for them to respect you.
There's a huge difference between seeing someone right in front of you who will die if you don't help them, and deciding whether or not to give to charity. I find it remarkable that you apparently can't see that difference.
Enlighten me. In both cases: someone will probably die if I don't help (depending on the charity). The only difference I see is that in one that death is near, and in the other I can't see it.
Not sure what you're trying to say here. To be clear, my position is that morality is not imposed from some divine (or otherwise non-physical) external source. That means that our desire to act morally (such as it is) arises naturally. That means that 'should' is irrelevant at the level of "why 'should' we behave morally?" It's not a question which makes any sense - the idea of 'moral' behaviour is just that behaviour we find ourselves generally inclined toward with a certain category of effect (either internal or external). The inclination (ceteris paribus) is already there.
So when we say "You should give the poor", we're saying "in order to fulfil that moral inclination we, ceteris paribus, have, you should give to the poor". Proceeding to ask "why 'should' we fulfil such a moral inclination makes no sense. It's like asking "why 'should' I like whisky?" It's not a question that has a normative answer.
Agreed.
Quoting Isaac
But not everything we are inclined toward doing is moral. That's the naturalistic fallacy. We are inclined to steal. We are also inclined to help the poor. One is moral one is not. Deciding which is ethics.
On what grounds do we decide?
Arbitrary ones. I think.
Then how does anyone learn what the word 'moral' means?
By sharing the same arbitrary starting point.
Well then it's not arbitrary, is it. Unless there was some global coordinated government ruling on what counted as 'moral', that I missed. If we generally share the same starting point (and we're ruling out divine intervention) then that fact stands in need of explanation. If that explanation is natural, then there exists a naturalistic basis for that shared understanding.
Arbitrary in the sense that there is no reason you should favor it over another one.
Quoting Isaac
Agreed. There is a naturalistic explanation for why we have the starting premises we do. However that does not invalidate using alternative premises.
Quoting khaled
You're missing the point. We have those imperetives. That's what we just established. The's not some 'other' you that gets to decide what the 'natural' you wants. There's just your wants. Some of which are 'moral' according to the definition of the word, which is a community reflection of some grouping.
At no point is there some external judge.
Agreed. I wasn't talking about whether or not we have this or that inclination. I was arguing which should count as "moral".
Quoting Isaac
But which becomes the problem. We have an incentive not to harm others. We also have an incentive not to want our species extinct. What do we do when those clash? The answer to THAT is not natrualistic. You can explain the instincts and evolution behind both incentives but that doesn't tell you which one we should favor in which circumstance. That's the job of ethics.
Quoting Isaac
What do you mean here? Just sounds like word salad to me.
Again, you haven't explained a) how this 'job of ethics' is to be done - what do we use to judge, and b) if there's not a naturalistic explanation (predictive model) to be had regarding which we will choose, then what does the choosing? If, on the other hand, the choosing is done by some natural mechanism, then there exists a naturalistic account of the choice.
Quoting khaled
Just that words are not defined by individuals alone, nor by some rational process. They are defined in the use they are put to in a community. We cannot 'work out' what counts as moral, it is already worked out by the ways we use the word, all we can do as individuals is describe that meaning.
Arbitrary standards, again.
Quoting Isaac
I never denied that there is a naturalistic explanation behind our choices. I denied that that gives any choice legitimacy. Say you have a 5 year old that says "two times two is six". There is a natrualistic explanation behind that utterance, that we can get by going into the neurology. However that does not say anything about 2x2 or 6 and certainly doesn't make them equal.
In the same way, figuring out why you favor this or that moral premise while I favor a different one does not say anything about the premises themselves, or which is better (if there is such a thing), or which is consistent. That is the job of ethics. That is what we are debating.
When I say "we use arbitrary standards to judge" I am not denying that there is not a natrualistic explanation for why I picked this premise and you picked that. There is nothing in the former statement that implies the latter, they're speaking at different levels. But you seem to me to have a habit of thinking things imply things they don't imply (usually a neurological theory), fom talking to you on multiple occasions now.
Quoting Isaac
Agreed. And clearly we have had hundreds of uses of the word "moral" in context of antinatalism. So I'm not sure where your objection that the conclusion is "not moral" but is "just a plan" comes from. It could only come from arbitrarily deciding that one use of the word is "illegitimate" even though we have had threads going into hundreds of posts using it in the context of antinatalism.
Quoting Isaac
And as we said, the word has some room for error. And I think "having children is immoral" falls squarely within legitimate bounds of its use. You also think this, or you wouldn't have understood what was being said. It would have sounded like "having children is 134". But it doesn't.
It's not a job if the standards are arbitrary. There's nothing to be done. Plucking a rule out of thin air is not a 'job' in any normal use of the term.
Quoting khaled
What I'm saying is the judgement of which is better must also have a naturalistic explanation, or be non-physical in origin. If the former, then there is no 'better' in objective terms, nothing to debate.
Quoting khaled
This is not at all true. If I said elephants are a type of cat you'd know exactly what I was talking about, but I'd still be wrong - elephants are not a type of cat. The mere fact that antinatalist premises make claims to be moral and that we can understand what those claims mean does not make then automatically right about that claim.
I think the standards are arbitrary. Moral objectivists think they're not. Also there is no job called "ethicist" for this reason.
Quoting Isaac
There is never "better" in objective terms. Objective terms are just what is. Since when does that mean there is nothing to debate? I really don't understand what you're trying to get at here. Why are you on this site? After all, all of what we are doing here has a natrualistic explanation, including every thought and typed word. If this means that there is nothing to debate then what are you doing here?
It's so bizzare to me that we are 17 pages in and you keep saying "Well actually, your view and my view are both caused by natrualistic means therefore there is nothing to talk about". That there is a natrualistic explanation does not mean there is nothing to talk about. There is nothing about the former statement that implies the latter. And it is clear there ARE things to talk about or you would have stopped talking.
Quoting Isaac
Agreed. Now, we check the premises and check the reasoning. If we agree with the premises and reasoning then the conclusion must be true. You don't just say "Well actually there is a natrualistic explanation for what we are doing here therefore there is nothing to talk about". That makes no sense.
- Conditional anti-natalism which doesn't state all human existence is and will always be immoral simply for whatever reason be it the specific country, life circumstance, or state of society/the world one is in doing so would be "bad" or unwise ie. having kids if you're in a third world village that is already struggling to survive.
- Utilitarian? anti-natalism meaning you should only have kids if they will be your (more or less) main focus in life until they are able to live under a similar or better situation than you yourself, where said outcome is more likely than less likely due to planning, etc. As in, due to the horrors and potential misery that can be experienced in life you shouldn't "just have kids" because you "just wanted to" one day or are infatuated with your partner so much you want to "make one flesh" out of passion or otherwise just have something to do for in life for 18 years.
- Reactive? anti-natalism as in the belief that life (being born) causes suffering and so should be avoided at all costs unless you will raise or can otherwise be reasonably assured the life you bring into existence will actively work to make the world, society, life, etc. a better place for all thus defeating the anti-natalist premise. So, if you want your kid to "do what makes them happy" in life and you and your partner (or other children) don't seem to be exceptionally talented in skills that can help make the world a better place (being a genius, etc.) it should be avoided. However, if you will tirelessly ensure they end up on a path to helping others and improving the quality of life in general (being a doctor, scientist[?], all-around good and selfless person to be around, etc.) or perhaps you yourself, your partner or other children happen to be incredibly talented and therefore capable of doing great works to improve the quality of life and state of the world, it's "OK".
The terms I used are probably poor word choices but you can see the various forms that exist outside of the standard, resolute definition in the OP.
I think there are a couple ways of going about answering these conditional versions.
1) The risk factor. There is still a non-zero chance the child itself or other he/she interacts with will be/cause harm that is not worth the risk, so why risk such a possibly devastating outcome?
Although this is the most accessible claim, as everyone can understand risk, I don't think it's actually the most important.
2) The imposition/don't cause harm premise. A lot of universal antinatalism (as I'll call it) is that causing impositions unnecessarily on others, and causing conditions which inevitably lead to harm unnecessarily on others is always wrong. In the case of antinatalism, there is a unique choice, perhaps unique amongst all others (so not special pleading) that all harm for a future individual can be prevented, without that child also being deprived in the present state (as they are not born yet). Unlike being born already and already being harmed and harming others (even unintentionally), the situation of procreation is a case of preventing all harm and not needing to harm someone else in order to "improve" a situation either. For example, a lot of times, we cause impositions or minor harms on others so that they can get to an even less harmful situation in the future. However, even this is not an excuse to cause conditions of harm in the procreation decision as there is no one who exists yet that needs to be harmed a little for a greater good (as they don't exist yet). Thus, this really is a unique case, again, because one would be creating conditions of harm and impositions on another completely unnecessarily and not for a greater good in terms of for that individual's sake.
Now, couching this in terms of greatest good for greatest number and not focusing just on harm of the individual being born doesn't persuade me either. I think this is actually non-moral or even immoral as it is now not basing morality on the dignity of the individual but rather how that individual can be used for some aggregated cause. However, as I've explained elsewhere, I see the locus of ethics at the dignity of the individual. People should not be used for others ends. However, there are varying things one might give up living in a society. However, certainly these kind of mini-violations that we must weigh once born are not a consideration in the procreation decision, as again, no conditions of harm needed to be created in the first place in order to use those individuals for aggregated needs. So those mini-violations for the "greater good" don't even need to take place. It would still be completely unnecessary to create conditions of harm for that individual for "greater good" community reason outside of the very child whose whole existence will be predicated on this abstraction.
What are your views on the trolley problem?
I'm sure you know people who actually think enough to consider anti-natalism and it's arguments are the minority. People will still keep having kids without a care in the world. So, just let them? This would seem to place any alleged concern of "human suffering" along with any alleged efforts or attempts to reduce it secondary to simple avoidance of personal responsibility. Would it not? Perhaps that's all it is to some, elimination of (personal) imposition. So this definition of anti-natalism it is not a "humanitarian" or "moral" belief that "delves into the deepest wells of selfless concern for one's fellow man in hopes of preventing suffering" but rather a simple and independent whim of one's own selfish, personal prerogative. Is it not?
Using people is not respecting the dignity of the individual. If a person self-sacrifices, that is different than sacrificing someone else for some cause.
What I don't get in all this is people don't understand de facto forced situations. Certainly, if I tied you up and made you work at some factory you did not want to.. eventually came to think it was okay because, what other choice do you have? Is that good? I'm guessing you'd say no.
Yet life is basically a much wider version of that. Instead of the factory it is working via social institutions. The illusion of choices doesn't cut back the actual decision made on someone's behalf that this is indeed "Just needs to happen for other people". People have to live, because why? So they can experience the wonders of blah blah and so and so? Not an excuse.
So we are not here to reduce suffering. We are not here so more plastic can be created, more technology happening, more movies watched, more people singing Kumbaya around a campfire, more presents can be given, more food can be distributed.. That is using people's lives for some cause outside the very people being created. Bypassing suffering for the future individual is what matters. Principles of this or that are not focusing on the individual being created.. and their dignity as people. Wanting to see some X outcome outside of the individual is where this goes off the rails...
I don't think Isaac is censoring anyone, merely pointing out that the assumptions of certain arguments are unjustifiable. It's always interesting, even necessary to talk about what we should and shouldn't do because these are the bases of our laws and we are, in part, responsible for shaping them.
What should be called out is when an unjustified argument is being defended by a demand for necessary omniscience in an opposing argument. It is unfeasible to give a complete description of how we ended up with the precise moral culture we have. We can understand more and more about evolutionary biology, and we have records of key historical paradigm shifts (Christianity, abolition, suffrage, civil rights, LGBT rights, trans rights, animal rights) that fed into our current moral structures, but you can always tack on a 'Why?' to any answer. But as well as unfeasible, it's also unnecessary. That we do not tolerate certain behaviours under certain circumstances (e.g. allowing a person to die who can easily be saved) but are fine with others under other circumstances (not giving to charity at noon tomorrow) is sufficient to demonstrate that the the moral claim that all suffering is equivalent and any action or inaction that might yield or fail to quell it is as bad as terminal negligence is simply not a reflection of human morality and, in the absence of any other moral authority (like God), cannot be justified this way.
The 'why' *is* interesting, but is not necessary to dismiss antinatalism as bunkum. Now... If an antinatalist could argue on pragmatic, naturalistic grounds, e.g. that it is hypocritical to not extend permanent non-existence to our potential offspring... That would be both interesting and relevant, but also places the burden of proof correctly with the claimant, not the sceptic.
But that's my point, friend. You may choose not to participate and create a person who you will raise to not only not do that but do everything in their power to prevent that. Not because they're "forced to" simply because you raised them to view doing so as beneficial and bringing joy to their person. Meanwhile, those who are raised without said belief will continue to do so and thanks to your non-participation will continue this unabated and unrestricted.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The child will undoubtedly do what the child wants. The assumption that a child raised to receive joy from selflessness is "sacrificed" or otherwise forced to do something against their will is on par with the same idea toward a child raised to feel joy from selfishness, is it not?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, people will continue to be born, and without proper guidance, continue to be subject to the scenarios you provided. Until, someone with knowledge and perhaps guts, decides to raise others in opposition to this.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What future individual? You're an anti-natalist!
Quoting schopenhauer1
See above. People will continue to be born, either with the mission or at least inclination that they should or perhaps could better their fellow man and thus future selves in the process, or not. Regardless, births will continue. So. Do you, as someone who recognizes or at least identifies the current state of society and the world as "in need of improvement" enough to imply it needs to be improved have kids who may be taught to do so, or do others who either don't realize or couldn't care less have kids that just contribute to the degeneracy. The choice is and has always been yours.
That's not the kind of why I'm tacking on. I'm not asking for exactly why we ended up with a desire not to harm others or whatever, that is irrelevant to the argument. To think it was relevant is a naturalistic fallcy.
I'm asking "Okay, so due to [insert neurological, biological, evolutionary process here (no omniscience required)] we ended up with a desire to steal, is it moral to steal?" The fact that we have an inclination to steal does not make it moral as I'm sure you'd agree. Similarly, the fact that we have an inclination to reproduce, and the fact that most of us think that it is morally fine, does not show that it is.
To show that we have to agree on starting premises and reason from them. Now if, like Isaac, one of your starting premises is "Anything that leads to extinction is bad because preserving the human race is a worthy goal in and of itself" then of course having kids is fine and that's that. We go our merry ways. I don't share that premise so that's as far as the talk will get (unless you can derive it from a premise I DO share). However this method fails to show what was intended to be shown, that there is some actual error within AN.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
In ethics you argue as to what should or should not be done. The fact that our current moral paradigm (supposedly) does not lead to antinatalism doesn't make antinatalism bunk. That would be like saying that the fact slavery existed for the longest time makes it right. This is no more than an argument from popularity.
The title of the post implies that there are things wrong with antinatalism. As in, even starting from the same premises that lead to AN you will not reach AN. Every time I talk to Isaac (or anyone really) about AN it goes like this:
1- They try to show an inconsistency
2- They fail at showing the inconsistency
3- They either add another premise to overwrite the conclusion (see above) OR just conclude "Your premises are unusual" which is very different from "Your reasonsing is wrong" (what they originally try to show)
4- Wait 5 posts
5- Repeat from 1 again for some reason.
I'm hoping if this is going to go on that that doesn't happen because it's just tiring for all parties envolved.
"People will be born therefore procreation is ethical" is a bad argument. The former says nothing about the latter. It's like saying "theft will occur therefore it is ethical".
No doubt. Meanwhile what I was saying was .. okay let's for a second go back to the OP. At least his stated definition "living causes suffering". Suffering is (or causes) a negative emotion .. therefore it is bad and is the main reason for anti-natalism. Inversely, pleasure is (or causes) a positive emotion, therefore a life with more pleasure than suffering is .. good? Otherwise, a life with simply more suffering than pleasure is bad. Unless the argument an individual adopts in anti-natalism is "I can experience a lifetime of pleasure however one moment of suffering makes it not worth living" which the rational person or even a non-rational person would toss aside as non-nonsensical rubbish. So, that means, if life can be made to be more pleasurable than it is suffering, it is good and worth living. And who will help to ensure and/or correct it's current state toward this? Those who identify the problem and therefore its potential solutions, or those who do not?
Well it wouldn't make sense to use that terminology. We don't have a natural drive not to steal. We have a natural drive not to do to others that which we would not have done to us (empathy and altruism). If we were fine with others taking whatever they liked, we wouldn't have a sense of personal property or theft.
Quoting khaled
It's not that we have a moral imperative to perpetuate the human race, rather that we have evolved moral behaviours to perpetuate our genomes. Morality is the mechanism of longevity; longevity is not the ends of morality.
Where both antinatalism and the above position you quote are at fault are in specifying moral values in the absence of relevant living things. No life, no biology. No biology, no morality. Morality is existential: existence must precede it. If I and my partner end up being the last two humans alive tomorrow, we're under no moral duress to procreate.
Quoting khaled
The fact that it rests on a unjustifiable claim does. One can dismiss it with as little justification. The trend on this thread, in your contributions in particular, has been to demand a rigour in this dismissal that is very absent from the antinatalist argument.
Quoting khaled
No, quite false. Slavery did not exist because of a pre-existing moral consensus that it was right. It existed because power attracts evil, including the power to shape moral consensus. Slavery has always been about a powerful minority exercising that power for personal gain, the very opposite of a moral position.
Quoting khaled
Most counter-argument, including the OP, point to the fact that the antinatalist argument is simply not shown. The counter-counter-argument assumes the argument in countering this. The best you've got is a self-consistent argument. I would argue that antinatalism isn't even self-consistent, nor is it about actual morality. That to one side, you can employ this argument to defend a decision not to have children just fine, although it's rather over-the-top: no one could say you were wrong to not have children to avoid your offsprings' suffering. But antinatalism is a claim that *I* should morally judge someone for having children. For that, you need a compelling argument, not just a self-consistent one.
If we all decide not to have kids tomorrow, no one will have to. You’re not addressing the actual question of whether or not procreation is moral
We also have a natural drive to take what we want. Yet we pronounced one drive good and one drive bad. All I’m trying to get at is that the mere fact that we have different, often contradictory drives is not in any way useful when talking about morals.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Agreed. One can dismiss the conclusion if one doesn’t accept the premises. That’s why I don’t peddle antinatalism, because usually people have different starting premises from mine.
But that’s not what Isaac and Benkei are trying to do. They are trying to find a contradiction even after accepting the premises, and failing.
I’d like to note though that this isn’t an AN specific thing. Any moral theory can be dismissed on the basis of unjustified claims. Unless you’re a moral objectivist, you’re going to have to admit that your starting point is unjustified.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
You can’t get better than that in ethics. “Compelling” is subjective.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I could try, though it is not usually my goal to peddle the belief. I’ll try some “intuition pumps”. Here goes:
First off, do you think there are situations where having children is wrong? If not, do you think malicious genetic engineering is wrong (genetically engineering an otherwise able child to be blind for example).
What is your justification for why that is wrong? (the situations or the genetic engineering. If you think the genetic engineering is fine there isn’t much I can do)
It's neither moral nor amoral, intrinsically. It's a means not an end to a means, one that can result in either outcome. I could make a weapon that can be used to either end all criminality or end all justice and ensure the continuation of said criminality. Haste makes waste they say. Not paying attention and tossing caution to the wind resulting in offspring raised without proper guidance that will become a burden on society whether directly or indirectly through the welfare system or not being raised any better and ending up in prison sucking on the public taxpayer teat while another, possibly a victim of said person, has to work their fingers to the bone to put food in their mouth is of questionable morality, for starters. However, this is but one of many scenarios.
You would probably agree that malicious genetic engineering (like making someone blind through genetic engineering) is wrong. If that’s the case what is your basis?
I find the idea that there are absolutely no moral considerations when it comes to having children laughable. Most people I’ve talked to on here (and I’m pretty sure you too) would agree that having kids when one cannot provide for them is wrong.
Quoting Outlander
Me pointing a loaded gun at someone and pulling the trigger doesn’t necessarily harm them. My gun could jam after all. But I’m pretty sure we can agree it’s wrong. Imagine if I said “Shooting people is a means not an end to a means, one that can result in many outcomes”
Who knows, maybe if I shoot just right I’ll accidentally remove a tumor or something. So I guess shooting people is fine?
This is obviously ridiculous. Humans are capable of predicting the future and making decisions based on that. We do not need certainties to say that something is wrong (shooting for example, doesn’t harm for certain and yet is wrong). So let’s apply the same standards to procreation. Let's not require perfect knowledge in this one case, and actually look at the harms done by procreating vs not procreating.
Humans are not a bunch of inputs that magically will be programmed to be beneficial robot machines. And my main point is that even if you were to be able to program a human in such a fashion (again not how it works), procreating a person in order that the outcome of a beneficial robot machine comes about, would be wrong. That's my point. It's not about the utility of a person in this case of the procreation decision. It is about using them for your means, good intentions or not.
Quoting Outlander
Same response as above.
Quoting Outlander
Sounds like culling new people to be part of charitable organizations.. weird. I mean, if you are simply saying teach people to give more, fine. But to create new people for that purpose, is the problem.
Quoting Outlander
I mean we are ignoring the individual, bypassing their dignity by creating a being who will be imposed upon and suffer.
Quoting Outlander
See above. If you want to start charitable organizations and schools that promote charity, cool. It's more about creating people who will be harmed unnecessarily by way of existing (to be harmed) for this purpose that is the problem here. I look at it as, is this causing unnecessary harm? Is birth for the sake of the person born? No? No? Don't do it.
I don't mean 'job' as in employment. I just mean that you cannot sensibly say that something is the 'job' of a particular type of person(or investigation) when there's no course of action implied. If the rules are arbitrary, then there's no task to be done at all - shut you eyes and point at one, string a randomly selected group of words together... It's just obviously not the case. We do not accept "you must wear a monkey on your head every Thursday" as a moral rule, there are parameters to do with our mutual understanding reflected in our common language - the 'meaning' of the word 'moral'.
Quoting khaled
I'm not the one saying there's nothing to debate. I'm saying that's the implication of you insistence that the rules are arbitrary (yet naturalistically derived). It would mean that we have no discursive role in their development as a community - something I don't hold to. Once you accept, however, that our biological mechanisms both drive and respond to our interactions with others, those interactions become a vitally important part of the process.
Quoting khaled
What do we 'check the premises' for? What are we checking? Let's say I have the premise that car's need to crank the engine before the pistons will star a self-sustaining cycle. I reason from that premise that we should crank the engine if we want the car to run. Premises we all agree on, sound reasoning. So if I say that it's a moral rule that "we ought to crank the engine", has checking the premises and reasoning helped at all in resolving that claim? No.
There's something about moral claims which sets them apart from other claims. It's not arbitrary - because if it were we'd not be able to trace any kind of connection or draw any meaning at all from someone's use of the term. It's not just whatever anyone speaking claims it to be - then we'd have a private language and communication would be redundant. So there's a matter of fact here (albeit maybe a fuzzy one) as to what are and are not moral premises.
Reducing suffering by removing all life capable of it is not a moral premise because morality (religious hijacking aside) is all about interpersonal behaviour aimed at co-operation. Not causing suffering is surely one feature of this broader objective, but it's not the premise, it's a method - if I cause another to suffer, they may get angry and retaliate, or I might cause them so much harm they're no longer a useful member of the community... and so on.
Basically, what I mean by raising the naturalistic explanation is that we don't just have a series of random desires, and since our language reflects functions in our culture, terms like 'moral' are also not going to have random definitions. So if you can't trace your purported definition somehow back to something 'useful' in our culture, your definition is wrong.
I don't think we can describe any drive, including the drive to procreate, as either moral or immoral. How we act, yes. Perhaps even how we think. But one cannot be responsible for one's biology or one's upbringing.
Quoting khaled
On the contrary, I think it is the crux of morality. Were we a solitary species, the question would not arise. Likewise were we of a hive mind. It is the competition between impulses that gives us ambiguity, without which there's nothing to talk about at all.
Quoting khaled
I read Isaac as saying that there's no basis to accept the premise, which is my view too: if there's no naturalistic reason to accept that premise then, in the absence of any other moral authority, the resultant moral rule is arbitrary. There are quite a lot of arbitrary moral rules.
Btw I realise I misread you earlier as expecting such a precise naturalistic justification, my bad. On second reading, I think you might have missed Isaac's point somewhat, which seems more to be an appeal to base moral rules on what morality is, not arbitrarily chosen premises whose falsity requires proof. I am saying more or less the same thing. There are biological drives and responses that act as the angels of our better nature, as well as selfish ones. If we cannot accept the premise on grounds of common experience, nor on grounds of biology, nor by extending existing in-group morality to out-groups, then it's difficult to see how the argument can be well-founded. There are well-founded moral arguments that are based on other evidence, such as animal rights and environmentalism. But antinatalism doesn't have that either.
Quoting khaled
Of course! And situations where it's fine to let someone die, and ones where it is morally compulsory to give to charity. But none of them are generalisable.
I was oversimplifying. I meant to say that we decide that acting on the drive to steal is wrong. But that that statement cannot be concluded from the mere fact that we have a drive to take what we want or from the fact that we have a drive to cooperate. Listing which drives we have doesn't help here.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
But, again, the mere fact that there ARE different impulses is useless. Which should be favored when? That's an interesting question. But restating that we have different impluses over and over again (like Isaac is doing) is not adding anything to the conversation.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
First off, there is no such thing as "no natrualistic reason". Unless you consider accepting the antinatalist premises a supernatural act somehow. There is clearly a reason that we accept this or that premise. Stating this fact (over and over) adds nothing to the conversation about which premise we should be accepting.
Secondly, you are implying that the moral rule ought to be accepted based on the existence of a naturalistic reason to accept its premises. Which is textbook naturalistic fallacy. And, as I said, there are naturalistic reasons to accept antinatalist premises (unless, again, you think that the Devil is playing with my mind or something).
Quoting Kenosha Kid
At some point we determined some drives and responses as "better nature" and others as "selfish". This was not done by looking at our impulses. That is what I am saying. But for some reason you and Isaac keep restating the point that we have different impluses. As if that helps in any way to determine which we should think are good and which bad (again, I'm simplifying)
Quoting Kenosha Kid
The first would be an argument from popularity. The second would be a naturalistic fallacy. And the final would actually be something akin to what I'm trying to do.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Ah come on now. You can do better than that. None of them are generalisable? At all? We just decide arbitrarily on a case-by-case basis depending on how we're feeling? I doubt you really believe that.
For one, I think we can agree that it's fine to let someone die if saving them puts you in similar danger for example. There is some generalization there. I bet you could come up with SOME outline of the scenarios where procreation is unethical, and we can go from there if you want.
But I'd like to point out something important here. Nowhere in my talk with Benkei or Isaac have I pushed antinatalism, because I think that would be a waste of time (and not fun). What they were trying to do is find an inconsistency within the system itself. Failing to do that, they resorted to saying "Well we still have no reason to accept it" which I am perfectly fine with. I was only trying to show that the system is consistent, even if you don't agree with its starting premises. I am only now trying to actually make a compelling argument rather than just a self-consistent one at your request.
If all you and Isaac want to say is "There is no reason to accept the premises of antinatalism" then that's fine by me. However Isaac was trying to say "There is something wrong with antinatalism internally" which is just false. And I would again point out, that unless you're a moral objectivist, "there is no reason to accept the premises of X moral theory" applies to any X. This isn't an AN specific problem which is why I'm confused why it's highlighted so much.
Yes it can (to an extent). If we did not have a drive to co-operate, for example, there'd be no material cause for us to "decide that acting on the drive to steal is wrong". We don't weigh up the choices randomly. There's an astonishing amount of similarity between cultures on such decisions which stands in need of naturalistic explanation.
Quoting khaled
You're not reading what @Kenosha Kid is saying. There is, in the very quote you're responding to, a bare-bone version of that explanation. It must be something to do with living co-operatively because if that weren't an issue we'd have no morality at all. As such, any purported 'moral' objective which cannot claim to be working toward such an end is not moral, by definition.
The alternative is to posit that drives such as the desire to avoid imposing suffering on others without consent, arise randomly, without any purpose (in an evolutionary, or biological sense). That's the whole reason I've been bringing up naturalistic explanations for drives. To seek some common ground that they do not simply arise randomly. Given that you seem to agree, what purpose to you suppose a drive to avoid imposing suffering on others without consent might serve?
Quoting khaled
Then how do you suppose it was done? Randomly? And the massive levels of correlation between disparate cultures are what...just coincidence?
Quoting khaled
No-one's failed to do that. @Benkei's original argument still stands. If you just stick to avoiding harm, you end up with contradictions (such as surgery), so you need to introduce consent, but consent is meaningless for non-existent entities, so we're forced to include benefits in our assessment (again, on pain of inconsistency with emergency surgery). Once benefits are included the antinatalist argument dissolves into completely normal decisions about having children.
All that's happened here is that to avoid having to consider benefits you've doubled down on some idea of avoiding non-consent at all costs, which has lead us here to this discussion showing how such a maxim cannot really count as 'moral' because it is not focussed on living together better, the need for which is the only reason we have morals in the first place.
Correct. We also have a drive to take what we want. So it is not the mere fact THAT we have a drive to do X that makes X moral. Sure, we would need some sort of drive to do something to ever consider it moral or immoral, but simply having such a drive doesn't make the thing moral.
Quoting Isaac
All he says is that were we a solitary species, the question of whether or not to steal would not arise. In that I am agreed. However, this does not indicate at all how a communal species (like us) should act.
Quoting Isaac
Ensuring a more harmonious community with less conflict. What now? Because it does NOT follow from that that the goal of morality is to establish such a community. Just as seeing an apple fall to the ground does not give apples any sort of teleological purpose of falling to the ground. To think that since moral impulse X arose naturally due to [insert explanation here] therefore we must all believe in moral impulse X is textbook naturalistic fallcy.
I could just as easily ask "What purpose do you suppose a drive to take what we want from others serves?" The answer could be something along the lines of "To ensure the survival of the individual" or "To establish dominance" or whatever. Does that make theft moral? It clearly does not.
Quoting Isaac
Definitely not randomly. But that is different from having a justfication. All moral premises are by definition unjustified. Some work better than others at preserving the society. The societies that adopted the ones that work better have survived longer.
However, you cannot conclude from that that: "Therefore the goal of morality is to ensure the survival of the community". It simply doesn't follow.
Quoting Isaac
Not necessarily. I've presented my system and you summed it up well. Whatever Benkei is attacking is not the system I'm using. If you want to go back to trying to show contradicitons please do so directly, as I see none.
Quoting Isaac
Morality is not concerned with living together better, but with what is right to do. We often happen to decide that the right thing to do is also the thing that leads to us living together better. This is not necessary nor is it always the case.
You're not following the argument. What does then make a thing 'moral'? Our agreement that it fits in some loose category. What causes us to agree on such a loose category? Our shared experiences. Why do we assign normative force to the behaviours in that category? Because we have some drive to do so.
You've yet to provide an alternative explanation for why we call some behaviours moral and why we are inclined to assign normative force to those (and not others).
Quoting khaled
Should act for what? I thought we'd been through this, there's no 'should' without contingency, we're not moral objectivists. If you want to have a high return, you should invest diversely. If you want to avoid pain, you should use gloves to handle hot pans... If you want society to co-operate effectively you should [insert moral rule]. You could potentially not agree with my contingency for moral rules, but what you're trying to do is do without one entirely whilst still claiming not to be objectivist about morals. This leaves you in the bizarre position of claiming the moral rules have no purpose at all, that we're inclined to add such normative force to them for no reason.
Quoting khaled
Of course it does. You may not agree with the premise, but it absolutely follows from the fact that we evolved moral sentiments to enable a more harmonious community that moral sentiments would be aimed at the maintenance of such a community. That's just how evolution works.
Quoting khaled
No one is claiming that. I (and Kenosha, I think) are claiming that since all impulses which count as 'moral' have some common features, origins and evolutionary heritage which sets them apart as an identifiable group, impulses lacking such features cannot reasonably be called 'moral' (in the absence of evidence to the contrary). It's not "x is natural, therefore you should do x" (naturalistic fallacy). It's ignoring all talk of 'should' as being uninforceable, but saying that "x lacks features a, b and c (which moral impulses share), then x is not moral". The normative force attached to moral impulses is neither here nor there, it's the definition of the word we're talking about.
Quoting khaled
Still not answering the question. For someone who apparently doesn't have a clue why some behaviours are considered moral you sure have some strong opinions as to what is not the reason.
Agreed. Though I'd add that the "shared" experiences are not shared by everybody (maybe not even shared by any majority)
Quoting Isaac
It leaves me in the position where moral rules are followed for their own sake. As I have said to you on a bunch of different occasions. Frankly, I find your whole "Let's follow this moral rule purely because it makes better societies" repulsive.
Quoting Isaac
I would say that we do not evolve moral sentiments to enable a harmonious community. As in, no one goes out of their way to decide how people should act purely to make for a better community. People propose and use all sorts of crazy moral sentiments. The ones that survive are necessarily the ones that encourage said survival.
However you give these rules undue importance. Simply because they survived does not mean they ought to be adopted. A lot of very questionable ethics have survived for a long time, what makes you think procreation would be different?
Quoting Isaac
What are these features?
And more importantly, why do you make these features definitional instead of circumstantial? That's really the crux of the matter.
Where have I said anything like that? I can quote several places I've said the exact opposite. If you're not going to actually follow through the argument there's little point in continuing. We're talking about a) what features of certain normative claims make them 'moral' ones, and b) what it is about those features that gives them their normative force - the 'if you want...' before the '...then you should...'.
My claim is that it is community co-operation. Efforts to support it are what unite certain normative claims we call 'moral', and the normative force is the maintenance of such co-operation - 'if you want {community co-operation}, then you should [moral rule]'.
Your claim seems to be that there is no 'if you want...' component at all, nor any uniting feature which makes certain normative claims 'moral' ones. Yet you've just ignored my arguments against such a position (private language argument against private definitions, and cultural similarity argument against a lack of contingency).
The rest of your post simply arises from this basic misunderstanding. There is no 'ought' without an 'if' it's impossible for non-objectivist (I'd argue it's impossible anyway, but since neither of us are objectivist I don't have to). So any discussion of what we 'ought' to do must be accompanied by an 'if we want...'. What we're discussing is your 'if we want...'.
So you need to fill in the blank 'if we want to...we ought to avoid risking harm to others without consent'. What is in the blank?
Or...you're arguing that avoiding the risk of harm to others without consent is the contingent part - 'if you want to {avoid risking harm to others without consent}, then you ought to [not have children]'. But here you're faced with the naturalistic argument. We are evolved and culturally embedded creatures. We simply do not have random wants en masse. So why would anyone have an otherwise unfounded desire to avoid risking harm to others without consent?
Quoting khaled
Private language argument. We cannot have private meanings for words. Language is a social enterprise.
Quoting Isaac
Quite. One can look beyond naturalism to culture, but what kind of culture would obliterate itself? Answer: a very, very small, very, very short-lived one.
Quoting khaled
You keep using this argument but it's quite false. All electrons to have the same charge. Defining the idea of 'the electron charge' is not 'an argument from popularity': it is a statement about the category of things called 'electrons'. Likewise deeming something to be a moral consideration or not on the basis of its ubiquity is not about popularity: that ubiquity speaks to the presence of an evolved characteristic.
So unpopular moral theories are no longer moral theories? I'm confused here. What "evolved characterisitc" is antinatalism missing that other moral theories have?
Sure the ubiquity speaks to the presence of an evolved characteristic, but it is your choice to make that characteristic definitional or circumstantial.
If they are about how you should act.
Quoting Isaac
So I guess "ethical egoism" is not about morals then? And neither was whatever Kant was doing. I think your claim is ridiculous because many (if not most) things we call "moral theories" do not have the community co-operation as an end goal, and often have cases where they favor other values (freedom, sanctity of life, whatever) over the community.
If you want to define "moral" such that Kant was never talking about ethics feel free to do so but don't expect anyone to use that definition.
Quoting Isaac
No, my claim is that the "if you want..." component is arbitrary. "If you want community cooperation" works. So does "If you want to respect the freedom of the individual". etc.
Quoting Isaac
Silly quesiton. Here let me ask you another silly question: "If we want to..... we ought to ensure community cooperation". What is in the blank?
See how this is silly? You have to start somewhere. I could just keep taking whatever answer you give there (X) and ask "If you want to.... we ought to X" what is in the blank? Ad infinium. This is why I keep saying the starting point is arbitrary.
Quoting Isaac
This.
Quoting Isaac
How is this a natrualistic argument? I didn't say "We should not want to harm others without their consent because it is natural".
If you mean to say that we have no reason to favor "Avoid risking harm to others without consent" over "Ensure the harmony of the community", I'd agree with you. But then there would be no error with antinatalism, just premises you disagree with.
So "you should use a 10mm spanner if you want to undo a 10mm nut" is a moral claim? Weird.
Quoting khaled
Quoting SEP - Egoism
Quoting khaled
IF you want to explain the origin of Kant's 'goodwill', then do so and we can look at it, but since the issue has dogged scholars since its inception, I doubt you'll be able to give a clear answer. Invoking 'whatever Kant was doing' in an argument is useless unless you know what Kant was doing.
Quoting khaled
Firstly, It's not my claim - I'm using it as an example (one I have a good deal of sympathy with, mind). What I'm trying to get from you is your equivalent for your moral framework. Secondly, you still have not resolved the issue of what makes claims 'moral'. As the SEP quote clarifies not all values basing a moral theory are properly countable as 'moral'. It's insufficient to simple say that other moral frameworks have slightly different values and therefore any value equally counts as moral. A multiplicity is not the same as arbitrary.
Quoting khaled
Again - so "if you want to undo a 10mm nut..." works? You were previously arguing that my concept of what is moral was 'ridiculous' on the grounds of inconsistency with other frameworks we call 'moral'. So if the same inconsistency is not to apply to your position you should be able to point to the moral framework in which undoing a 10mm nut is the main value.
Quoting khaled
No. I'm saying the exact opposite. We simply do not have arbitrary desires. If you think we do, the onus is rather on you to explain the mechanism by which you propose they come about because neural representation arising without cause sounds like magic to me.
It's worth having a look at the SEP entry on defining morality.
Quoting SEP - The Definition of Morality
We're looking for that 'something else', in your framework to justify the claim that it's a 'moral' one.
If you were to also propose some moral duty to undo 10mm nuts, then yes that would be a moral claim. Otherwise it is instructions.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting SEP - The Definition of Morality
Ah so that's where the misunderstanding is. I've been using "moral" in the descriptive sense.
Quoting SEP - The Definition of Morality
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Sure....
Quoting Isaac
We keep getting confused here that's my bad. I should have used "No justification". There are clearly reasons (natrualistic explanations) for why we favor this or that moral premise but there are no justifications to favor any. To say those are the same things would be a naturalistic fallacy.
That's precisely the point: it would be impossible for a species to evolve a social drive toward antinatalism, therefore it is not part of our social biology. Nor can it be part of our culture since any such culture would be small and short-lived. We can call it an ethic insofar as you can personally subscribe to it, but it has zilch to do with human morality.
Quoting khaled
That has nothing to do with what I said.
Quoting khaled
Not really. You can be trained to suppress, for instance, altruistic impulses. These are the aforementioned counter-empathetic responses, as e.g. a racist will typically respond to seeing a member of an ethnic minority in torment. You can rely on willpower or fear of reprisal to not act on selfish drives. Characteristics are always definitional though: that's why they're called characteristics.
What’s “human morality” if not codes of conduct you personally subscribe to? All you’ve said here is that it is Impossible to have an antinatalist culture. Ok so what?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
The question is why do you make it a characteristic of a moral theory to ensure the survival of the society in which it is used? Why does it need to be possible for a moral theory to be accepted on a societal level for it to be called a moral theory? Because that would disqualify many moral theories.
Humans are (generally) creatures that can self-reflect on any given situation in real-time. An example would be that I can know while I am shoveling the sidewalk, that I am indeed shoveling the sidewalk.
Indeed, with the feature of self-reflection comes the ability to also evaluate any given situation in real-time. So as I am shoveling the sidewalk, I can evaluate the situation as not pleasant, neutral, pleasant and anywhere in between.
If it is the case that the person being procreated is one that can evaluate a situation as negative and if there are de facto "facts of living a normal human life" that cannot easily be escaped, or would be violating the communal norms that sustain the individuals in the community by doing so, and can be indeed evaluated at any given time as negative by the person doing them, then forcing someone in a situation where negative evaluations is possible, would be wrong. The keywords are "forcing someone" into possibilities of inescapable negative evaluations.
The implication here is the paternalism feedback loop of forcing someone into situations where one can evaluate the very acts of surviving as negative, and then believing that society must re-educate these individuals into accepting this inescapable circumstance. This is through all sorts of coercive means.
If anyone can provide any further ideas.. this scheme of creating people who can evaluate the very givens of life as negative and then re-educating to "get with the program".. why does this seem immoral, not right, fishy, wrong? I think it has something to do with using individuals, but I'd like other ideas for why this intuitively seems wrong.
It's a lot more than that! Human morality concerns biological and cultural adaptations to allow humans to live together in social groups and allow social groups to co-exist. One can personally believe that you must wear a blue hat on a Tuesday, but it has naff all to do with people or morality. Simply calling it a moral theory doesn't provide insight.
Quoting khaled
Moral theories are diverse in that respect. For instance, utilitarianism does not depend on *what* makes us happy. If receiving bananas was the only thing that made us happy, utilitarianism would suggest we should maximize production and distribution of bananas. But it's not. Other theories specifically concern the conflict between selfish and selfless drives. Individualism is an antisocial moral philosophy, socialism a social one. Others, such as egalitarianism, directly describe our base moral nature. I'm not arguing that a moral philosophy has to be fundamentalist and naturalist: I have already said that a purely naturalistic justification for morality would inevitably be ambiguous, untenable and inappropriate. But all of the above deal with that very problem in different ways. Antinatalism does not. It is a fundamentalist moral theory that has nothing to do with what morality is, fundamentally.
Also... Merry Christmas!!!!
But then 90% of moral theories cease to be moral theories, because they have never been tested to prove that they would allow us to co-exist better or at all. I don’t think it’s a fair definition.
I think you’re using morality in the normative sense while I’m using it in the descriptive sense (check the SEP article on the definition of morality)
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Weird. How do you consider it a moral philosophy? It would not allow social groups to co-exist very well. Unless you’re suggesting it would.
I cannot see what individualism is doing that antinatalism is not.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Merry Christmas to you too! And everyone here.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/482594
Quoting schopenhauer1
Then I honestly don't care. I don't care about "embedding" moral premises in other moral premises. Why is creating someone who might hate life wrong? Because it just is. OR because it is "using people". OR because it is "disrespecting the freedom of the individual". OR because it is "unwarranted suffering". Or because all of the above. Or because of the first, which is because of the second, which is because of the third.
I can embed the premise (make it a conclusion deriving from another premise) in a large number of other premises but I think doing that is just distraction. The question then becomes "Why is using people wrong?" or "Why is causing unwarranted suffering wrong?" etc. This "embedding" is just a waste of time, it doesn't give any new information or any new answers.
People certainly seem to like it though. The best moral theories have 2-3 "layers" of redundant embedding at least so that when someone asks "Why X?" you answer "Because Y" and then they ask "Why Y?" up to 3 times at whichpoint you can pretend that they're being ridiculous. That is tip number 1 in the "Moral Objectivist's Guidebook to BS". "Embed your moral premises in many layers so that when people keep asking 'why' you can call them children and not actually have to justify anything"
Note: I'm not calling you a moral objectivist or saying you're BSing. It's unrelated.
I totally agree with your sentiment and really like your explanation of how often finding a moral foundation is simply embedding it in yet another layer that needs another foundation, etc. At some point, you either agree or disagree with the axiom. I have maintained for a long time now that at that point it is more about appealing to a person's emotions on why exactly that premise is so important, not embedding it in another principle that is some sort of air tight case. That will never be the case.
That being said, this doesn't have to be embedded in layers as much as just another primary layer for why it could be bad to procreate. But I guess my real question then is what is it about this principle that seems so noxious to me in particular? It's this weird paternalistic idea that people should like, tolerate, or deal with negative situations in the first place I guess, because it's somehow just "good for them" and if they don't realize this goodness, they need to be re-educated. I guess the difference between that side and my side is that side leads to other people being affected, and my side does not. Of course, that side would shrug and say, "I just don't care" or "experiencing the negative is good" or make it seem like it is inevitable, "it's just the course of life", as if there was no other option. Then you can ask, what is it about experience that needs to take place. I know that is a very deep and somewhat dark question because people think that simply living must be good in and of itself and antinatalism is preventing this, just as antinatalists might say that they are preventing a future person from suffering. There is an odd sort of secular theism in the optimism that living must take place. I don't know.
That's really been the whole crux of the disagreement with literally everyone here.
For them we should live, and we make morality to live better. For me, we make the morality first, and if "we should live" doesn't come out of it then so be it. Occasionally they try to adopt the second mindset but end up with a really crooked and funny looking morality that makes weird exceptions (causing unwarranted suffering is bad, EXCEPT HERE) and so revert to the former. Some think they're doing the latter when they're actually doing the former. The malicious genetic engineering example is really telling for this.
But then again, is this really unexpected? Antinatalism will never be a major thing, because all it takes is for 2 people of opposite genders to have the first disposition for everyone else's opinion not to matter.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't bother appealing to people's emotions on the internet at all though (anymore). I don't know why you do it or how you can put up with the replies. It's not like I'm going to change their mind in all likelihood and even if I could I probably wouldn't bother.
I think this whole debate is odd. It basically serves no purpose. None of the antinatalists on this site are moral objectivists, and I have yet to run into a moral objectivist from the other side either. We spend all this time arguing over what exactly? As you said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
If the goal is to try to get people to agree to the axiom through emotional appeals, I don't really want a part of that. But then you get threads like these that attempt to show inconsistencies in the system. As usual, they fail, and upon further investigation neither Benkei or Isaac or any of the big participants are willing to push for a moral objectivist view, so it's more like "All the reasons you shouldn't be an antinatalist" rather than "All things wrong with antinatalism". Sometimes they get a bit daring with "All the ways I can define 'morality' so that antinatalism doesn't count because I don't want it to"
A bunch of moral relativists really not liking the other relativist's point of view who pop up with threads like "All things wrong with antinatalism" or "Arguments for antinatalism" where they pretend to be moral objectivists for the first 3 replies then somehow stretch it into 18 pages. A tale as old as time.
Yep agreed.
I guess my point with that one too was that in so many ways humans are understanding their pain as they are living it. In a broader philosophical conversation, we are animals that use ideology, ideas, linguistic/cultural based motivations to get stuff done all the time. At any given time we know we can technically be doing something else, even if in the long run it would be a worse alternative in terms of our survival or pain.. but we know we could do something else.
Let me explain further...
Because of this extra layer of how we operate and survive, it adds that much more suffering onto the task at hand. We now have to do all sorts of things to try to bypass the suffering and "deal with" the situation. We use things like "ideals", "habits of thought", "self-talk", "discipline" and any number of things. All of this we know as we are doing the very thing at hand. It isn't an instinct, a reflex, a habit learned from operant conditioning really.. it is a dialectical, existential, thing we do as operationally deliberative beings.
That's not what you're arguing though, you keep loosing the thread of the argument and so it's become very tiresome. Your claim was that features of certain normative claims that make them 'moral' ones are "If they are about how you should act". You've also previously said
Quoting khaled
So your answer that "you should use a 10mm spanner" is only a moral rule "if you want to undo a 10mm nut" is inconsistent with your position that "moral rules are followed for their own sake" as now you're defining a rule as moral that is only followed for the sake of undoing a 10mm nut, not for it's own sake.
Quoting khaled
Where is "avoid all risk of harm without first obtaining consent" a moral objective other than in your mind? It's not a very useful description as it captures one thought of a tiny (possibly even uniquely idiosyncratic) proportion of the population. Descriptive morality isn't about that. Otherwise, again, every single thought counts as a moral one and the term becomes useless.
Quoting khaled
The former refers to a global definition, the latter refers to what my personal answer is - read carefully.
Quoting khaled
Right. So if you agree that there are naturalistic reasons why we prefer this or that moral premise then you are compelled to also agree that moral premises are not arbitrary. If the arise resulting from naturalistic forces, then they are constrained by the probability space created by those causative variables - broadly natural selection and cultural survival. That one should use a 10mm spanner (or indeed that one should undo 10mm nuts) cannot be reasonably shown to fit either.
I was just about to say the same to you.
Quoting Isaac
But undoing 10mm nuts can be a moral commandment, though a very stupid one. And in that case it would be getting followed for its own sake. If you believe that undoing 10mm nuts is a moral duty for some reason then it follows from that that using 10mm spanner is a moral duty, as it is the way to undo 10mm nuts.
Quoting Isaac
That is exactly what it’s about. If you think otherwise then can you tell me exactly what the proportion of the population is that makes something a “descriptive morality”? Does the moral premise have to be shared by 20%? 30? Are all age groups counted?
Quoting Isaac
“I like pizza” can’t be a moral claim. Even if literally everyone thinks it. Because it’s not about how you should act.
Quoting Isaac
I do. For the 100th time. But just because they’re not arbitrary doesn’t mean they’re justified.To say that the mere fact that there is a natrualistic explanation behind why I'm an antinatalist IS justification for antinatalism is textbook natrualistic fallacy. Same with saying that the mere fact that there is a natrualistic explanation behind why you're not an antinatalist IS justification for natalism is textbook naturalistic fallacy. How many times do I have to say this?
Quoting Isaac
It is impossible for anyone to think that you have a moral duty to undo 10mm nuts? I’ve seen people think crazier things on this site.
On what basis are you making this claim?
That it's stupid? No basis. But I'm sure we can agree that a moral commandment to undo 10mm nuts is stupid.
To clarify before you conflate them again: No basis =/= No natrualistic explanation for why I think so. If you are asking me to provide an account of the neural activity that led to me thinking that a moral commandment to undo 10mm nuts is stupid then I can't do that (if such a thing even makes sense).
That it can be a moral commandment? Because it is talking about what you should do, and is done for its own sake.
Yes, that one. Where are you getting this definition from?
You make it sound like there is some set definition of the word. Where do you get yours from? Silly question.
1) Equate the actual world with an ideal world. This is just false because if you can ever evaluate a task/situation where you would rather it have been different, than you already have a more ideal world. It's easier to pull out some Eastern/Buddhist crap to say that it is our expectations and mental attachments on things.. but that's not how it works (via experience in living daily life). Even if it is true, the fact that we need the Eastern thought is the more ideal state that we are not at yet so by way of self-refutation it is wrong.
2) Claim that if people weren't born, they wouldn't even know there was an ideal world, ergo, people need to be born to realize this sad truth that this isn't an ideal world. That is just ridiculous even on its face. That's like saying, suffering doesn't exist unless someone suffers to know it sucks, so we better bring more suffering so that it can exist to know it sucks. Doesn't compute.
3) Claim that the actual world is good enough to be born into. But this is like saying that it is good to create situations of impositions that are inescapable. So, if the actual world has the imposition of needing to survive and this causes all sorts of stress, anxiety, harms, and that this cannot be escaped by going to a more ideal world, but only by suicide, this is not an optimal situation to impose on anyone.
or gestalt, a pattern of interaction with the world. I like Piaget’s way of defining need in relation to such a behavioral system. He says that Need is the expression of a totality momentarily incomplete and tending toward reconstituting itself. So that which we choose furthers our goals and that which takes away our freedom is that which acts as an obstacle to our achieving our goals.
Note that, unlike older notions of pleasure as being connected to a state of quiescence and absence of activity, constructivist and enactivist notions of fulfillment of need and desire make them synonymous with an increase in organizational coherence. Desire is an active notion, pertaining to a system
of sense making that aims toward an ever more harmonious balance between differentiation and integration.,what Piaget called progressive equilibration.
At any rate, from this perspective , suicide is a life-affirming desire in that, in aiming for the cessation of pain, it desires the elimination of that which obstructs and interrupts goal-directed ness. It may sound strange to suggest that wanting to off yourself is life-affirming , but dreaming of or craving nothingness is aiming only at a change. The idea of pure nothingness in itself is incoherent.
When we think about death or pure nothing we are thinking of an active comparison, a transformation, a differential. As soon as we take away what we compare the nothingness to, nothingness itself
vanishes. In order for us to think of nothingness, we must continually re-think an active change from
one state to another. So pure absence of being has no meaning in itself for us. All we can ever experience, care about, desire, etc, is the continutiy of our cognitive functioning and the overcoming of obstacles to that continuity.
In this context, what would it mean to wish to have never been born?It would be similar to wishing suicide, the desire to overcome an obstacle to the goal-directed integrity of thinking.
Again, we’re not actually imagining non- being, even though we think that’s what we’re doing when we dream about how nice it would be not to ever have been born. The ‘niceness’ or ‘ relief’ or peace we associate with non-being is peaceful in same way that any other change in thinking is peaceful, by moving past an interruption in active goal-oriented cognitive activity.
Desire knows nothing of non-being, only different forms of movement of thought.
So what does it mean, then, to claim
that our freedom of choice has been taken away by being born. ? We
certainly didn’t have a choice in the matter, did we?
But keep in mind that ‘freedom of choice’ requires a thwarting of willing and desiring, an interruption of or obstacle to our goals by the actions of another. In other words , violation of freedom of choice is an event that takes place within a functioning cognitive system. But what if that event takes place (conceiving a child) before the system in question has come into existence?
It would be pointing out the obvious to state that ‘I’ am not the one whose freedom of choice was thwarted by someone’s else choosing to have me be born, ‘I’ had no say in the matter since there was no ‘I’ at that point. The particular ‘I’ who had no say in being born also had no say in any of the events that took place since the beginning of the universe up till the moment of their conception. But none of those events affected ‘me’ , neither benefiting ‘me’ nor violating
my right to choose, since there was as yet no ‘me’ to have desires that could be thwarted.
The key point is that anti-natalism confuses elimination of pain with absence of being. You don’t take away MY pain by not having me be born in the first place. You only take away MY pain by giving me the choice of removing an obstacle that is interrupting my ongoing self-functioning. If I choose suicide, I havent chosen ‘non-being ‘ , since that notion has no meaning in itself. I have only chosen that way of thinking which reduces pain, provides a sense of relief , and so ENHANCES my functioning.
Um, antinatalism isn't about the already existing person. It is about the future person. Also, oddly, your points are already predicted and refuted in the post I made right above the one you chose to write here.
See points 1-3. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/483507
Nothing. Agreed.
Quoting Joshs
No one is doing this in this thread. We are instead predicting how likely it is that it would suck to be born. And the chance is greater than 0. So don't take it with someone else, because you're not the one paying the consequences.
Quoting Joshs
No one has claimed this in this thread.
Quoting Joshs
Agreed.
However by choosing to have a child you take a non zero risk of them having a shit life despite your best efforts. The act risks harming someone. Normally we would need some justification to take such an act then, but that is not present here. That is the argument.
Antinatalism isn't about helping non existent people. An antinatalist does NOT claim that not having children is good. On the other hand he claims having them is bad. Similar to how "not shooting people" is not a good act, but shooting them is bad. Because shooting people has a significant risk of causing unjustified harm. And having children has a slight risk of causing unjustified harm, so it gets the same treatment.
Quoting Echarmion
I think it is that you guys think we consider "not having children" as a good act. It isn't. Having children is a bad act. That doesn't make the opposite good. The opposite (not having children) is not good or bad, because it doesn't harm or benefit anyone.
Put simply, the goal of antinatalism was never the elimination of pain, as that would require the existence of someone whose pain you're eliminating. The goal was not to cause pain. So the fact that the elimination of pain is not the same as absence of being is irrelevant.
This seems a very obvious point, but it's not one that the anti-natalists here accept, so there must be some fundamental disagreement about the basics of the argument involved. Unfortunately, I have been so far unable to figure out just how exactly this fundamental disagreement comes about.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/483829
Also https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/483829
Good points.
The problem is I don't see how "do not cause pain" can possibly be a reasonable goal in isolation. In the abstract, pain is just a fact of the universe. It's a bit like making a rule not to strengthen magnetic fields.
The entire reason we care about pain is because we care about people. If your solution to pain is to prevent people from existing in the first place, you're totally missing the point.
Meanwhile, you as the anti-natalist are very much alive, and while the decision you make not to bring a life into the world is designed to ‘prevent causing pain’ in another, it has a paradoxical effect. Because it at the same time is relieving your pain. That is , your decision on behalf of the yet to be born resolves a dilemma, problem or dissatisfaction within you. It eliminates or reduces your pain (felt on behalf of others). So your voting for ‘non-being’ enhances and
furthers the functioning of your cognitive system. One could say your decision against another’s birth is a kind of fecundity. You are after all a self-organizing complex system , and your vote on behalf of ‘non-being’ does what all personal choices do , it increases the complexity of your living system by resolving interruptions in its functioning and therefore transforming and strengthening itself further. Your vote for the other’s non-being was at the same time a vote for the affirmation and enhancement of your own life vector. This is why I think that the motive of not wanting to CAUSE suffering in others cannot be separated from the ELIMINATION of suffering in yourself. Not just because you would not be motivated
to do the former if it didnt also achieve the latter. But because the two are really one motivation.
My point isn’t that all supposedly altruistic acts are
really selfish. Benefiting others benefits ourselves because our personal and social welfare are inextricably intertwined. It’s that not wanting to cause suffering is in the service of life enhancement, even when couched in the confused terms of anti-natalism.
So while anti-natalists think the terms of the debate are about being versus non-being, they’re really about how best to move forward in life.
I actually don't mind this interpretation. Certainly by having children, an existential stance is being made on how to move forward in life. It is an ideology of a way of life that is literally replicated in another person who will be involved in some way in the socio-cultural-political-economic sphere of the society they are born into. It is a stance on how things are, and an affirmative for perpetuating that way of life. The pessimist/antinatalist takes a "no" stance on this perpetuation. It stops here. I don't speak for all antinatalists though. Certainly for the philosophical pessimist variants, this makes sense.
I've posted stuff previously about how procreation is actually an a political act. It is a stance on behalf of someone else, that they need to live the life that the parent deems needs to be lived out by this new person.
Nothing exists to suffer the deprivation, or to miss out on the good in life. Children are not out there somewhere in the aether, suffering from lack of embodiment. Preventing suffering takes precedence over the creation of pleasure, especially when not creating 'good lives' does not harm the unborn. It's an unjustifiable risk to create life where it needn't have existed in the first place. You are essentially gambling with the potential welfare of another person, yet if the dice roll is unlucky, it's somebody else that suffers the loss. There is no moral obligation to make this gamble. People don't need to be born - there's nothing wrong with non-existence, while on the other hand human embodiment contains serious harms.
This is your opinion. That’s what makes it a political issue, and why you have to honor the voices of those already living who say that preventing suffering does not take precedence over the creation of pleasure, and it is not an unjustified risk to create life. They are speaking from their own experience , just as you are. Why are you a better proxy for those not yet born than these other voices? Especially if they are the majority? Maybe your unhappy life gives you a skewed perspective.
One wonders why there are not more suicides. Many who don’t contemplate suicide have had much suffering in their life, and yet they view each new day as if they are potentially reborn, with a new chance at meaningful existence. Even though they know what great pain may lie ahead, they clearly don’t believe that choosing to be ‘born again’ into the next new day is an unjustifiable risk where they needn't ‘re-birth’ themselves into new life in the first place. They could choose preventing further suffering over the creation of pleasure , but they don’t. Why? Perhaps because even the suffering has meaning and value to them. If they feel this way about their own lives, maybe you can see why they feel the same about conceiving children.
Furthermore, isn’t choosing the benefit of the many over the suffering of the few the basis of modem legal systems and governance? Remember, the political issue here isn’t about preventing the birth of everyone who might suffer, it’s about preventiing the birth of those whose suffering would cause them to regret having been born and to support anti-natalism, and that I imagine is a small fraction of the population.
Having children benefits society in myriad ways, and leaves only a small fraction wishing they had never been born. If the measure of success of the anti-natalist movement ( if there is such a thing) is a cessation of reproduction, then let’s examine the consequences of this. It will lead over time to a progressive deterioration of the quality of life as populations dwindle
down to nothing. This in turn will cause wide-scale
suffering. If in this extreme hypothetical all of humanity wiped itself out ( not sure if this is the goal of anti-natalism) , eventually the species would re-appear, as evolution likes to repeat itself. So the cycle would have to continue over and over. This sounds to me like an awful lot of needless suffering. Let’s look at an alternative scenario: human ingenuity evolves more and more reliable ways to reduce suffering and promote happiness, and eventually figures out how to genetically engineer immortality, providing an alternative to procreation. This sounds to me like a more ethical program from the standpoint of preventing suffering than letting society dwindle to nothing just so it can eventually re-evolve and have to be tamped down over and over in spasms of cataclysmic suffering
I think the lesson here is you can try to quash life in the aim of preventing suffering, but life will
always re-emerge one way or another anyway, so really the only ethical direction is embracing and improving life.
This is another natalist trope.. that because people don't commit suicide all over the place, that must mean that the decision to create another human who will suffer must be justified. Again, look at my post that actually predicted pretty much all of your arguments..
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/483507
A life starting and continuing are different. The choice itself of "Well, you just have to live this out or kill yourself" is an unfair choice, cold comfort really.
Compare two people - one of whom is starving, while the other is simply not experiencing taste pleasure. There is a moral urgency to prevent the starvation of the first person, yet inducing taste pleasure in the second lacks this same urgency.
Quoting Joshs
"Not yet born", is a poetic turn of phrase - there is no referent for the term. I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone or anything (literally), which is precisely the point - nothing exists to suffer from lack of life.
You’re still not dealing with the central political issue. The only people you can put in your camp are those who support anti-natalism , not those who have suffered in their life but nonetheless believe life is worth living , and procreation also. So your mission can’t simply be to prevent suffering. It has to be to prevent the suffering of those who , when born, would grow up to believe they shouldn’t have been exposed to the risk of suffering. How large a group so you think this is?
“"Not yet born", is a poetic turn of phrase - there is no referent for the term. I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone or anything (literally), which is precisely the point - nothing exists to suffer from lack of life.”
Just substitute ‘would have been born’ for ‘not yet born’.
You are speaking on behalf of that sliver of humanity that believes that we should not expose future generations to the risk of a suffering that would lead them to become anti-nataliats, and I distinguish this group from that group that believes that giving birth is exposing future generations to worthwhile suffering.
As I wrote to Schopenhauer, if you want to eliminate procreation this isn’t a zero-sum game because you’re trading off the potential suffering of the not yet born anti-natalist for the real suffering you would cause in many living people.
“This is another natalist trope.. that because people don't commit suicide all over the place, that must mean that because people don't commit suicide all over the place, that must mean that the decision to create another human who will suffer must be justified.”
My point isn’t that not killing oneself in and of itself means that one believes the decision to create another human who will suffer must be justified.” It is that I believe that most of them do believe it is justified, in spite of their misery, because they equate the gamble involved in a life starting and one continuing.
I refer you back to what @Inyenzi says.. there is no referent of the unborn that will suffer not being born. There will be someone who suffers if born. No one actually loses out in a situation of no person born (that could have been let's say). A person will be born and will be harmed.
Quoting Joshs
You make an impossible situation, and you still haven't read my post probably that I keep referring to. You think people ought to live to "know" if living was worth it. The antinatalist side would simply say, harm can be prevented, and no one suffers from not being born. Period. You are trying to subtly do the tree falling in the woods argument. If no one exists to know about suffering, who is this "for"? People need to exist to evaluate this pain, according to you.. But they don't. People don't have to exist to evaluate anything, and no "one" is losing out for this. However, once born, it is too late. Someone will be harmed. That someone also exists to evaluate this, doesn't matter. We don't need people to exist so that suffering can be evaluated. If you would be creating unnecessary suffering on someone else's behalf, and there is no actual person who needs to suffer in the first place, then don't create this unnecessary suffering. It's not like they exist already, and you are preventing a future of even more suffering (like a vaccine or something), but rather, there was no conditions of suffering for a person to begin with, and then you are creating this from whole cloth, unnecessarily. No good that.
But I'm sure we can agree there is a difference caused between the pain that you experience when you stub your toe and when I punch you in the face. The difference being that I am directly reponsible for one. The goal of antinatalism is to cause as little of the latter as possible while ensuring you yourself survive. With having kids you are responsible for every pain and pleasure they go through. Because none of it would have happened without you. And you didn't need it to survive.
And making a rule not to strengthen magnetic fields is fine, it's just dumb.
But khaled, according to @Joshs, most people will have wanted to have been born, and think that it was justified for the parents to cause the harm. The end. End of story. Go home, pack your bags, end of debate.
We agreed the question makes no sense so I'm not sure what the poll is supposed to accomplish.
Quoting Joshs
Again, we agreed that you don't do the not-yet-to-be-born favors at all, period, because they don't exist. I think you mean "there is a 70% chance that your next child will find their life worthwhile".
Let's say I have a drug that has a 70% chance of immunizing people to COVID and a 30% chance of giving them COVID. Am I within my rights to go around putting it in people's food without telling them?
Quoting Joshs
Mostly agreed but none of this is a rebuttal. For the 100th time, I NEVER claimed that "not having children" is altruistic. I don't know why everyone here thinks ANs think that. No one has claimed that not having children is altruistic, on the other had having them is bad.
"They are the majority therefore they are right, you're just sad". Has to be the worst thing I've read in recent memory. I know it isn't directed at me but it is still pretty pathetic.
Though I do agree that it is an opinion and that it is possible to hold a different one.
Quoting Joshs
So if I find purpose in your suffering I get to cause you to suffer? If I for some reason derive an immense amount of pleasure and purpose by torturing people I can just go around torturing people?
I don't think anyone in their right mind believes that if they find pupose in some suffering or other that that gives them permission to inflict it on others.
As Inyenzi said Quoting Inyenzi
Quoting Joshs
"I predict your moral premise cannot be enforced therefore you shouldn't have it". Is a close second in terms of worst things I read in recent memory. "You will never be able to prevent theft entirely therefore theft is okay".
Also note that "embracing and improving life" doesn't contradict antinatalism.
So what you're saying is that we ought procreate so that the future people can be used as a means to reduce/prevent the suffering of the already living?
Quoting Joshs
Antinatalists seek to prevent all human suffering - regardless of whatever philosophical position the child would have ended up adopting. Can you spell out exactly what you're implying when you say, "I imagine is a small fraction of the population"? Is it that the people who regret having been born are essentially collateral damage justified by the majority who don't?
Most of the future people will also say that they are grateful they were born. So between them and the current generation who benefit from their birth, there’s a much larger consensus in favor of procreation than against it. You’ll have to convince people to be much more miserable if you want your movement to catch fire. That could very well happen, especially in rural
areas of Western countries, where suicide and addiction is rampant , and fewer men are marrying.
“Antinatalists seek to prevent all human suffering - regardless of whatever philosophical position the child would have ended up adopting.”
So you would run roughshod over the views of some of those those who you are claiming to help? Would you also try and prevent the suffering of masochists? Not all suffering is the same. I can understand to some extent you’re acting on behalf of preventing the kind of suffering that would lead someone to say that they regret having been born, that their suffering was so great that it wasn’t worth it, or that you’re prepared to accept the risk of preventing the births of those whose suffering would have been worth it along with those whose suffering would have led them to become anti-natalists. But if you’re trying to say that you’re lumping all suffering together as requiring your moral imperative my response is that you’re turning the concept of suffering into a meaningless term.
Also note that "embracing and improving life" doesn't contradict antinatalism.”
How do you propose to embrace and improve life by stopping procreation if that leads to a disastrous decline in quality of life?
Sure. Who suffers by not having kids? You could argue that the parents do, but that suffering is definitely less than the suffering the kids would have had to endure. So if literally everyone decided not to have kids tomorrow, then there would be a lot less suffering.
However it is most definitely the case that not everyone will decide not to have kids tomorrow, so trying to enforce the rule will backfire and cause more suffering.
Quoting Joshs
Is it a decline? Let's say a person suffers X due to not having children and Y is all the suffering they experience otherwise
If they have children and then those children don't have children:
Total suffering: X * number of children + Y * (number of children + 1)
If they don't have children:
Total suffering: X + Y
If they have children and those children have children (ad infinium):
Total suffering: Infinity
There is literally no way 1 or 3 are less than 2. I am assuming that X and Y are similar for the parent and children.
Also if your only objection to Antinatlism is: "If we try it it won't work and will instead increase suffering"
First off, that's not an objection to the principle, that is an objection to enforcing the principle, and secondly would you be fine if I proposed a population decline model where we have just enough kids to ensure the quality of life remains the same until extinction?
Quoting Joshs
......
Kindly explain to me what becoming an antinatalist has to do with embracing my own suffering and finding meaning in my life. This is the most false false dichotomy I have seen in a while. I am glad I was born (the sentence makes no sense, what I really mean to say is "I find my life worthwhile") AND I am an antinatalist. Mindblowing.
Why though?
Quoting Inyenzi
This seems to be an absurd goal. What's the point of preventing suffering by preventing existence? Suffering isn't objective metaphysical evil.
Quoting khaled
Sure there is a difference. But there is also a difference between causing something in the sense of the sine-qua-non ("it wouldn't have happened without you") and responsibility. Causality is far, far wider than responsibility.
There is a common example to illustrate this taught in law school: A car drives by a school, within the speed limit, as a child runs into the street from behind a parked car. The car hits the child. Later investigation reveals that the driver could not have avoided the accident and did not make any mistakes in the situation. However, it is also revealed that just outside the town, the driver was speeding. Had the driver driven more slowly before, he would not have reached the site of the school at the critical moment and the accident would have been avoided.
The drivers behaviour (speeding outside of town) was clearly causal for the child's injuries. The child would not have been injured otherwise. At the same time, it seems obvious that speeding beforehand does not make the driver responsible for the accident.
Agreed. And we can get into the nitty gritty. But I doubt whatever configuration you choose will end up having the statement "You are responsible for your child's suffering and pleasure" be false. Or are you going to argue that parents are not responsible for their children?
If we can agree that they are, and we can also agree that there is a risk the child suffers disproportionately in their life despite the parent's best effort, what justifies that the parent taking the risk? We can agree that usually we would need some sort of justification when doing something that can risk harming others no?
Moreover I think we can agree that there are situations where it IS wrong to have children. Severe poverty for one. So it's not like I'm proposing anything new here. What makes having a child in severe poverty wrong?
I think the statement is clearly false. Parents are responsible for the upbringing of their children. Noone is responsible for someone else's suffering and pleasure in toto. Such a responsibility would have to come with absolute authority over the other person, which should never be the case.
Quoting khaled
Everything we do risks harming others. So there are plenty of justifications available. For example, one might argue providing the future with capable humans justified the associated risks.
Sure. I don't think so though. And I find that justification disgusting.
Quoting Echarmion
Not in total, sure. If a kid runs into a wall like an idiot despite their parents warning them that running around like that will hurt, that's partly on the kid. However I think that parents are partially responsible for all their child's suffering.
My "test" for responsibility is: "Had X not been around would Y have still suffered". If yes then it's not X's responsibility to help Y. However in the case of children (being Y) the answer is always no (X being the parent), for every instance of suffering. That I find problematic.
I think that disgust has a lot to do with the disagreement we have. Can you elaborate on what you find disgusting?
Quoting khaled
Your test also fails the car example though, doesn't it? Had the car not been around, there would not have been an accident.
You can argue that having children is different, that the dangers are more predictable, more imminent etc. I think ultimately we won't get past the different "risk assessments" for lack of a better word. You place a lot of emphasis on the suffering, and not a lot of emphasis on the value that human life has. I see it differently. I think it's mostly down to my perspective on suffering, which I consider simply the necessary flipside of happyness. One never exists without the other, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.
The idea that "mankind" and other such concepts should be favored over a single human's actual concrete suffering. Things like "For the country" "For mankind", etc always rubbed me the wrong way. If you can't point me to a person getting harmed, then I couldn't care less about "the country being harmed" or "going against mankind's interests".
Quoting Echarmion
It does. I should go into more detail. The test is more like "Had X not been around would Y have still suffered and if not could X have predicted this?". If the answer is yes then it's not X's responsibility to help. If the answer is no-no then again, not X's responsibility. You have to judge people actions based on the info they had at the time. There are other rules but I don't want to overcomplicate things for now.
Had the driver known that he was going to run over a kid by speeding out of town, then he is responsible. However, he did not know that. Furthermore, it is just as likely that that child would have ran behind the parked car 10 minutes later, meaning if the driver did NOT speed up out of town he would have ran him over.
In other words: At no point did the driver commit an act he could reasonably predict would harm someone, as speeding out of town and NOT speeding out of town have a basically equal chance of causing an accident as far as the driver can predict.
Quoting Echarmion
Agreed. But from where comes the justification to create happiness at the risk of suffering for others? No matter how much I like a videogame for example, I can't go around taping people to chairs and forcing them to play it. And I definitely can't justify it by giving all these people a button they can press to instantly kill themselves then saying "I'm not even forcing them to do anything, if they don't like it they can just kill themselves. The pleasure and suffering are two sides of the same coin". I find it apphaling how often I hear that as a legitimate argument by otherwise rational people. Heck with life, you don't even get the "quit button" and have to make your own.
You still haven't answered my question though. Quoting khaled
I said most antinatalists on this site are not moral objectivists. In general I suspect most are moral objectivists. Heck, I don't think I've run into a moral objectivist on this site now that I think about it. Which makes sense because moral objectivists don't debate morality, they already know all the answers after all.
I believe anti-natalism is an ethical position, and like all ethical positions , there is no God’s eye view, no ability to channel som eternal divinely dictated moral truth. Thus, forming a moral precept is an empirical endeavor. Which means we have nothing but our own experience directly, and indirectly our interpretation of the experience of others, to guide us. It seems to me that the disagreements that will form between various forms of anti-natalism and various natalisms will be the result of different personal experiences. You claim to find your life worthwhile and yet you are an anti-natalist. Illl have to take you on you word about that. I strongly suspect that most anti-natalists are more like Schopenhauer1 in extrapolating from their own painful lives in order to form their anti-nataliat stance.
How we experience our own suffering plays a central
role in our position on this issue. The thing about suffering is that it only exists as a relational dynamic in a changing environment. In order to feel suffering, one must have had something taken away from one, which pre-supposed a state of non-suffering that the suffering takes away from.
Since human life is constant change , suffering appears and disappears constantly. At one moment life is t worth living, and then the next we find a way to re-adapt to our circumstances and life becomes worth living again.
The same is true of deciding to conceive. At certain. times in our lives , the prospect of bringing children into the world may seem cruel to the child for any number of reasons, and at another point , it appears justified. So most of us are naive anti-natalists sometimes and natalists other times. But then there are some people whose suffering seems unrelieved. For instance , those with chronic severe depression may have has few happy times in their lives. Unlike others, they fail to adapt to circumstances, fail to thrive. Severe depression is never just about physical struggle. poverty, etc. It is fundamental a disconnect of social belonging , a sense of alienation with respect to other people or groups. Others appear to me as callous and cruel and unfeeling. Is the depressive’s view of human suffering then to be considered as distorted , abnormal, pathological? Or are they the realists in the world?
I would prefer to say that their circumstances (perhaps even more that biochemistry) are not conducive to effective adaptation. In this case the role of adaptivity and suffering must be looked at in a larger sociological context. Adaptation isnt simply an individual
process, it takes place within a larger human ecosystem.
So in many periods in human history, entire groups fail to thrive as the larger adaptive systems of culture shift and change, leaving them in states of despair and dysfunction as a result of a shift of dominance to other segments of culture.( native Americans, Aborigines). So from this perspective, anti-natalism is an illustration of evolutionary adaption at work. Those who are failing to adapt stop having children, while other groups who are succeeding become fertile and multiply.
For instance , rural America is a veritable ‘breeding ground’ for anti-natalism as despair and depression , addiction and suicide run rampant. Meanwhile , huge urban areas become centers of greater and greater concentration of wealth and thriving among certain groups, causing them to be unabashed supporters of natalism. So throughout history, one will find anti-natalist movements popping up where a segment of society fails to thrive as a result of a shift of the larger ecosystem’s center of gravity.
Perhaps the current anti-natalist
movement can be seen as a symptom of the violent economic and social transition taking place throughout the world. My guess is populations will
progressivevly shrink as larger segments of culture become obsolete thanks to automation.
At any rate. I think it’s a mistake to believe that a changeable and complex notion like suffering can be ossified into a single moral category. To me , the lesson is not that life necessarily tends toward improvement toward happiness rather than perpetuation of suffering, but that it is each at different times and places. Even within anti-nataliat movements, there are likely to be many changes in attitude about the interpretation of human suffering as individuals go through different experience in their lives.
Even you, at some point in the future. might find changes in your personal circumstances lead to a shift i. your calculus concerning the risk-reward benefits of procreation.
I can even imagine how some individuals
drawn together by common purpose into anti-natalist groups, particularly those struggling with depression, isolation and aliemation, might for
the first time find meaningful social bonds with other suffering souls, leading to romantic pairing, and perhaps a mini baby boom or two.
I know that I will likely change my attitude toward the worthwhileness of life many times.
Non sequitor but ok.
Quoting Joshs
Agreed. (Duh what else could it be?)
Quoting Joshs
I don't remember when Schope talked about his personal life here but I might have just missed it. Sadly though you are right about that. Most "antinatalists" are just depressed edgy teens who can't actually argue for the position coherently.
Quoting Joshs
Disagree. How we experience our own suffering has nothing to do with how others experience theirs, so nothing to do with whether or not we get permission to subject them to suffering. No matter how much meaning I find in donating to charity for example, it is still wrong for me to go around forcing people to donate. In the same way, no matter how much meaning I find in my life it is still wrong to have child knowing they might not find any in theirs despite my best efforts. That is the argument that you have yet to attempt to address.
The claim for antinatalism is NOT that life is terrible and miserable so we shouldn't have kids. It's that life COULD BE terrible and miserable despite our best efforts so we shouldn't have kids. The principle here is NOT that since there are risks that things go wrong that we should not take risks at all (that's impossible), it is that since there are risks that things go wrong, we should not take the risk for someone else. Unless they tell us to.
Quoting Joshs
How exactly? What justifies it? Where is this arbitrary point at which we say "no this is too risky"? And why is it that you get to decide it when you're not the one taking the risk?
Quoting Joshs
In general yes. I'm waiting for an actual rebuttal to the position though instead of a poor lecture on how "the antinatalist movement" came about and an even poorer explanation of what depression is.
This was a very disappointing read. I kept expecting you to actually argue against the position, but instead all you said was basically "Most antinatalists are depressed, you might change your mind in the future, and our ethical positions are a result of our experiences". Agreed. Now, are you actually going to argue against the position or not?
I wrote:”Quoting Joshs
Matthew Ratcliffe , in his book, Experiences of Depression, wrote:
In depression, “The person feels alienated from others, unable to relate to them, and she also feels lacking in some way.”
Others appear to behave in ways that cannot be sincere, as they are no longer experienced as offering the kinds of possibility that would be associated with honest expressions of support and concern. In the absence of those possibilities, their well-meaning utterances can only appear disingenuous.
“People in general seem more hostile and uncaring when I am depressed and more likely to make fun of me or criticize me.”
“One therefore retreats from the social world, even though some sense of what it would be to connect with others remains, along with a profound feeling of isolation.”
Let me know if you believe Ratcliffe, one of
the leading researchers on affect, should be considered an authority on depression.
Quoting khaled
Decision is what this discussion is all about, making a decision to conceive or not to conceive for the sake of preventing suffering in another. But that decision depends on an earlier decision concerning the meaning of terms like suffering, pleasure, value and morality.
Quoting khaled
If you want a refutation of the logic behind your formula
of the risk versus reward calculus, you won’t get one. Your logic may be flawless. But then again isn’t that what logic is supposed to do? Isnt a logical proposition a kind of truism , presupposing what it sets out to demonstrate in the way it defines the terms in its premises?
Quoting khaled
Actually, implicit in what I said above was a philosophical argument countering anti-natalism, which I could have made more explicit ( although I suspect a number of contributors to this forum recognized it). Let me make it more explicit now. I am a moral
relativist. More specifically, I take a post-Wittgensteinian position on the origin of language in local pragmatic contexts of use. I don’t believe anyone coming from this perspective could be an anti-natalist. Not because the logic of the premise “ Preventing suffering takes precedence over the creation of pleasure, especially when not creating 'good lives' does not harm the unborn” isn’t ‘sound’, but because I dispute the assumption that the sense of the terms ‘suffering’, ‘pleasure’, ‘good lives’ ‘harm’, etc can be kept stable enough , long enough for reliable interpersonal agreement. That doesn’t make your logic wrong, it makes it meaningless.
So my disagreement is not about anti-natalism per se but the understanding of use of language that it presumes. To continue such a discussion would require a new OP, I think.
I didn't disagree with your explanation, it's just that 2 sentences don't cover depression.
Quoting Joshs
Agreed. I'm pointing out though that it is very clear we have very different pleasure-pain risk formulas when concerning others. For ourselves, we have no moral qualms about taking any risks whatsover, however for others we generally need a justification to take ANY unjustified risk and I've given examples of this (forcing people to donate to charity was one). That justification is what would be required in the case of procreation but is not present, or so the argument goes. So:
Quoting Joshs
Ok at least we have that down. If the logic works then your disagreement must be with the premises but which ones? Maybe you can give a reason having children should be justified. Or in other words challenge the premise that that justification is not present. Or otherwise challenge the premise that we need a justification to take risks with others (I think this is the way less reasonable route though some have tried). Take your pick.
Quoting Joshs
Let me challenge that idea.
Is malicious genetic engineering wrong? And by that I mean genetically engineering an otherwise healthy child to be blind and deaf for example. I think we can agree it is. If so why? How do you explain it without using these "unstable" concepts?
Heck, why is having a child in severe poverty wrong? Without using the "unstable" concepts of course.
What? You're seriously arguing there's no definition of the word? How on earth do we communicate using it then?
Are you familiar with the Private Language Argument. I mentioned it a while back but you didn't respond. I don't want to teach you to suck eggs, but If you've not come across it before, I'd seriously recommend reading about it. It will save you falling into the hole you're digging yourself with this line of argument.
Clearly not. But I've given you my defintion already. You then ask me "where I got it from". I don't know how to answer that question. Where did you get yours from? Just so I would know what you find to be an acceptable answer.
I thought we agreed words have a range of acceptable meanings. I think a moral premise defined as "What you should do" is a perfectly reasonable definition.
As I said, look into the private language argument. 'Your meaning' and 'My meaning' don't make any sense. There's no private meanings to words, only public ones.
Sigh. We agree these public meanings have a range of error and that they can be used incorrectly. And I think that my definition of a moral premise perfectly fall within that range. At least one other guy here thinks so:
Quoting Joshs
Heck, I would say most people think so. You and KenoshaKid (I think) are the only two trying to say that antinatalism isn't a moral theory. If you're going to refer to the "public meaning" it seems that the majority seem to disagree with you so which "public" exactly are you talking about?
I said it has no basis in a naturalistic moral framework. You can make an ethic of what you like: It is wrong to eat sherbet on a Wednesday; Three-legged people must not own budgies; It is wrong to act in a way that would allow for the possibility of someone being harmed whether to a great or small extent. These have in common the fact that there's no natural reason to accept them.
Agreed. @Isaac so it's literally just you trying to say that antinatalism is not a moral theory. You're the one disagreeing with the public meaning (misusing the word) here, not me. So I ask: Where did you get your definition from?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
What do you mean "no natrual reason to accept them"? So antinatalists are getting misguided by some supernatural means? No, there are clearly natural reasons to accept them. I think I'd remember if Satan messed with my head.
I think Isaac's view was similar to mine.
Quoting khaled
Fine. Give me the natural reason to adopt the ethic:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I don't think so. He clearly and unambiguously said that the antinatalist claim is not a moral claim as far as I understand.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I can't do that for ANY ethic. Because I can't account for all the neurological, biological, social and personal factors that lead to the adoption of a belief. But I know for a fact that my antinatalist belief is not supernatural in the least. It was not a whisper from Cthulhu.
Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "natural reason". What is the "natural reason" to adopt good ol utilitarianism for example.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
There are religions with similarly ridiculous ethics. Even in christianity there was something against wearing two different fibers or something if I remember correctly. What's the natural reason behind that?
The only way human suffering can occur is by creating more humans.
There is a lot of suffering.
I'll try not to speak for Isaac but we are quite simpatico on this.
Let us take the question: Ought I to wear black shoelaces or brown shoelaces to the market? I would say this is 100% not a moral consideration. However an elder of the Latter Day Church of Black Shoelaces might strongly differ with me on this.
On the other hand, if you put forward a moral theory in support of the position of the Latter Day Church of Black Shoelaces, I can't rightly argue that it is not a moral theory: you are making a claim that it is moral to do a particular thing. It's just that your theory is daft.
Morality is really an intellectual endeavour. Fundamentally, and naturalistically, what we're talking about is biology, specifically the biological traits our ancestors evolved in order to better survive in groups: empathy, altruism, egalitarianism, and some means of overriding these in certain circumstances (called counter-empathetic responses). Naturalistically speaking, this biology underpins but does not fully account for what is real that we refer to when we speak of morality.
In this sense, the shoelace question is not a moral consideration: it has nothing to do with our social biology. However, "One ought to wear black shoelaces to the market", as espoused by the elder, is a moral claim in the sense that it is a claim about what our morality should be, even if it has nothing to do with what our morality is.
(Obviously your average religious person will completely disagree with me about what morality actually is, since they have a different and more rigorous and imaginary moral authority than the social biology you and I have inherited from our ancestors. But they are, of course, mistaken. :) )
I think you're conflating "morality" in general and the specific morality we have going on at the moment in particular. Point is you can't walk up to that elder and say "You are not making a moral claim". He is. It is just a very stupid one (he would beg to differ but I wouldn't care). Which is why I don't see where the whole social biology thing plays in.
The society and biology determine which moral positions become most prevalent. However they do not determine what is or what is not a moral claim. As you said:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Moral claims that don't match the majority do not lose their status as moral claims.
Exactly. Look at modern day Saudi Arabian practices of punishment and women's rights, All European Empire tactics towards non-European peoples, 400 BCE-400 CE Roman conventions of war, punishment, and intimidation, 1930s Germany, 1930s Japan, China's current political persecutions, 1830s USA, 1490s Spain, 800s Scandinavia, 1090s Christendom in general, 1200s Mongolia, All these societies seemed to have a majority of the population agree with what we would find appalling in our particular society, or were tolerated back in that time but not today.
Yeah, that's pretty much how I see it. The only way we can even make sense of what the elder means when he uses the word 'moral' is that we know roughly what he's trying to get at (in this case, something like "God wants you to...". We might disagree on the grounds that God doesn't want us to, or on the grounds that such a criteria makes no sense because of a lack of referent.
What would make no sense is if a non-elder just said "you ought to wear black shoelaces to the market" is a moral claim, but "you ought to use a double bow to tie them" is not a moral claim and can offer nothing by way of properties pertaining to either which might distinguish them.
Quoting khaled
So far your definition seems to be literally any instruction not contingent on a prior objective. I've not come across that definition anywhere.
No, it was rather more than that. The bases by which a moral proposition can be well- or ill-grounded are not just those "we have going on at the moment". What I was getting at was the distinction between the word "morality" as an umbrella term for theoretical concepts and its more fundamental, pre-theoretical, natural meaning.
So I'm attempting to clear up an existing conflation, not add a new one. Failed by the looks of it. :D
Quoting khaled
And that's my point: a moral claim is a claim about what a person should do, either generally or in specific circumstances. It may be true or false. So antinatalism is a perfectly coherent false moral claim. But it is not a claim about what morality is.
Quoting khaled
Well no, they don't, that's the shame of it. I would say they seem to be largely sculpting the trend of morality in some places to some extent at the moment. We are tending toward egalitarianism in most countries (not the middle east which has largely moved away from it) and I think people are encouraged to be more empathetic. We are increasingly progressing toward responsible social behaviour in many quarters.
But that's in the background of history of slavery, military expansionism, genocide, and other injustices, and it's not difficult to see how antisocial behaviours are again becoming not just normalised but lionised, i.e. ethics are made out of them. Likewise any arguments for such are not well-grounded, not because they fail to meet the theoretical criteria for a moral theory, but because they are contrary to what morality really is in its pre-theoretical sense.
Yeah, your argument is slipping. If history is the battleground of human ideas playing out, it's got a lot of horrible examples of what humans do. Thus this argument that some particular set of morality is "the" true or essential human biological behavior just seems cherry-picking. So I would move on from the biological aspect of it and just move to the idea itself. Reduction of harm seems a good place to start, as I think both parties agree that in some respect, this makes sense. It is more about the context and circumstances and thresholds of how much that difference start taking place.
Quoting khaled
This is the entry I've already cited from the SEP, my position is pretty much the standard one in ethics.
If my argument was simply that the nice ones in history are true and the nasty ones false, it would be, yes. But that's not my argument, which is grounded on scientific evidence.
No, not at all. Reduction of harm makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless there is someone to benefit from that reduction. That's the whole point. Moral rules have some broad set of unifying properties (as per the SEP article I cited). Reduction of harm without anyone to benefit from that reduction meets none of the publicly held criteria, not religious, not social, not biological... none of them. It's just a wierd arbitrary objective held by a small number of people for various non-moral reasons.
grounds wouldn’t be accepted by someone like Rorty because he would consider the notion of the natural
to be itself ungrounded in anything but contingent pragmatic use. But I’d have to refresh my reading of him to be sure.
In that he'd be against the essentialism, I think yes, but I'm not that familiar with Rorty.
The point I was making though was not so much about grounding answers to moral questions in naturalism (I think most such attempts are post hoc to that which has already been decided by deeper psychological processes). It was more that the word itself has a public meaning which has arisen partly from our biology, but also from shared culture, religion etc. What I object to here is the idea that one can come up with any objective whatsoever and claim it to be a 'moral' one. It's simply a misuse of the word. It's no different to if I were to consistently use the word 'angry' to describe my satisfied sigh at my first sip of evening whiskey. It's not that I'm 'redefining' anger, I've just misused the word. That's not the right word to describe such behaviour.
'Moral' is just not the right word to describe a desire to remove all suffering even at the expense of there being no one to benefit from having done so.
You’re probably aware that anti-natalist movements have cropped up numerous times in different cultures
through history.
From Wiki:
The Manichaeans,[13][14][15] the Bogomils[16][17][18] and the Cathars[19][20][21] believed that procreation sentences the soul to imprisonment in evil matter. They saw procreation as an instrument of an evil god, demiurge, or of Satan that imprisons the divine element in the matter and thus causes the divine element to suffer.
Julio Cabrera,[30] David Benatar[31] and Karim Akerma[32] all argue that procreation is contrary to Immanuel Kant's practical imperative (according to Kant, a man should never be used as merely a means to an end, but always be treated as an end in himself). They argue that a person can be created for the sake of his parents or other people, but that it is impossible to create someone for his own good; and that therefore, following Kant's recommendation, we should not create new people. Heiko Puls argues that Kant's considerations regarding parental duties and human procreation, in general, imply arguments for an ethically justified antinatalism.
Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that we should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness. It can be considered as a version of utilitarianism that gives greater priority to reducing suffering (negative utility or 'disutility') than to increasing pleasure (positive utility).[
are you saying that you would not accept any of these historical justifications for anti-natalism as a proper
moral argument, or are you focusing exclusively on the the ones in this thread?
He is trying to circle a square to make a non-argument; making a definition that will exclude antinatalism as moral so as to not even consider it debatable in ethical theory. Clearly your examples are some of the many formulations over the years, that do indeed take antinatalism as the basis of a moral theory, whether meta-ethical, normative, or in practical ethics. But, it is a fact that anyone can deny anything and with contemptuous phrasing to make it seem as if it is a matter of fact. Shrug
stance.
https://philosophy.osu.edu/news/archive/2014-logos//brian-mclean
Agreed but that’s not what I’m saying. All I’m saying is that moral propositions remain moral propositions no matter how well or ill grounded they are. That’s it.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I don’t get the purpose of the second sentence there, seems to be included in the first the way you use it. But all I wanted to get at was “antinatalism is a coherent moral claim”. I’m not going to try to convince you of it.
Agreed. Which is why antinatalists don’t see not having children as a good thing (most don’t). They see having children as a bad thing. The latter does not imply the former.
Quoting Isaac
Whatever your positions is it results in “Antinatalism is a moral theory” computing to false which makes it very much not standard as demonstrated by the number of antinatalism posts on this site under the category “ethics”.
And I already proposed that the extra thing is that the instruction has not ulterior practical motive. You may disagree with that, that’s fine, but “makes it possible for people to live together” is demonstrably not standard as, again, you’re the only guy here trying to say that AN is not an ethical position. I’m still curious what this “public” from which you get your consensus on the definition is, because it’s definitely not the members of this site.
No, one can have a false belief about morality. Human sacrifice to make crops grow is such a belief. It is about social interactions and social group benefits. Antinatalism isn't about morality. It is an antisocial belief based not on moral considerations but on personal entitlement: I should never have had to suffer, not even so much as a stubbed toe. And, indirectly, it's a messed up value system. But it has nothing to do with how we treat others in our society, and therefore nothing it presents as a problem is a moral consideration.
Of course, antinatalists can say the same of natalism...
Not sure how "Not harming a future person" doesn't count as moral. The whole social group benefit definition is too narrow a claim regarding ethics, and it's purposely created to exclude antinatalism, and then post-facto made to seem like some abstract consensus just annoints your exclusionary definition as of course, fact.
The most basic definitions usually read something like this: concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character. That's just from a quick Google search even. Don't have to go too far to see this is a mischaracterization of what moral means.
By natalism do you mean normal people just naturally procreating without theorising about it? Because I can't imagine much more redundant than a moral theory that says it's okay to have kids.
Quoting schopenhauer1
First, creating a person that might one day be harmed is not the same as harming that person. Second, if a person does not currently exist, one cannot behave immorally toward them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's a tad paranoid, isn't it? I'm quite sure they didn't have antinatalism in mind.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That "concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character" is not what moral means? We can take it for granted we'll disagree on what morality is just on the basis of the fact that you believe antinatalism addresses moral concerns, but I'll confess I'm curious.
Fair enough, natalists and typical views on procreation.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
So here is the little game you and that other guy on this thread play.. First you want to discount antinatalism as not even in the realm of morality because it doesn't have to do with "social groups". I already addressed this by pointing out that "social groups" is too narrow a definition. But, then when antinatalism does actually address issues of "other people" you then wan to discount that because "other people" is deemed as an illegitimate move. But it isn't. I have mentioned before that it doesn't matter when the decision was made, if the a person is born, and that person will then have a lifetime of X amount of suffering, that is the result. It is about "other people" very much.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sorry, "this" in that quote was your mischaracterization by too narrowly defining morality. That Google quote was to show contra your opinion, it concerns principles of right and wrong behavior, and goodness and badness of human character" or similar such definitions.
So "natalists" (i.e. regular humans going about their business) almost certainly do not make such value judgments at all. I've never come across anyone who said, "Well we pondered whether or not it's right to bring a child into the world but agreed in the end that everyone, future people, has a right to see Succession." In place of such value judgments, "natalists" have biological imperatives (and nagging mothers).
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure, among other things (there's more to a life than suffering) but that is not equivalent to harming someone.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Real, existing people, not just the possibility of future people. The former is a concern for morality. The latter is not.
Quoting schopenhauer1
My definition of what morality really is is based on what capacities and impulses we have as a species to behave socially. Anything else is fiction.
Ha, understood. Notice I said natalists AND typical views on procreation. The nagging mothers and biological imperatives falls into that. However, I would debate biological imperatives. I am not sure if the abstract notion of procreation itself is really a biological imperative as much as the physical act of sex itself being pleasurable. Procreation being a concept prior to birth is more of an outcome that people desire to have. It's about maintaining a lifestyle, tradition, and other values and notions (from communal traditions, the circumstances of one's relationship, or one's own preferences or both).
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I mean you know the argument is more sophisticated than simply "harming" someone. I usually define it as creating the conditions for all other harm to follow. As far as non-harm related experiences- no person is actually missing out if not procreated. For the antinatalist ethic, there is no obligation to create beings with good experiences, but simply preventing beings having any negative experiences. Not creating unnecessary suffering and impositions on another person is what counts here. The question is, "Is that taking place with birth?" Yes? Don't do it.
A question for the typical-view is, why does any experience have to take place at all, if there is collateral damage involved? Why must this "other" reason be carried out on someone else's behalf? I don't believe there to be a good answer which doesn't overlook the dignity of the person that is supposedly benefiting from these experiences. I simply see people not thinking it all the way through- especially the part of no actual person missing out on anything, and not future person suffering. That is why antinatalists see a win/win with this ethical principle. There is no hangup about no one who experiences in the first place. So what? Is someone not going to be put in conditions of X amount of a lifetime of harm? That is the important question. I can go further for the basis of this, but I leave it at that.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Who says? Will a person be affected (and most certainly negatively) when born? Then that person who will come into existence does have some consideration. What I think is interesting is then when typical-viewers don't consider the inverse notion. That is to say, they don't consider that since there is no "real" actual person now, there is no person who is "missing out" or "needs this or that" from life. Only the parent's need for a person to exist.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I mean, that would be convenient when debating antinatalism. I will stick to the broader definition. I think you are actually at the wrong level when debating this, which is causing the confusion. Morality can be extremely diverse, and disagreements about the right conduct, behavior, beliefs, etc. are within the broader scope of "right conduct/behavior/character". Once we are debating this realm, then we can argue which actual conduct/behavior//belief/character is the right one. The definition is the arena, the different values are the participants in the arena itself. But even if we were to use your narrow definition, since antinatalism is indeed about the consideration of people in future states of being, it is indeed social as well, so fits under both. Is it about consideration for other people? Yep. Certainly is. Even if it is about what will happen to a person rather than the current state.
It could be. Even then it would be a moral theory though.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
False. We can agree there are cases where having children is wrong. Like severe poverty for example. Antinatalism is an expansion of that. Having kids is entirely free of moral considerations? Stop being ridiculous.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Agreed. Both can be wrong though. As I said, we already find having kids wrong in some scenarios.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Why is it wrong to have children in extreme poverty then? Note, I’m not disagreeing with this claim, I’m just asking how you would explain with it why having children in poverty is wrong. Because I don’t want to waste time trying to find the metaphysical setup you find acceptable
Quoting Kenosha Kid
We have a capacity and impulse NOT to have children in extreme poverty. And furthermore we find having children in those scenarios wrong. Now it’s just a matter of determining what the acceptable conditions are for having children.
Again, antinatalism isn’t some wacky supernatural belief as much as you’d like it to be. There are real, natural, moral instincts behind it. But you don’t want to even give it a real chance so you chalk it all up to entitlement. You sound like you’re just arguing in bad faith.
And you haven’t even explained what you mean by “natural reason” yet. Still waiting on that. What would be the natural reason to adopt utilitarianism?
I couldn't possibly say that, I've not read most of those. No doubt some fail on that count, maybe others don't. I can only argue against positions which I've read. It can't possibly be the case that simply by declaring something to be a moral theory it thereby is one. It must be possible to be in error in this regard - as I repeatedly mention, the private language argument already makes this case.
The point still stands, and @schopenhauer1's move of kicking the can down the road to 'right' and 'wrong' does nothing to change it. 'Moral', 'Right', 'Wrong'...these are all terms in a common language. In order for them to function they cannot have private meanings. As such the question of what is 'moral', what is 'right', what is 'wrong', must have an answer (at any given time) and that answer must be in the public use of these terms.
The alternative is that language is somehow delivered to us by some supernatural force (what is 'right' has been defined, not by our use of the term but by some outside force compelling us to use the word a certain way), or that there's no relationship at all between all the things we use 'right' for and they are each just individually labelled thus by fiat at the time.
The former is ridiculous. The latter is at least plausible, but I think it's a trivial matter to point to commonalities between the things we call 'right' which suggests more than a case-by-case christening.
What is evident is that individuals are not placed to simply declare what is 'right' or 'moral' from their own private opinion on the matter. 'Right' and 'moral' are both words in the English language - their meaning is a public matter.
It follows then that any discussion about what is 'right' or 'wrong' is a discussion about language use. Which things are understood by using those terms.
What I'm arguing here cannot possibly cover all of anti-natalism (there are other good arguments against other aspects). I'm arguing here against the specific claim that "do not risk harm to another when you cannot obtain their consent no matter what the consequences" is a 'moral' or 'right' objective in the normal use of those terms. I can't think of a single other maxim we count as 'moral' or 'right' which adds '...no matter what the consequences', and it's trivial to find many maxims and duties which break that rule but are nonetheless considered 'moral' or 'right' so it seems a very poor candidate for inclusion in the use of those terms.
That's the only reason why I've invoked any sort of naturalism (which shouldn't be taken in isolation - I've also invoked culture and religion). It's because such naturalism (together with the other influences I mentioned) gives a very good model for what sorts of things are meant by those terms. we've not just randomly grouped some behaviours together and labelled them all 'good', 'right' or 'moral', those groupings very much appear to have common threads - threads resulting mainly from psychology, culture, and religion, with a very strong emphasis on psychology.
The argument there wasn't about the label, it was about the objective. It makes no sense. why would you want to reduce harm if no-one benefits from the world thus freed from it?
Quoting khaled
Simply claiming something is a moral theory does not make it one. so the mere existence of such claims can't be held to show such a definition is flawed. A definition is not required to encompass each and every use. it has to be possible to misuse a word, otherwise words have no meaning. you keep avoiding the private language angle here. I can go through the argument if you're not familiar with it.
Quoting khaled
The article points out how that is insufficient. It does not eliminate maxims which are not considered 'moral' by anyone.
Quoting khaled
again, simply declaring something to be the case cannot be held as sufficient argument that it is, that would render all discussion pointless. That the anti-natalists here claim to be falling back on such relativistic axioms is not sufficient to show they in fact are. You regularly invoke such emotive judgement s as 'disgusting' to lend weight to your position. @schopenhauer1 has used 'smug'. Regardless of your protestations to the contrary, you are both expecting a common sense of right and wrong which you are appealing to to carry your arguments. That is the 'public' sense of the terms. It's only when your position is shown to be contrary to them that you resort to some faux claim of the arbitrariness of moral axioms.
The objective is not to reduce harm. The objective is to not cause unwarranted harm. The reason you do not cause harm is because causing harm makes things worse than not causing harm.
Quoting Isaac
Agreed. But everyone claiming that something is a moral theory does make it one. And that is what is happening. Everyone agrees that antinatalism is a moral theory. Some disagree with it, but even they recognize it is a moral theory. But it is only you that thinks it is not a moral theory in the first place. So you are misusing the word, by your standard.
Quoting Isaac
I think I am and I don't think I'm avoiding anything. I have not proposed private language. It is just the case that the public meaning of "moral theory" clearly includes antinatalism. You think it doesn't, even though everyone here (the public) thinks it does. You're the one that has to explain that.
Quoting Isaac
They are clearly considered "moral" by the group proposing them as moral, and maybe others. And it happens to be the case that everyone here except you considers antinatalism a moral theory.
Quoting Isaac
Wrong. I always say "I find that disgusting". I make sure to always include the "I find that", specifically so that people don't say what you're saying here. If you are emotionally affected by my opinion that's on you not me. And since when is emotive judgement a basis for a moral argument anyways?
Quoting Isaac
I'm not. I repeatedly said that I know people here have different moral premises. That is why I don't go around pushing the belief. That would be a waste of time.
Quoting Isaac
Wrong. I always resort to the claim that moral axioms are arbitrary. Find me a quote where I did not.
Again arbitrary =/= there are no natural causes for them. It means there is no objective metric by which we can judge one to be better than the other. However some are clearly more suited for creating thriving communities, and so those become popular by evolution.
But it absolutely evidently does not. Surgery being the obvious example where causing harm does not make things worse than not causing harm. Which is why you have to go through all these additional caveats and addendums to make your position fit your pre-determined conclusion.
Notwithstanding that, you've still not answered the charge of there being no reason to follow the maxim. Even if we were to accept your claim that moral maxims are arbitrary (which seems very obviously not the case given the very broad agreement as to general topics within the range)...do you just unquestioningly follow every whim that pops into your head? If no, then why follow this particular one?
Quoting khaled
Yeah...bullshit. That sort of thing might carry elsewhere, but not here. "I'm just mentioning that I find your behaviour disgusting out of idle interest, I don't mean to influence you in any way by such a choice of words...". Sorry, but that's just disingenuous.
Quoting khaled
'Faux', as in an affectation.
Agreed. I keep saying this. Moral premises are arbitrary. The only reason you see this as a "charge" is because you believe I'm trying to sell the belief no matter how many times I tell you I'm not and I don't understand why. All I'm trying to establish is that there is nothing wrong with the belief. That it is internally consistent. And that is the best you're gonna get (this is more meta-ethical and likely needs its own OP).
Quoting Isaac
There is a difference between harm and unjustified harm. I don't wanna get into it again unless you want me to. And you've summarized the position well already so you know what I mean. I don't see a reason to do the same song and dance again. We've gone over surgery before I think.
Quoting Isaac
I assure you it is not. But you're free to believe what you want. Echarimon for example didn't seem to take it personally:
Quoting Echarmion
A philosophy forum seems PRECISELY the place where once can say things like that genuinely. If someone says "I find vanilla ice cream disgusting" do you think they trying to convince you of the merits of chocolate ice cream? No, so why are you doing that here.
Quoting Isaac
If you're just gonna keep saying I'm being disingenuous go ahead but I see no reason to continue the discussion if that's your argument. You seem already set to believe I am trying to spread an ideology no matter what I say or do.
You completely dodged all of what I said about antinatalism being a moral claim though. Is it or is it not? The majority seem to think it is, you think it is not. Furthermore, you think the public meaning of morality does not allow it to be, (even though the public think it is a moral theory). Why? Or did you give up on that demonstrably false claim?
No, it is explained in the rest of that paragraph which you've ignored.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting khaled
It's because your argument fails without them, but including them invalidates the ad populum argument. On the one hand you want to say "harm is bad - everyone agrees with that" to lend this popular weight to your argument, then when pressed on the details (such as surgery), you add all the caveats. But the point is that with the caveats your maxim is not at all what people commonly consider 'moral' or 'right'. So it's crucial they are mentioned.
Quoting khaled
It's not about spreading an ideology. It's about recognising our shard social experience. You choose a word like 'disgusting' because you know I'll know what you mean by it. You rely on our shared social experience to communicate, and then, in the same paragraph you try to pretend we've no shared ideas of right and wrong and it's all just arbitrary. That's what I find disingenuous. Using emotive language to describe arbitrary emotional reactions is a performative contradiction.
Quoting khaled
I'm not argueing that all of antinatalism is not a moral claim. In fact, in my reply to @Joshs I've explicitly said that such an argument would be impossible to make. I'm arguing specifically that the maxim used here as an axiom leading to antinatalism is not a moral one. The mere existence of antinatalism within the topic of ethics does not impinge at all on that argument. If one were to show, for example, that antinatalism arose from following some scripture from an accepted religious text, that would indeed be a moral claim (not one I'd agree with), because concordance with common religious scripture is one of the common public meanings of 'moral'.
Because it works everywhere else and I don't like making exceptions for something because it is "natural".
Quoting Isaac
I am not making an ad populaum argument.
Quoting Isaac
I never said this. I said "harm is bad - we can agree on that". As in you and me. And we can reason from there. So I am not, in fact, lending popular weight to my argument at all. That would be stupid seeing as how unpopular antinatalism is.
Quoting Isaac
Agreed which is why I don't go around spreading it. I reason with someone from some premises we can agree on. Upon reaching a premise or caveat we do not agree on, I stop. Because I am not interested in changing people's moral view over the internet, just what those views are.
Quoting Isaac
Wrong. I am saying that our shared ideas of right and wrong are arbitrary. Again, arbitrary =/= there is no natrualistic reason we believe them.
Quoting Isaac
Sounded like you were. But antinatalism does not lead to a flourishing community so how come it is a moral claim by your definition? What makes a "moral claim" exactly for you because you seem to me to be hedging.
Quoting Isaac
Which one would that be exactly just so we're on the same page. Consent? Asymmetry? Not causing unwarranted harm? Something else? All of those seem like moral claims to me, and I suspect everyone here except you (not that I agree with all of them being valid).
Yeah, that makes sense. I think I fall more on the community side of things myself. I think that explains some of the difference in outlook on an emotional level.
Quoting khaled
That works. I don't agree with making the core of your test a negative rule, but apart from that I don't have any fundamental disagreement.
Quoting khaled
I think the "lesson" here is that we always accept certain risks when we act, and thus those general risks don't come with moral responsibility attached.
Using predictability seems problematic, because I don't see a clear way to draw the line between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" predictions. Freak accidents are predictable. That's why we can create thought experiments like this in the first place. It's not that the driver lacks the information to predict that the accident is possible. Rather, the risk is accepted as a necessary part of vehicular traffic. There is a normative element in what risks we think should be avoided.
And this means that a moral approach that focuses on avoiding the risk of harm must always deal with this normative element somehow. An argument that goes "behaviour X risks suffering of Y magnitude and should therefore be avoided" is incomplete.
Quoting khaled
Your moral philosophy will either consider it moral to have children or it won't. We can of course debate the merits of different moral philosophies, but this isn't a special case where we do things we never do otherwise. Lots of actions have a risk of suffering attached. What matters is how good your reasons are.
Quoting khaled
But we have things like mandatory school attendance, so forcing people to do something for their own benefit isn't exactly unheard of. One can debate under what circumstances, if any, this is ok, but it's not prima facie absurd.
Quoting khaled
I am not sure I can make a good moral argument on when it is wrong not to have children. My approach though would be to look at the duties the parents accept if they wish to have children and then see if the likely circumstances are conductive of those duties.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Anyone who has a duty to alleviate that suffering.
Pleasure is an outcome; it can't stand in place of a drive. It also can't explain the desire of virgins to copulate. Nor can it explain the common negative emotional side effects of sexually active people foregoing reproduction, e.g. by use of contraceptives, or being unable to reproduce. The drive is to copulate, you're right, but not to experience sexual pleasure, i.e. the urge is not subdued by regular orgasm.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, but that was your wording and I do feel that the two are conflated.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's the real question, one I've already touched on a few times, but not one that makes the antinatalist argument one iota more compelling. ("Who says that a generic, abstract, potential future human is a moral subject?" is an equally good question.) If you wish me to accept a moral proposition, there has to be some basis on which to do so.
How people answer the question "Who says?" interests me. Probably the most frequently given answer has been something like "God": a hypothetical moral authority whose moral views are "evidenced" by e.g. scripture, prophets, testimony of divine revelation, etc. But I have no reason to believe God exists either so it's a lame ad hom.
Or the answer might be "Jesus", or "Muhammad", or "Kant", or "Rousseau", i.e. some people who spoke or wrote down their views and some other people did find them compelling and *subscribed* to their views. But then lots of people subscribe to opposite views. Hell, lots of people subscribe to Trump's views.
Or if you yourself are Kant or Rousseau, maybe you believe that we can work this out by thinking really hard about it, i.e. "reason dictates". But reason never dictates. Reason always regresses back to a priori moral truths or God or some such again.
If you're a lawyer, you might say "The law says", but we still need to know if we have the right laws. If you're a relativist you might say "According to this culture" but you accept that no one culture is authoratitive. If you're an existentialist the answer might be teleological: whatever proclaims your freedom, whatever God asks of you personally, whatever proclaims your strength personally. But then we cannot ask who is right in any conflict of interests, therefore we cannot make claims about how someone else should behave.
This is why I reject any such unfounded claim about what morality is. "Who says?" cannot be answered with God or Jesus or Kant or Marx or UK law or local practice. That always leaves more questions or requires unjustifiable assumptions.
I don't believe in the supernatural, which means that morality is, if real, a natural occurrence, i.e. something nature did. The only moral arbiter I can accept then is Nature. Fortunately this does not suffer from the problems enumerated above (although it has many of its own): many moral claims can be derived from non-moral i.e. biological facts.
So TL;DR version: Nature says.
Apparently we cannot agree on that. :) I would never judge someone Ill for having a child in poverty. I would judge the agents of their poverty if there were any. Now, I agree it would be wise to wait if waiting would help. But not morally compulsory.
Quoting khaled
I said there are specific scenarios that one can't generalise from. A sadist approaches a couple who do not want or like children and offers them ten million dollars to have a child, homebirth it, not register it, then hand it to the sadist to torture. To have a child under those circumstances would be abominable. But there's no route from that to "You should never have children".
One of the interesting things for me about this conversation is that I am someone who made an ethical decision not to have children :rofl:
Quoting khaled
That is true but not for the unborn child's benefit. Not even for others' benefit, which, given that we do not have children for others, makes it a non-moral concern. We reduce the number of children we have during scarcity because the personal cost of having more is not outweighed by an increased survival benefit of our genome. It is more akin to choosing not to pay $10 for a cookie even though you really want a cookie.
Quoting khaled
I never said it was supernatural. Other reasons for other moral beliefs are supernatural.
This is true, but then I think there are close analogies between moral standards and scientific theories, if you take a Kuhnian position as I do. Cultural definitions of
morality change constantly throughout history, and each one , like a scientific theory, has to begin somewhere, typically with a tiny community, or perhaps a single individual ( Einstein first conceived e=mc2 as a private thought experiment).
Often, the originators of a new language of science or morality are treated as weird or even alarming outcasts. When their movement grows, the size of it is denied by its opponents. When it becomes too large to deny, it’s opponents accuse its followers of being brainwashed ( by fox news or cnn, perhaps). Eventually , what began as fringe becomes the new standard, but the cycle inevitable begins again.
As George Kelly wrote:
“ ...yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive
doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.”
Kant’s categorical imperative hasn’t yet reached the status of petty superstition, except in the eyes of radical
atheists like Dennett, Dawki s and Harris, but it may get there eventually.
The point is that defining the requirements for a claim to moral status by reference to the SEP (my favorite part of that essay wasn’t the part you quoted but the part where it discussed the lack of any consensus on even the most general features of morality. )or any other normative text risks performing an act of violence ( and immorality) against a group who may represent a new normative
community.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
How so?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sure because there are many ways to explain that scenario being unethical that do not require you to generalize to having children being unethical. Like: Treating children as tools is wrong. Which still leaves room for having kids being ethical.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sure.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
But false. This is clearly not the only reason. Everyone here except you so far has agreed that having children in extreme poverty is unethical not just impractical. The reason people don’t have kids they can’t afford is not simply impracticality but also a sense of responsibility not to subject someone to “too much suffering”. Now the question becomes how much is “too much”? So it is clearly the case that we have a naturalistic reason to believe in antinatalism (again, I don’t know what a supernaturalistic reason would be) since we find having children in extreme poverty morally wrong. There is a moral instinct behind it.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
But you said it is “not natural”. So how did it come about?
But causing it in the first place is fine? Why? And why is it fine sometimes and not fine in others?
Quoting Echarmion
Sure. And that’s where lawyers come in.
Quoting Echarmion
Exactly. Which is why we send people to jail if they drive without a license. We deem that at their skill level the risk of an accident is not an acceptable trade off for them going to work on time.
Quoting Echarmion
I don’t see this as very weird though. That we find different risks morally acceptable is normal. We make laws out of the ones we agree on. Generally speaking though, if X * Y is greater than the suffering alleviated from the person committing the act then the act is wrong. We can debate how big X and Y are in each case, but more often than not it’s clear which is greater (X*Y or the suffering alleviated from the actor)
Quoting Echarmion
Exactly. And the reasons aren’t good enough for me. If you discard “the benefit of mankind” I don’t see how you can possibly argue that they are.
Quoting Echarmion
Sure. I would say dependents are special. Because it is the job of the parent to make sure they suffer as little as possible, since they’re the ones the brought them here. And so they’re allowed to force them to do things for their benefit.
But what I was getting at was forcing people to do things that YOU like, without knowing whether or not they will. In the example I assume the person tied up is not your dependent and you do not know if they’ll like the game or not. Sure, they may end up enjoying it, but we don’t just take that risk with people who are not our dependents. Ever. And even with dependents we are very careful.
And you cannot argue in the case of having children that existing is good for the non-existent potential child (because they don’t exist!). So you are taking a gamble, like with the tying up example. Sure the game is pretty good and has few complaints, but is that a good enough reason to force people to play it? Not unless you want to bring in the survival of mankind as a good in itself I don’t think you can argue it is.
But what you absolutely cannot say in both cases is “This is not an imposition because they can just kill themselves if they don’t like it”.
Quoting Echarmion
And what would those be? The duties.
And I never get why people are always willing to claim that having children is wrong sometimes but never actually go into detail on when. It happens every time around here.
Well that's hardly surprising since you're arguing for antinatalism and I against. :)
It's an interesting question though. One can't generally know, so we can't generalise from this. Not knowing the future is part of what makes antinatalism so wonky, since it is preoccupied with current moral culpability for potential future events one is not responsible for. More realistically the situation would be a couple having a child while aware of a significant risk of such a disease. In that case, no, I would not judge them for it.
But taking the further-fetched scenario for the sake of argument, yes I would agree. It would, if the disease were certain and debilitating, not be accidental if the child then had a debilitating disease. I would inevitably find myself responsible for its suffering after it suffered.
But since this is a fanciful scenario, I wouldn't worry about it.
By the way, environmentalism is the closest I can think of to the sort of logic you apply, insofar as the point of environmentalism is to provide a habitable world for people not yet born.
Quoting khaled
Overpopulation is a factor. While I'm not antinatalist, I do think we should breed much less. I would have campaigned for adopting under different circumstances, but ended up stepfathering which amounts to much the same thing.
Also tbh my parents weren't great and I occasionally catch glimpses of them in me and I don't like it. I think I would have a low opinion of myself as a father, and why do something if you don't enjoy it? :) And it pisses my parents off because I'm an only child; that's a bonus.
Quoting khaled
As we've discussed, anything is unethical wrt a suitable ethic. I would be surprised if people genuinely did judge such parents thus in practice, rather than in some theoretical moral playground. But I was addressing your point that people in poverty in poor countries have fewer children, which is true. It is *not* true that people in poverty in poor countries have NO children. There have been an uncountable number of poor people throughout history, including today, and most that lived to sexual maturity will have had a child.
Quoting khaled
It didn't. It is neither natural nor supernatural. It is simply mistaken.
Damn. Ok let me ask you this. Is pointing a gun at innocent people and pulling three trigger for recreation wrong? After all, the gun might jam, so:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I just don’t understand how you can seriously require 100% knowledge of the future for an action to be wrong. It is a demonstrably ridiculous requirement. Nothing can ever be wrong with it.
Also this is not a fanciful scenario. Genetic counseling is a thing and you can easily know the likelihood of your child having this or that genetic disease. A lot of times you can be certain.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I would be surprised if they didn’t. I’d be outraged if I heard someone I knew had a child knowing they have a high chance of having a severely debilitating disease. And I know I’m not the only one who would react that way.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sorry but this is just word salad. It didn’t? Antinatalism is not a belief? Wot?
Still, what is a “natural reason” to adopt a belief. I am still waiting on an answer to that question. What would be the natural reason to adopt utilitarianism as an example?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Correct. But not purely because of impracticality but because of a genuine desire not to cause suffering as well. That’s what I’m getting at. There is a moral instinct behind AN. Maybe one you don’t share from reading your comments but one that is definitely not unpopular seeing as how everyone here except you agrees that having children in poverty or with a severe illness is wrong.
Sorry to hear about your parents though good thing you’re pissing them off
What do you mean "it works". What would it not working look like? This is a fundamental axiom we're talking about here so there's supposedly no more fundamental one to check it by.
Quoting khaled
You are - frequently...
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
...come on!
Quoting khaled
Right. That's literally all I'm arguing here. Your maxim is not a moral one. It's just a thing you want to achieve - an objective - for...seemingly...no reason at all.
Quoting khaled
It really doesn't sound like it. are you not familiar with the meaning of the word 'stop'?
Quoting khaled
No this is not all you're saying. Your claim requires the additional feature that these naturalistic reasons are sufficiently wide to derive absolutely any maxim whatsoever. It's that part of the claim I'm questioning. By analogy, the weather is a result of naturalistic forces, but what the weather will be like tomorrow is somewhat arbitrary (we could say for sure). It can't, however, be just anything - being caused by natural forces limits the options to those resulting from a causal chain initiated by those natural forces, it can only be some kind of weather. Admitting (as I hope we have) that your moral imperatives derive from naturalistic forces means that the range of possible moral imperatives is constrained to those which can feasibly result from those naturalistic forces. as far as the evidence we have is concerned, that means that they will be overwhelmingly the result of some biological broad constraints fine-tuned by the culture an religion you've been brought up in. Since unconstrained probability spaces are the exception rather than the rule, the onus is on you to support such an extraordinary claim.
Quoting khaled
Let me try and be clearer then. There's two issues which you seem to be getting confused over. There's the meaning of the word 'moral' and there's the things I personally consider to be my morals. Two sets. the one is necessarily a subset of the other. Like {all the clothes in the world} and {the clothes I wear}. One is necessarily a subset of the other. I can say "I wear trousers, but skirts are an item of clothing" without contradiction. What I can't say is "I don't happen to wear them myself, but elephants are an article of clothing". Whether I personally wear them is irrelevant here - elephants are not an article of clothing. Us debating whether elephants are an article of clothing doesn't mean I'm committed to wearing them if it turns out they are.
I'm arguing that "do not risk harm where consent is impossible to obtain no matter what the consequences" is not a moral claim by definition. "Risk no harm to others where you cannot obtain their consent", however, is a moral claim, but not one I subscribe to. The question of which maxims are 'moral' ones and which I personally subscribe to are two different questions.
Quoting khaled
As above "do not risk harm where consent is impossible to obtain no matter what the consequences". Morality is about people. No people, no morality, It's not about reducing some poorly specified platonic form to zero. I doubt you'd get a single person to agree that reducing the number of bananas in the world is a moral imperative, or ensuring that there's no electricity, or no number 7... What do all these patently ridiculous examples have in common, that moral imperatives to reduce something do not. They all have nothing to do with people.
I disagree with this framing. I can see where you're coming from, but moral theories are not like scientific theories. Firstly, our moral theories are trying to frame something post hoc. We already have moral imperatives, before we're born in some case, but certainly by the time we're old enough for serious reflection, so, unlike scientific theories which we're free to incorporate into our behaviour or not, moral theories are our behaviour. We're not so free to choose to incorporate them or not.
Secondly, with scientific theories we're trying to model the world outside of our own minds and those models have to at least be slightly useful. One can navigate assuming the world is s cylinder, or even a flattish square (so long as one sticks to equatorial routes) but presuming the world is a triangle simply wouldn't work. It's a non-starter. Moral theories likewise must model our feelings and interpersonal relationships at least slightly accurately. That limits the range of possible moral theories to those which have at least a feasible change of being accurate.
That said, I can certainly see the merit in having a broad enough definition to allow the exploration of new ideas. But then, that's what we're doing here. I'm not simply declaring that these maxims are not moral, I'm actually presenting quite a lengthy argument to that effect, so I've not kicked "Such maxims are 'moral' ones" out of the 'marketplace of ideas', we're very much discussing the notion here.
Not matching my moral intuitions. So if it leads to shooting people being right for example.
Quoting Isaac
Each and every single one of those is talking about whether or not antinatalism is a moral theory. I have never made an ad populum argument FOR antinatlaism, only for it being a moral theory. I have never said something along the lines of "everyone agrees that having kids is wrong" because that is just false. And when I have made similar claims it was only in response to people who define what is moral by what is widely accepted. Every quote there is me telling you that the "public meaning" of moral theory clearly includes antinatalism and that it is on you to explain why you're using the word differently.
Quoting Isaac
An objective that I want to achieve for its own sake is a moral maxim. That is what I find the public meaning of "moral maxim" to be and what most people here also seem to find it to be. No one so far has agreed with you that AN is not a moral theory. And at least one (KenoshaKid) has stated unambiguously that you can make an ethic about anything which agrees with my definition. You may disagree with my definition of the public meaning, but you cannot pretend that the public meaning does not include AN as a moral theory, because it does.
What I know for a fact is that "A moral maxim is one which creates a harmonious community" is NOT the public meaning of moral maxim because it is literally just you insisting that it is. Demonstrably, everyone here agrees that AN is a moral theory, showing that the public meaning of moral theory does NOT require its application to create a harmonious community so your definition is wrong.
Quoting Isaac
Every single time I have talked with you we reached a point where you resort to "The survival of the human race is a good in itself" or another maxim that I disagree with and I stop there. The reason I am not stopping now is because you are making a completely ridiculous claim that "antinatalism" does not fall under "moral theory" by virtue of people supposedly not referring to antinatalism as a moral theory, but that is demonstrably false, yet you hold onto the claim for no reason.
Quoting Isaac
False.
Quoting Isaac
The naturalistic reasons ARE sufficiently wide to derive absolutely any maxim whatsoever. Someone crazy enough might think that it is wrong to wear socks on christmas. However such a belief will likely not be adopted on a societal level because it is useless.
Quoting Isaac
What makes the first not a moral claim and the latter a moral claim? Because you are the only one making a distinction here. Which suggests you're misuing the word "moral claim". And I've shown how your "definition" is inadequate, because no one else is using it.
Quoting Isaac
And not risking harm is not about people? What would "do not risk harm" in the absence of people even mean? Don't be ridiculous. Or are you suggesting that if the act that does harm is taken before the person harmed exists that that somehow makes the act ok?
Quoting Isaac
Agreed. But I also doubt that you can get a single person to agree that "We are morally obligated to reduce the number of bananas" is NOT a valid moral claim, though a ridiculous one. Yet you are attempting to redifine what "moral claim" means by referring to the public use of the word even though you are literally the only one going against the public use which I find funny.
There is a distinction between whether or not something is a moral claim and whether or not you agree with it. "We are morally obligated to reduce the number of bananas" is a moral claim. But not one I think anyone will agree with. "You shouldn't have kids" is a moral claim (as much as you'd like it not to be, everyone here agrees it is), but one most don't agree with. That's what I'm saying.
Yes, it's wrong. Even if the gun does jam, it's still wrong imo. The intent is to harm others greatly for some small and perverse satisfaction. If successful, it is no accident if someone is harmed, rather it is accidental (i.e. fortunate) if no one is harmed.
Quoting khaled
I don't. But there has to be a direct consequence of my acted-on intentions for which I am culpable. They needn't necessarily be foreseen, for instance negligence: a failure to consider the direct consequences of my actions before performing them.
What I can't be morally culpable for is unforeseeable events that eventually hurt somebody that could have been trivially avoided had I acted not to remove the harmful event but the harmed person. If someone asks me for directions and I provide them with a shortcut and, on their way, a piano falls on their head, I am the cause of their being under the piano but not the cause of their death: that blame lies with the negligent person who failed to properly secure the piano, even though they might not have foreseen the potential consequences of their negligence.
Quoting khaled
Can you give an example of a 100% certain debilitating disease?
Quoting khaled
We could take the time to look at e.g. media coverage of such events but I'm not sure what that would give us. You obviously know about liberals and could probably predict they would side with the parent. I know about tabloids and would guess they would react with outrage, real or faux. But if one of us has the time, it would be interesting to know.
Quoting khaled
It was a typo or autocorrect: I didn't. The moral proposition in question is not supported on naturalistic or supernaturalistic grounds: it is not grounded at all.
Quoting khaled
This isn't about general belief. There is no natural reason to become a Christian. There are *cultural* reasons. However there are natural reasons to adopt some of Mr. Christ's arguments, insofar as they accord with the specific drives and capacities that nature has selected for us to make us social, and in turn moral.
There are neither natural nor cultural reasons to accept the antinatalist argument.
Quoting khaled
I think you'll find this extremely difficult to argue. For one thing, what you're describing is not a human trait but a trait across a vast range of animal species who do not make decisions in the way you describe. As for humans, the biological reasons for reduced fertility are sufficient. They do not have to be ratified by reason. But they will likely be *rationalised* by reason, which isn't the same. Statistically it seems probable that people have decided to limit the number of children they have on a purely rational basis during times of scarcity. But I'd have to see some pretty compelling evidence, e.g. an absence of any biological markers, to accept that this is at all significant.
This actually ties into why I would never judge someone having a child during poverty. Moral philosophy has a tendency to fall into the rationalist fallacy: that humans are principally rational agents acting on the outputs of rational processes and therefore are expected to conform to some ideal moral schema in which they are either good because of their actions or bad because of them.
Humans aren't like this at all. For the most part we are reacting unconsciously according to learned rules, and only use our reason for problems unsuitable for those rules or sometimes to ratify the application of those rules. The urge to have a child is mediated through e.g. libido, but regulated by many other factors, scarcity being one, but childlessness being another. Childlessness itself can be a form of suffering and, just as I would perfectly understand why a starving man would steal a loaf of bread, I would perfectly understand why a childless person in poverty would have a child.
An important aspect of real morality (as opposed to theoretical or religious morality) is our capacity for empathy. This is why psychopaths might not be held morally culpable for their actions: they lack the ability to make moral decisions in the way that normal people do, so we should not expect them to conform to some ideal of moral agent. To judge harshly someone for having a child at all during scarcity would seem to me a total failure to empathise with the plight of that person, as well as a disregard for science and the primacy of that person's biological nature. We are centuries past the idea that morality is binary precisely because we have codified more and more of what makes us moral, including our ability to understand why a social being might understandably behave in a self-centred way, not because they do not care, but because there are ample circumstances in which the selfish need is overwhelming to the detriment of both reason and sociality.
And your child suffering is an "unforseeable event"? Seems pretty forseeable to me. Sure you can't forsee exactly what form of suffering awaits but you know in all likelihood some form does. And that's never stopped things from being wrong.
Is dumping someone in a jungle full of predators in their sleep wrong? I think we can agree it is, even though we can't predict if they'll be eaten by a lion, a hyena or a leopard, or if they will survive. Simply subjecting someone to a risk requires some justificaiton normally. What would be that justification in the case of children?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
If both parents have a hereditary genetic disease their child will have a hereditary genetic disease. You would have to rely on a mutation for that not to happen so fine, it's not 100%, but maybe 99%
Quoting Kenosha Kid
So a "natural reason" would be if I adopt a belief because I have a specific drive that nature selected for me to make me social and in turn moral.
And I am claiming that there is a specific drive coded within us to be able to project into the future and not subject someone to harm. For example, couples that don't have children upon being informed that they have hidden genes which could result in debilitating illnesses. How do you explain that behavior? It is not scarcity that is making them not have the child there. So I think it is reasonable to claim that we have this instinct. Giving a natrual reason to adopt AN.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
See above. It is not.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
But if the starving man produces another starving man by stealing said loaf of bread I think we can agree the starving man (original) is wrong. Understandble? Yes. I might (probably, actually) even have done the same thing. But still wrong.
I am not saying that having children is not understandable. I am saying it is immoral.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sure. We call those cases moral failures. I did not say that they do not deserve empathy or that they should be punished for it. We are debating purely on a moral level here, not on the level of what people actually end up doing. For all my talk of ethics I do wrong things sometimes. However, when I do something wrong but understandable, it is still wrong.
My child suffering is not an "event" at all. My child suffering a car crash when she is 17 at a particular time and place due to a drunk driver coming the other way is an event.
Quoting khaled
If my intention was that they be eaten by a predator, then it is not accidental if they are eaten by a predator. If they are not eaten by a predator, my actions were still immoral because that's what I intended, whether I was successful or not. If my intent was to save their life before the plane crashed, then the plane landed safely and that person was eaten by a predator, it is extremely unfortunate but I would not consider myself *morally* culpable. My actions were morally sound (save the life of this person by removing them from *this* harm) even if the outcomes were far from ideal.
Quoting khaled
That should be based on scientific evidence.
Quoting khaled
See above: it is! ;)
Quoting khaled
I would not. I would not consider a starving man a moral agent at all. If they had the wherewithal to, say, kick a random child in the face, they clearly aren't that starving. The question for me would be: is it reasonable to assume that their drive to survive was sufficiently overriding to consider them incapable of moral decisions?
That someone else starved is unfortunate, but I wouldn't consider the thief morally culpable even though the existence of that thief was clearly a causal factor because, as I said, such a judgement demonstrates a failure to be a moral being.
Our morals are derived from biological traits evolved in small hunter-gatherer groups a long time ago. Those groups were egalitarian. If they ate, they ate together. Starvation would likely have destroyed the coherence of that group, putting it on a pre-social basis. This seems reasonable to me: there is no point in every individual starving if the fittest can survive.
However, if the cause of the poverty that kills one or other of the men is one or more human agents, i.e. not just an environmental fluke, then moral culpability is likely to be found. This is the case in my society in which people are kept poor by a privileged minority who remove capital from circulation for personal benefit (power) and the legislators who enable them. If such an event occurred in my society, that's who I'd point the finger at, since their behaviour is antisocial through choice, not through desperation.
One can argue that this is true in almost every society where it is possible to help the poor, even societies not our own. The logical conclusion in the application of natural moral instinct in an international society is to treat everyone as part of your group, treat them how you would wish to be treated. What we see generally is a willingness to exploit the advantages of globalisation while snorting at the responsibilities. I see this as no different to a person exploiting someone from their own village or family.
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
And I'm saying that empathy is not separable from morality. It is irrational to understand that, in their shoes, you would have likely done the same and at the same time say they were wrong. And if you fail to do the former, the immorality is yours, not theirs.
What if your intention was to teach them survival. No they are not you dependents nor is there any reason to do so, but your intention is not malicious, you never intended for them to get harmed. Now what? Is it wrong or not?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sure no one is disagreeing there. You took them from a position where they were definitely dead to a position where they might still be dead. That's good. But what if your intent was never to harm, but you put them in harm's way anyways (as in in a position that is worse that the one they were in). Does that make it acceptable?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I was referring to the couples that don't have children after learning that they are likely to have a severe genetic illness. Even if they can afford to care for them. How do you explain that behavior?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
But if they're psychopaths, which many are, then they're not culpable per your own words... So now what? Are they no longer doing anything wrong?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
There is no contradiction there so there is nothing irrational about it. I am not a perfect being. I do wrong things. That doesn't make the wrong things not wrong. I don't see why you want to join the ideal that is morality with the reality. If you want to say that arguing about ideals is impractical, people will still have kids, and starving people will still steal, sure, I don't really care though. I am talking about it because it's fun to talk about is all.
For the actor to intend them not to be harmed, they would have to be mentally deficient enough to not consider that the lesson was more lethal than that which the subject might expect to face. Or, alternatively, belong to a culture in which teaching this lesson is held as crucial. In the former case, we're likely not describing a moral agent; in the latter, there are other examples.
Human sacrifice is one I've brought up before, in which the belief is that the disputed act is essential to the survival of the group as a whole and all of the individuals within it. Homicide was a grave (haha) crime in Aztec law, so this matches Kierkegaard's description of a teleological suspension of ethics. The root error is not a moral one, but one of fact.
Another pertinent example is how religions propagate. Parents usually indoctrinate their children almost from birth, which hugely skews the child's ability to determine the validity of their own beliefs, which in turn makes it harder to discern reality from fiction. Religion is hardly alone in this, but it is the most pronounced example, especially given the fears often instilled in those children for even questioning their beliefs in the face of contrary evidence, sound argument, or a disagreeable consensus.
I would consider both cultures bad in the sense that they are antisocial: they lead to the pointless murder and brainwashing of innocent people respectively. However the individuals perpetrating the acts are themselves products of the cultures that insist upon them, and thus are blameless.
I have heard of cultures in which adolescent boys are sent into the wild for a spell of time to learn how to survive, however I'm not sure how accurate these are. One example I've heard of is some Australian aboriginal tribes, where there is definite risk, such as spider or snake bites, but not the sort of risk where one might expect the lesson to be more lethal than real life. I could only conjecture on this because I'm not sure it's accurate. It seems to me illogical to send an inexperienced person out alone to face dangers that they are likely to overcome later based on experience and safety in numbers. It seems, therefore, contrary to what it is to be social, but then cultures often are. Were it true, I would not judge them morally, but like the other two examples, I wouldn't mourn the loss of the culture.
I can't think of any other scenario in which it can be logically possible for a person to drastically reduce the odds of another person surviving in order to teach them survival. It seems such a stupid idea, either the person involved is a moral idiot, or they emerge from a stupid culture I'd rather see perish.
Quoting khaled
I'm not sure what you mean. Can you flesh out the example? Or does the above cover it?
Quoting khaled
Oh I see. That's not too mysterious. If you can make a rational decision, then you are not that desperate. For instance, if you are starving but think, "No, I shouldn't steal that load in case my victim also starves to death" than you are clearly capable of rational decision making. That's admirable, but it doesn't follow that every starving person is in the same state.
Quoting khaled
It's a good question. Psychopaths are edge-cases, and edge-cases depend all the more on specifics. We cannot have evolved to handle psychopaths precisely because they are edge cases. Nature has nothing to say about them and so in a way are also not moral objects as well as not being moral subjects. I assume that, in pre-agricultural times, psychopaths would have been treated exactly the same as any other antisocial element and been promptly killed or exiled.
What do we do with the knowledge about psychopathy? It seems to me that we cannot generally hold them morally culpable for the actions they take (although see below), and so we cannot in good conscience punish them beyond that which is strictly necessary to safeguard society. What say we put them under house arrest, but in a grand penthouse suite with the best luxuries of life? Instinctively, it seems abhorrent, but that's because, like our ancestors, we struggle to see them as anything other than moral agents. In a way, it's the equivalent of not being able to comprehend death or the void. But there's no moral or rational reason to punish them.
However, I did say it depends on specifics. A person capable of cognitive empathy but incapable of emotional empathy is hungry (not starving) and steals the bread of another starving man... It seems reasonable to me that the psychopath could not be expected to understand that his need (hunger) was less than his crime (theft). If he then killed someone who was about to report him to the police in order to safeguard his liberty, that is horrific but still understandable: his ethical crime, from his point of view, was simply to break a social rule for the sake of something vital to himself (a teleological suspension of entirely abstract ethics). I see no moral culpability.
But if he pushed a child of a cliff to enjoy the sound of her screams... There we might have common ground on. There is no perceived need, and he knows that's wrong on an intellectual level. That has more in common with a normal person hurting others for pleasure, so we might have common ground there. Such a person would certainly be a monster, and the question of the extent of his moral culpability seems rather moot. Happy to talk it out though.
Quoting khaled
And this is why I think we have very different ideas of what morality is. Yours is quite old school, in which if you broke the law you're immoral and that's that. Mine is somewhat more new-school, in which one considers a broader range of factors in determining culpability (e.g. self-defence laws). I think that progression in law is an effect of our natural morality refining less sophisticated approximations to what constitutes moral culpability. We are becoming more understanding, not just as to the causes of immoral behaviour, but even about the nature of moral culpability itself.
Or we were, until Trump started executing mentally handicapped offenders again.
Quoting khaled
Yeah man, and interesting too.
But it is not any more lethal. What if the kidnapper believes that a man's worth is measured by their ability to survive in the wild and therefore if you die there he didn't kill anyone because you are not a man. Or some other such insane notion. Is he now blameless?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It does.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Either way, blameless though, right? Damn I don't know what to do with that. I think you might just be a non-starter for me. I don't think you can ever say anyone did anything wrong with your system.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
The line between a need and a want is very very blurry. It is not clear he did not have a need. A good enough lawyer can drum one up. Which is why I'd be terrified if your system was more widely adopted.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
So in the case of food, we show an ability to emphasize and therefore we do not steal other people's food so they don't starve since we don't need it ourselves. But when I propose that similar reasoning is being employed in the case of birth, you insist that no, we do not have any drives there. That makes no sense. If we truly couldn't care less about the state of the child after they were born. If that were truly not a factor at all, as you claim, then couples should not care at all about genetic counseling results. But they do. Showing that there is, in fact, a natural instinct behind AN.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Not exactly the law but I get what you're saying.
Anyways I don't think this is going anywhere anymore and will likely fizzle out. I don't think I can talk about AN with a guy that thinks ritualistic sacrifice is blameless and having chidlren with severe handicaps is ok. The only outstanding point we may reach a consensus on is whether or not AN has a natural instinct behind it. I made my case here.
For my view: I recognize the psychopath may have not known any better when he killed the guy trying to report him. I recognize there is no moral ground on which I can stand on to claim that he should be imprisoned or executed. I still think he should be imprisoned or executed. You attempt to "meet people at their level" both in the principles involved and in the reaction to those principles. As in, in the absence of shared moral premises, no one can be blamed, and no one should be punished. I don't think so. I am fully aware that the psychopath would see this as an injustice and I don't care. Tribal? Barbaric? Unjust? Maybe.
Anyways I'm going to bed now.
@Isaac Observe how I stopped upon finding premises we don't agree on.
Then what is the difference in risk between that and sending them to the shops?
Quoting khaled
This again sounds like the teleological suspension of ethics of a deranged individual. Again, if there is no cultural explanation, I would presume the culprit to be out of their frickin gourd. By your own description, the culprit believes themselves to be doing good by their victim. He's clearly a monster, but too insane to be held morally culpable.
Quoting khaled
Morally, not causally or lawfully. A moral idiot by definition cannot be held morally responsible, it would be paradoxical to do so. And people are not to blame for being raised in a given culture. There are lots of horrid practices in many cultures. Genital mutilation is abhorrent, but you cannot hold that a person raised in a culture in which it is seen as morally obligatory is immoral for enacting it.
Quoting khaled
Differentiating them from a third person perspective, yes it is. Unless we start monitoring everyone's biological markers at all times, it's difficult to say whether someone's biological needs were overriding. I'm in favour of the benefit of the doubt. Or monitoring everyone's biological markers at all time. :)
Quoting khaled
It is widely adopted. We have the presumption of innocence and concepts like diminished responsibility and temporary insanity for this reason.
Quoting khaled
If we are not driven by an overriding need to eat, yes. A person who has their full faculties at their disposal naturally has their social faculties at their disposal, and acting against them would be wilfully antisocial, with their full culpability. But we should not pretend that this is always the case. A starving person will often not have their full faculties at their disposal and cannot therefore be held as culpable as if they did. This seems as perverse to me as making a limbless pupil swim.
Quoting khaled
The above is tantamount to saying that because a starving person has diminished responsibility, we should see everyone stealing food whether they're starving or just peckish. That's clearly not logically defensible.
Quoting khaled
That is quite trivial to treat. Nature cannot have selected for a drive to not reproduce. At best it has selected to reduce, not eliminate, reproduction when the cost of reproduction outweighs the benefit to the genome, which is not a social trait.
Quoting khaled
There is a watertight pragmatic case for the former. I think most people these days would view the latter as barbaric and immoral. But this the constant battle, isn't it?
It's been interesting talking with you. The great thing about sites like this is that, in day-to-day life, we tend to assume we have typical opinions and beliefs because they shape who we surround ourselves with and they in turn shape those opinions and beliefs.
We seem equally startled by each others' beliefs and assumptions, a good consciousness raiser if nothing else.
The rest is pretty much semantic mumbo jumbo.. Consequences for a future person are seen as not legitimate because you cannot know the proximate cause for each and every harm. I'm not sure why aggregating "All Harm in an Individual's Lifetime" doesn't compute. That someone was not put in a position where a lifetime's worth of harm could take place is one formulation of the principle. That someone was not put into a game that cannot be consented is another principle in the same realm. Both are valid. The excuse that the parent is preparing the person to play the game well, and that reasonable amounts of harm are okay to inflict unnecessarily on someone underlies a lot of this too.
That you need to send them to the shops to buy food because you're busy. If you're not busy you should do it yourself. Sending kids to random places for no reason is wrong and irresponsible.
Crucially, they need the thing you're sending them to buy. If they don't then sending them to buy it is wrong. You can ask them as a favor but you can't force them to. Unlike in the hunting example where you can't really argue people need to be able to survive.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
That's the non starter bit for me. I would say he is a monster, and so we will hold him morally culpable.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I don't see the paradox.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Watch me :cool:
I wouldn't hold them accounable if they never gave it any thought. However if they did think about it, and chose to ignore good arguments against it just to maintain their culture, I would hold them accountable.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Idk what this means but ok. What's the biological marker for "Satan forced me to do it"
Quoting Kenosha Kid
But if a terrorist blows up a store because God told him to we don't spare HIM do we? Just saying that we do not forgive everything, even though by your model, we should forgive that terrorist because of his culture.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
But you can never know that. What if they did have their full faculties and CHOSE to be evil? I know I used to do that occasionally as a kid. Even now sometimes in small doses, like flaming teammates in online games despite knowing that they're not actually trolling.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It is not a drive not to reproduce. We have a drive to reproduce. And a drive to empathise, or to not do harm or whatever you wanna call it. I am arguing that that drive to empathise is what is behind AN. The couple that chooses not to have a disabled kid despite being able to afford it are not doing so because of a drive not to reproduce but because of a drive to empathise. And they are not doing so out of practical scarcity as you claim.
This drive to empathise extends to people who don't yet exist. Which is why I bet you would find someone who genetically modifies their child to be blind despite them having been fine otherwise because "I want a blind child" disgusting. Our capacity to empathise can be projected into the future, for better or worse (I think better), and that is what leads to AN.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
What do you do when peckish people insist they are starving? Maybe in that case it's not too hard to disprove. But what do you do when the lawyer uses that insistence to claim madness?
I don't think we're diametrically opposed or anything. I think we are just on different points in a spectrum of moral culpability. I think people have their capacities intact most of the time, and when they don't I think people that treat others unfairly relinquish their right to be treated fairly. That's perhaps where we disagree.
The psychopath did not think about the guy he killed, so I won't think about the psychopath. And the psychopath has no moral ground to stand on to claim I should do otherwise. Same with the starving man. I think forgiveness is a virtue, not a necessity. One I try to have as much as often but I don't think I can forgive a psychopath who kills someone close to me. I don't know if I really want to. There must be SOME reason nature selected for the "revenge instinct" right? Maybe it's just an artifact in the modern world. Sounds like a new OP.
In a sense though, your view seems somewhat self-defeating now that I think about it. We know people have an instinct to take revenge. So when a psychopath kills someone out of not being able to understand that his actions are wrong, why is he excused, while if we can agree to execute said psychopath because we do not have our full faculties at our disposal (due to aforementioned desire for revenge) we cannot be excused? If you take this desire for revenge into account, then it seems that your view is practically no different from mine. I am not morally culpable in wanting the psychopath dead (holding him morally culpable) because I do not have my full faculties at the time.
:up:
As I said to echarimon:
Quoting khaled
That seems to be what it comes down to as usual. I give it a month before we get another thread and do the same song and dance again though. At least the dance is fun, sometimes...
I don't think this is an apt description of culture. You seem to characterise cultural modes as suspended pending justification. Rather, the justification is presumed. The believer has already been taught, over and over, that the mode is right.
Quoting khaled
If a person has an overriding biological need, e.g. starvation or childlessness, it ought to be biologically evident.
Quoting khaled
So here we're in the terrain of bad ideology. The terrorist and I disagree on what the moral thing to do is. Jihad is not a teleological suspension of ethics: it is an ethic in and of itself. Within a jihadist culture, there's no moral ambiguity. They are at war with western capitalism.
There seems to me little point in pointing one's finger at the jihadist individual when such individuals are an inevitability because of a broader culture they are not responsible for. The fault lies with that culture, which is not a moral agent.
The culture is antisocial for a large number of reasons. Such a culture could arise spontaneously but I'd wager that, when you see an antisocial culture, there is a corresponding power that accounts for it. Power is intrinsically antisocial, since it is intrinsically non-egalitarian, but also inevitable in post-agricultural society. Those who employ their power for grossly antisocial ends are immoral imo.
Again, this isn't a new idea. With the exception of the Holocaust, we have typically *not* held the violent actor morally culpable for the decisions of their leaders. The hijackers who downed the WTC were likely not immoral people: they did what they thought was good. The moral culpability lay with the persons who used their power to corrupt the "martyrs'" minds imo.
Nonetheless, terrorists are are danger to our society and many others. Irrespective of who is to blame, it is our social duty to at protect ourselves against them.
Quoting khaled
If you know they are peckish then you have evidence they are behaving immorally. Do you presume the accused guilty until proven innocent or vice versa? I'm of the latter persuasion. If it is reasonable that the thief was desperate, they should not be considered morally culpable.
Quoting khaled
It's not an unreasonable conclusion, but it is wilfully inconsistent with what makes us moral in the first place. But like I said, part of what makes us social is an intolerance toward antisocial elements. Psychopaths can be considered antisocial elements by default, insofar as they can't behave sociably. (Well, they can, it's just a lot harder and therefore less likely.)
Quoting khaled
I did not say we could not. If a psychopath killed my partner, I likely would try to kill them because that asocial desire for retribution would be overriding. And I think that would be a deciding factor in my trial, in my country at least.
Those two things are are far from the same category of dire need, and one is affecting the whole lifetime of another person. The other simply means one needs to eat something
How so? We're not talking rational decision-making here, we're talking biological imperative.
Quoting khaled
That seems to be a weird question, honestly. I don't think you want to discuss individual scenarios and decide whether this or that is moral or immoral. But apart from that I can't think of a meaningful answer to your question other than "because my moral philosophy says some things are fine and others are not".
If causing suffering were somehow absolutely permitted, noone could function. We'd all have to lock ourselves into rooms for fear of stepping on someone's toes. Perhaps you mean some specific, qualified kind of suffering?
Quoting khaled
I just think it's important to be aware that this is not a mathematical operation. There is no quantifiable amuont of risk that is automatically unacceptable.
Quoting khaled
I don't think this works. Not least because I see no way to quantify suffering unless you have already decided - based on some other system - what importance to attach to different kinds of suffering. We don't consider heartbreak the same as we consider physical pain, and this isn't based on the actual consequences or the experienced severity of either kind of suffering.
This approach seems to elevate suffering to the ultimate moral arbiter - life is about inflicting as little suffering as possible while experiencing as little as possible yourself. I don't find that a very convincing view, because it makes one the slave of circumstances. Everything turns into an optimization problem, leaving no room for the self.
Quoting khaled
This seems slightly contradictory to me though. If you don't accept "mankind" in some form as having moral weight, why care at all about the suffering we cause for others, especially those that otherwise would not even exist?
Quoting khaled
I don't really follow the logic here. Why would dependents have some special moral status where you are allowed to do thing to them in the interest of reducing overall suffering, but you cannot do the same thing for non-dependent people?
Quoting khaled
That's assuming a very specific motivation for having kids though, which strikes me as constructed. I am not saying having children for any arbitrary reason is fine. And as with all examples of this kind, it runs into the problem that it's not the parent taking away the choice to either experience something or not. The experience is necessary and unavoidable.
Quoting khaled
If you want to argue that creating people is "forcing" them to exist, you have to treat non-existant potential children as if they exist. This is a "have your cake and eat it" scenario.
Quoting khaled
For example to provide your children with the emotional support they need to fully develop their own self, and to provide the necessary material support that your children will not be so preoccupied with survival that they cannot develop their own interests.
Quoting khaled
I kinda consider it a trap question. There is no way to answer it in a way that cannot be then criticised on the details, and that would lead to discussion of some specific scenario in place of the general question. It's also going to be impossible to give a list of scenarios that is in any way exhaustive, so I prefer to stick to general and vague principles when the discussion is about antinatalism as a general stance - i.e. having children is always bad, regardless of the circumstances.
It simply doesn't. Cognitive empathy is driven by the activation of mirror neurons throughout the brain in response to stimuli before the person in question. An abstract potential future human can not be an object of empathy.
Then why do we find someone who genetically engineers their child to be blind repulsive? What's the drive there? Or are you saying we don't?
Well maybe "When X happens it's ok but otherwise it's not". Any sort of condition at all. Instead of "just decide on a case by case basis".
Quoting Echarmion
That's exaclty what my quote was saying. We find different amounts unacceptable. But there is large agreement on them.
Quoting Echarmion
This. And we decide slightly differently but largely similarly.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't see what the self has to do with anything.
Quoting Echarmion
No, you're free to experience as much suffering as you want to. So it just becomes "You should inflict as little suffering as possible". I don't really think that's a new or unreasonable view. Heck I'd say you'd agree with it if it wasn't put in this context.
Quoting Echarmion
Because humans suffer but "mankind" doesn't. Often when we say something bad happened to "mankind" we mean that something bad happened to certain people. But sometimes not. Sometimes we forget that "mankind" is just a concept that can't suffer. Like in the case of birth. If everyone decides tomorrow to have as few children as possible so as to lead to the extinction of mankind slowly while maintaining quality of life, then "mankind" certainly suffers, but people don't. It is in these scenarios where I find appeals to "mankind's suffering" disgusting. When no person is actually suffering and the concept is treated as a person.
The concept was designed as a shorthand, but when it becomes its own thing you get situations where people do things for "mankind" or "for the country" even though not a single member of mankind or the country actually wants the things. And those are bad situations.
Quoting Echarmion
Because for dependents you are partially responsible for all their suffering. So it is your responsibility to mitigate it as much as possible. For non-dependents you are not responsible for their suffering so it is not your responsibility to mitigate it.
Quoting Echarmion
False. "Forcing" maybe not the right word, but whatever word you want to use it must include: Putting them in a situation where they might suffer that is very difficult to get out for selfish reasons without asking. I find "forcing" fits the bill the best. If you don't like the word then just replace it with "Putting them in a situation where they might suffer that is very difficult to get out for selfish reasons without asking"
Quoting Echarmion
If the discussion of the specific scenario leads to a counterintuitive conclusion that may be a sign that the answer might have to be changed. So if your answer makes it so that having children is wrong on tuesdays, then maybe the answer has to be changed. But I don't see what's weird about participating in that discussion because it is exactly how we test any moral premise ever. We test it till it breaks then we find a better one. Idk why no one is willing to do that from your side.
I'm starting to see similarities of these bad arguments with Trump supporters who by saying something a certain amount of times somehow makes a claim true. So, Trump keeps saying the elections were stolen. Pro-natalists keep saying that one cannot consider the harms that may befall a future individual because they will only exist in the future and don't exist currently. If they know what they are doing, it's a red herring. If they don't, it's simply a denial that one can affect a person in the future (that "will" exist rather than someone that "does" exist now). Somehow future tense doesn't compute with these people and their arguments suffer for it. I suspect it's more of the former.. they know it's true, but red herring is easier to obfuscate and put up a smokescreen for a couple posts to not argue the heart of the suffering/consent argument.
That seems right to me. What is family planning after all? A conscientious potential parent will at least consider what kind of life they can offer that possible child as a parent. Does this make sense to everyone? Humans have vivid imaginations. We project into the future constantly. It's easy to imagine a person who on some level would love to be parent worrying about whether creating that child would be a selfish act.
Of course. I tend to agree.. Red herring it is. They pick and choose when this "no actual child" makes a difference it seems. For universal antinatalism.. it does apparently, but not for other considerations.
I think resistance to antinatalism is more of a gut-level thing that finds reasons after the fact. But I don't see how the issue in general escapes being dominated by an overall judgment on life.
I can imagine a character bent on the elimination of suffering. He would wipe out not only humanity but also all life on earth. It would be best to destroy the planet too, in case life were to evolve again. There's a kind of 'insane' rationality at play in this idea. Put everything to sleep, out of...love?
I'm not this character, but I do have an antinatalism streak. Lately it occurred to me that a contempt for vulnerability might be at play. Also an outraged tenderness. The genius of traditional visions of afterlife is that they ultimately negate all suffering. Temporary pain (which may be intense and long-lasting) is intuitively-emotionally if not logically justified by an eternity of safety, dignity, pleasure. It makes sense that the original Schopenhauer with his atheism would also see the guilt in reproduction.
Well I consider morality to be on a case by case basis. There is a general principle according to which you decide, but there isn't a canon of commandments like in the Bible. You just look at a situation and apply the categorical imperative to your best ability.
Quoting khaled
It's not just about amounts though. Causing heartbreak is more acceptable than slapping someone across the cheek, even if the latter is a much shorter amount of much less severe pain.
Quoting khaled
But then the question you'd have to ask yourself is why, in this specific case, you decide significantly differently from the vast majority of people.
If you agree there is a value judgement involved here, you'd have to ask yourself why we shouldn't treat the suffering entailed by living the same as the suffering entailed by heartbreak. Unfortunate, but not morally wrong to inflict outside of very narrow circumstances.
Quoting khaled
The self is the reason we consider killing a cow to eat it morally permissible so long as the cow doesn't unduly suffer, but killing a human isn't.
In other words the self is exactly the reason why morality is not simply about avoiding suffering.
Quoting khaled
I do think it's unreasonable though, because I can clearly come up with plenty of examples where I'd value other concerns higher than the suffering involved. "Inflict as little suffering as possible" is a purely instrumental command, it only tells you how to go about doing things, not what things to do.
We put people in jail not based on some calculation of the suffering this will avoid, but based on more abstract notion of respect for the law. We may dress this up as a decision to avoid some vague amount of suffering in the future, but I consider that an ex-post rationalisation.
Quoting khaled
Fair enough, I can see your point. But I do think that in order to consider empathy more than just an emotional response to perceived suffering, you must consider there to be some shared quality that all humans have. Something that binds you to humans in general not just to specific humans you might know. Otherwise, why worry about them?
Quoting khaled
Where does that responsibility come from though? Biological children are not the only kind of dependent there is. So it can't be merely that the suffering was caused by the biological parents.
Quoting khaled
I don't think it must include that at all. The word "them" refers to nothing here. Noone is "put into a situation" by existing. Existing is the situation.
It's as wrong as saying a stone is forced to obey the laws of gravity. It's not. The stone is part of the laws of gravity, it's not in some way separate.
Quoting khaled
This doesn't follow though. It's only true for your position, because your position is absolute - having children is always wrong. It is this refuted if we can find a single example where having children is not wrong.
The same isn't true for the reverse. If having children is wrong on Tuesdays, that doesn't affect my position at all. I only need a single second of a single day to make the point.
Quoting khaled
Because it's irrelevant whether or not any specific justification of having children holds up to scrutiny. You'd have to establish that no justification is possible. This cannot be done by going through examples, because the number of examples is indefinite.
Nah.. there are crazies on all sides I suppose, but most antinatalists are person-affecting in some way. That is to say, it is the individual (who would have been born) who one is preventing from suffering and not an aggregated mass of suffering being prevented. I agree, aggregate utilitarianism (I guess the most cliched version) can lead to these kind of conclusions, but most antinatalists again, are person affecting. For example, much of my view rests on the dignity of the individual that would be born that is compromised by overlooking the suffering one is unnecessarily causing for them, the imposition/game that is "forced" (use whatever word you want there for this notion) on them, and the consent that can never be gained (vial not existing prior to birth). These are things overlooking the dignity of the future individual, and usually for either a selfish reason (I prefer to have kids) or an abstract cause (this is good for the country, humanity in general, etc.).
If you can prevent the suffering that the crime induced, would you? Or is the "game" of crime and punishment just something that should be played out to get a "higher meaning"?
I like the dignity theme, and I remember it occuring to me many years ago that 'life is an indignity.' One is thrown absurdly into an unchosen situation with responsibilities that one could not consent to.
But we learn to think that way as part of a human community, so that our culture allows us to articulate the violation in a way that other animals can't. And we have to have the fantasy or goal of dignity in the first place.
If we were less proud, we might not notice the indignity. If we weren't future-and-status-oriented individuals, we'd probably forgive a certain amount of pain. With humans there is humiliation.
Difficult question for some: If one could somehow know that one's child would be gloriously happy and successful for 30 years and then die suddenly and painlessly (without expecting it)...would one consent to the birth? I'd be tempted to consent. His or her life could be known ahead of time as a dream worth having. (Implicit here is an aesthetic justification of existence, and of course what is promised is well above the expected value of the random variable that we actually have to work with.)
Exactly! You can stop right there :).
Quoting five G
I mean, that is simply how humans operate in general. Humans use linguistic-conceptual frameworks and socio-cultural enculturation to be able to function in the world. So this is just a truism of how we operate, not a declaration of how humility is some sort of arbitrary concept.
Quoting five G
I would argue that any existence that is not a perfectly ideal world (for that individual being born) is probably a decision one person shouldn't make on another's behalf.
OK, but here we are within language appealing to concepts like dignity. Let me zero in. Human suffering has an extra dimension, made possible by abstract thought. We can experience the world as a meaningless nightmare, where 'meaningless' names a recognized absence of some kind.
We develop human notions of fair play and justice, and it's only then possible to see life itself as a kind of injustice or foul play. Other animals just hurt, but humans can see the absurdity of their pain, perhaps as they look forward to an inescapable personal death. For people in our culture, the 'point' is to become an Individual, which is to say irreplaceable and therefore genuinely mortal --unlike the interchangeable beavers who repeat, repeat, repeat the beaver destiny.
Yes I can agree with this. Humans have an extra "layer" of suffering based on our conceptual framework way of operating.
I can see where you are coming from. Any pain chosen for another is a violation in some pure theoretical sense.
My response is just the suggestion that human thinking is deeply probabilistic and approximate. So I can see that you are right in some sense, but an almost perfect life still pulls my heartstrings. That suggests that humans are willing to pay for pleasure with pain, and I project that onto this possible child. It's as if I am shopping for them and decide that I found a good enough deal.
Of course we don't get such assurances.
Yes, though not, of course, at any price. But this is because causing the suffering is a crime, so we have already established that it has special significance.
I wouldn't try to prevent suffering by heartbreak.
I'm not sure what you are saying, because based on this response, you are indeed agreeing with the sentiment (at least) of antinatalism. Surely you can at least see how antinatalists see creating the unnecessary suffering as the crime that is being prevented. They don't see the logic in some deeper "meaning" in letting the "crime and punishment" be carried out.
Haha yes! Good analogy.
Including breaking up with someone that loves you, for example?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, I can see how you arrive at the conclusion. It just seems to me you're thereby forgetting just why suffering matters. You're treating suffering like metaphysical evil, that needs to be eradicated "just because".
From where I stand, suffering (and perhaps even more importantly the fear of suffering) matters insofar as it keeps individuals from realising themselves.
And this indeed is the heart of our difference. I don't presume to "teach" another person a lesson of suffering as a goal that needs to be played out by that other person.
Quoting Echarmion
Whoa whoa whoa. Where did the categorical imperative come from. Didn't take you for a Kantian.
But see? You were able to specifiy a bit more than "Oh you just decide on a case by case basis". Now we know that you think lying is always wrong for example (categorical imperative).
Quoting Echarmion
And we tend to largely agree on which "types" are more prominent than others too.
Quoting Echarmion
Because one is justified and one isn't. And I already went into what justified means.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't see how they contradict. Why can't you have your self and ALSO think that one ought to inflict as little unjustified harm as possible?
Quoting Echarmion
I'd say the latter comes from the former. If putting people in jail caused more harm than not putting people in jail, we wouldn't have a law that puts people in jail. And I'd say "respect for the law" is precisely the kind of dangerous concept as "mankind". It is a shorthand, not a thing to be treated as its own entity.
Or else you get situations where you're "respecting the law" by putting people in jails that radically increases chances of repeat offences and doesn't actually reform behavior at all. Forgetting that the whole point of jail was to reform and to protect the population, people choose to instead "respect the law" and mistreat inmates resulting in repeat offences and no one benefiting. and A lose-lose situation, and why I hate appeals to "respecting" or "preserving" fictions over people.
Quoting Echarmion
Sure. But that's not "mankind". And saying that all humans share a certain quality does not lead to the conclusion that mankind should survive. Putting value in "mankind" itself is required to say that.
Quoting Echarmion
For the case of biological parents it's pretty clear. I would say you can also take on responsibilites for yourself. So for example, a life guard has a responsibility to save drowning people even though those people would drown if left alone and the lifeguard wasn't around. But a pedestrian doesn't. The difference is that the lifeguard has taken on a responsibility the pedestrian didn't. And I think these responsibilities are socially mediated. If you want the benefits the society gives you (in the case of the life-guard, money) then you have to respect the responsibilites it places upon you.
Quoting Echarmion
Not really for me but the situation required to say that having children is wrong is basically impossible. It would be when someone would suffer so much from being childless that their suffering is comparable to the suffering of their children across their entire lifetimes.
Quoting Echarmion
Sigh, I'm so tired of this argument. Ok let's take this to its logical conclusion. There is no "them" to put in any situations. Therefore if a parent genetically engineers their child to be blind even though they would have been fine otherwise that parent did nothing wrong. Since they didn't harm anyone. Since there was no "them". You and I both disagree with this. I don't want to keep going around trying to find the metaphysical setup that you will find acceptable so I'll ask you to resolve the conflict.
Malicious genetic engineering is wrong, yet there is no one being harmed. How? Why is it wrong then?
Quoting Echarmion
But if you think that having children should not be affected by the day of the week and at the same time you find that having children on tuesday is wrong, then something is wrong with your system. And I am sure we can agree that whether or not having children is wrong should not depend on the day of the week. Therefore it must be some other principle gone whack.
Quoting Echarmion
False. I can justify having children by saying "The preservation of mankind is the ultimate goal". Boom, done. Problem is, I don't agree with that premise. All I'm trying to find out is whether or not you have an internally consistent system. As in, by applying your principles we don't end up with ridiculous things like "Murder is ok" or "Theft is good".
You have tried repeatedly to find faults in my system by saying things like "What about surgery" etc. So far I think I've shown it's internally consistent. What I'm trying to find out is whether or not yours is internally consistent WITHOUT relying on premises that I disagree with such as "The preservation of mankind is the ultimate goal". Because I have failed at finding such a system so far.
Some people dislike it because it's 'playing God', some because it might lead to a form of genetic cleansing, but I think mostly we're supposed to love our children for who they are, not make them what we love.
And no one is actually concerned with the consequences for the child themselves? Sure....
By that logic we should be just as disgusted by someone who genetically engineers their child to get rid of their genetic illnesses and to make them geniuses with perfect athletic genes as the guy who genetically engineered his child to be blind. But we're clearly not. So, again, I believe we have a natural instinct to project onto the future and actually care about potential future people. How else do you explain the difference in reaction?
You seem fine with presuming to put words into other people's mouths though.
Quoting khaled
This often misunderstood example was not actually about the categorical imperative at all, but about responsibility for unforseen consequences.
Quoting khaled
You'll have to forgive me for not remembering the specifics.
Quoting khaled
I didn't say that they were necessarily contradictory. But there are situations where they lead to clearly incompatible results. Someone who is concerned about self-realization will allow people to make certain decisions, even if others find them stupid, and even if they involve the risk of suffering. We do allow people to engage in very dangerous sports for example, even though the overall suffering of the world might be much reduced if everyone refrained from doing it.
Quoting khaled
Just historically speaking, this is manifestly false. You can maybe claim this about some especially well working justice systems, like in the nordic countries. You certainly can't make the claim for the US, or any early 20th-century european country.
Quoting khaled
But there is also an opposite danger involved here: "reforming behaviour" can also be understood in the way China does it - turning into people into nice, conforming parts of society. An approach to justice that is solely concerned with protection and rehabilitation leads to this as a logical consequence - a consequence some early 20th century criminologists actually arrived at. So while I agree that one of the goals of criminal justice should be to prevent repeat offenses, another goal needs to be to have sentences that are commensurate to the crime. And that of course implies that the sentence is more than merely a tool for rehabilitation, and instead an actual punishment - intentionally inflicted suffering for the purpose of re-establishing equality.
Quoting khaled
True. But it is suggestive of the idea that the whole of interconnected humans is more than just the sum of it's parts, and that in some way, it ought to continue. Perhaps that's just the biological imperatives speaking though. The actualy justification for having children does not need to be so lofty. I'd consider it sufficient if your children can contribute to a future society of freedom, irrespective of whether they're necessary for the survival of the species.
Quoting khaled
And I just continue that thought to conclude that, since responsibilities are sociall mediated, rather than attaching to mere physical fact, causation is a common starting point for responsibility, but it's not a necessary or even a sufficient one.
Quoting khaled
How would someone ever know?
Quoting khaled
It's wrong because it's malicious. The intention makes it wrong. Not the result. The child is indeed not harmed, because this child was always blind and will always be blind and could never, under any circumstances, be any other way.
Whether or not some act is moral cannot be answered without knowing according to what intention, based on what guiding principle, it was taken.
Quoting khaled
Yes, but this kind of reductio only works so long as we're on common ground, which we're not for the most part in this discussion. You consider things absurd that I don't, and vice versa.
Quoting khaled
Internal consistency is not the same as disagreeing with a premise. It would be a sign of lack of internal consistency if you would agree with my premises but still disagreed with the result. You won't find a system that has premises that you agree on and is internally consistent, because if this were the case, we'd have the same opinion.
Not sure what you are saying.
I am saying your representation of what I said was either mistaken or dishonest.
So what is your position then?
You already quoted it. It just didn't say anything like what you then wrote.
You said:
Quoting Echarmion
I don't get how I can't take from this that it is okay to enable conditions of suffering of the future individual to occur. Also, what I think to be wrong is to put some issue like "realizing themselves" is some principle for which needs to take place above and beyond the indignity of causing conditions of someone else's suffering. Unnecessarily putting someone else in a position of suffering so they can "realize themselves" is a strange position to me. It using people for what YOU deem to be "good" for that person. Simply not procreating doesn't impose anything on anyone and certainly keeps in mind the dignity of the person who one would have enabled the conditions of suffering.
This indeed goes back to that paternalistic idea that other people need to live life out for YOUR idea of what is valuable for THEM to experience.
That's not, however, what you initially said.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I did not say that people need to be born in order to realize themselves. Though if I did say that, then the suffering would be literally necessary, so I don't understand your criticism either way.
What I said is that what is moral and what is not is not based on some quantification of suffering caused by a given course of action. Avoiding suffering is only an instrumental goal. The ultimate goal is a state of freedom, not a state of no suffering.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Obviously it imposes duties on people - not to procreate. But more to the point, I don't see how someone who will never exist can have dignity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Having a moral philosophy and acting on it isn't paternalistic.
That is my criticism.. Using people's suffering for some other goal that you have for them.
Quoting Echarmion
This sounds like doublespeak.. work sets you free shit. One avoids suffering if one has to chose between suffering or non-suffering (unless one is a masochist I guess). But intentionally putting people in positions where you know they will suffering X amount (a lifetime's worth of individual instances actually) in order for some abstract cause of "freedom" is what I am saying is wrong to do on someone else's behalf.
Quoting Echarmion
Oh this one again.. the person who will exist if you procreate won't exist? II guess you can say the indignity of being caused to suffer. That you did not enable suffering, thus violating the dignity of the person that will be born, by overlooking the fact that you are also causing the conditions for their suffering on their behalf, if they were to be born.
Quoting Echarmion
Having a moral philosophy is fine. Acting on a philosophy that affects others, by causing them to suffer for an abstract cause like, "realizing themselves" and "freedom" is not.
Ah, then i think the misunderstanding may be that you think I want other people to suffer so they can self-realize, but all I am saying that self-realisation is more important than suffering.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Neurologically simple Animals avoid suffering if they can. Humans do sometimes, but hardly all the time.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, well, I knew that. But that doesn't convince me that my own position is wrong.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No. The person who will exist if you procreate - will not exist if you don't. So, if you don't procreate, they won't exist. And hence they won't have a dignity to protect.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Then stop writing posts that talk about your moral philosophy, including anti-natalism, this instant, or be branded a hyporcite.
No I don't think you want that necessarily, I still think it is wrong to put any cause above unnecessary (unprovoked) suffering when it comes to making decisions on other people's behalf.
Quoting Echarmion
Yeah, I don't care if you do it to yourself. And obviously now that you created a being, you have to make decisions for it not to suffer a lot more. Certainly starting the suffering cycle all together was the wrong part though, not the "taking care of once born".
Quoting Echarmion
That's okay..then dignity wasn't violated. All that matters there.
Quoting Echarmion
I am not forcing you to follow or read them. Certainly I didn't cause your very existence where this suffering for you has taken place ;). Don't worry though, you'll suffer again and again and again..
Right, and I disagree. I don't see how your position could consistently avoid dystopian scenarios where everyone is forced to conform to some exact code of conduct so as to avoid all possible suffering for others.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Non-sequitur. Do you disagree that humans don't always try to avoid suffering?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I just wonder whether or not you realise that you're doing at least as much preaching as everyone else here, and that there is no difference between you arguing for your position and I arguing for mine. Noone of us has any more or less right to influence other people's thoughts.
In the case of heartbreak you are not forced to endure the pain, you accepted the risk by going into the relationship. In the case of children, they never chose to go into life, so you must minimize their suffering as their parent which calls for sometimes making them suffer now for less suffering later.
Quoting Echarmion
And when did I say we shouldn’t do that? The only case when we shouldn’t is with dependents. If your child suggests taking up parkour with a bunch of shady kids 15 blocks away from home you have a responsibility to stop him as a parent. Your responsibility is, more precisely, to minimize his suffering. Which probably means you’d try to fit in his interest in the least dangerous way.
What is absolutely wrong though is forcing people who are not even your dependents to play dangerous games. I’m sure we can agree on that. But as I said, everyone is free to risk their own suffering as much as they want, just don’t risk anyone else suffering unless they’re your dependents and you’re doing it for their own good.
Quoting Echarmion
Sure. Rather I should have said “The latter should come from the former”
Quoting Echarmion
False. It does not suggest that at all.
Quoting Echarmion
And this is another non sequitor. “More than the sum of its parts” doesn’t lead to “should continue”. Again, you’re just shoving that part in there. “Should continue” is its own premise.
Quoting Echarmion
Agreed, causation is not necessary for responsibility, as you can get it in other ways (socially mediated). But it is almost sufficient in my view with the conditions I outlined in the car example.
Quoting Echarmion
Which is what makes it pseudo impossible. Very hard claim to reasonably prove.
Quoting Echarmion
Well no it isn’t. Malicious definition by google: Intending to do harm. There is no one being harmed here. I called it malicious because I (reasonably) recognize that we should consider these “potential people”. But that’s just naming. And you think they shouldn’t be considered at all, since they’re not harmed.
What if the intention of the parent was just purely preferential? He just likes blind people for some reason. Just a fancy. Now is it ok? Surely not. But why?
Quoting Echarmion
I’m hoping we can find some common ground. We both agree that genetically engineering people to be blind is wrong for example. Though you haven’t explained why, and your principles seem to lead to a contradiction. Since they would lead to it being ok, but you think it’s wrong.
Quoting Echarmion
If I agree with the premises, and the logic, I must agree with the result. Maybe you have a way to get “having children is acceptable”, logically, without relying on premises I disagree with, that I haven’t heard yet. I’m not omniscient, I don’t know every argument there is. If you did find such a way, I’d probably not be an AN anymore. But so far I haven’t found that way.
Do you mean e.g. having an abortion if your child is very likely to have a debilitating disease? The consequences for the child are not real referents if you do. There is no moral good for the child. This is acceptable to me, and knowing that your potential child has a high risk of such a disease is a good reason: since the cause, degree and nature of the risk is understood. But that is a rational decision: we cannot possibly have a natural instinct for it since the possibility of acting on that instinct is only decades old. Which I think answers:
Quoting khaled
Yes and that would be impossible to keep once born, I agree so is a non-starter. Certainly, one can simply not procreate. Not an impossibility or even hard. In principle though, when you have the chance to not cause harm on someone else's behalf good idea to do not do that, and certainly not one that causes a whole life time worth of harmful experiences.
Quoting Echarmion
Not at all.. It's not about what you do to yourself but others. If you want to make a decision to cause harm to yourself, go ahead. I don't assume because some people do this, I therefore should do it on behalf of another person, just the same as if you like a certain game you shouldn't force someone else to play it, or if you like some harmful activity others should be a part of it to cause you insist.
Quoting Echarmion
We have a right to voice our ideas and arguments. It is not our right to force others to follow it. Similarly, it is not okay to force others into harmful situations because we insist it is good for them.. Also, can we skip your obvious reply about parents et al as I have addressed it? But go ahead..
Sigh. I wasn’t arguing there was.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Why is it a good reason? There is no moral good for the child. You’re not doing anything good by having the abortion. So it must be that you think the future child’s suffering is a bad thing. Which is the instinct I’m referring to.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Not really. There are people who choose not to have kids in war torn countries for example and not purely out of scarcity, but also because they don’t deem the standards of living good enough for a child. And this is true of all times. It’s almost as if they actually consider the future child’s well-being and decide based on it that right now is not the time to have a child because the child would suffer too much, and not just because of scarcity.
Right, but it isn't an instinct: it's a rational decision based on abstract information, not an automatic reaction to instantaneous environmental stimuli.
Quoting khaled
Likewise, war significantly reduces the possibility of sexual intercourse.
The biological underpinnings of sociality are not based on guesswork. They are based on empirical physiological and neurological data about people reacting to various stimuli. You can't just make up instincts to put antinatalism on a natural footing: the data doesn't support the conclusion and the premise is clearly incompatible with natural selection.
So when I cringe when hearing about the guy who genetically engineered his child to be blind that’s not an automatic reaction? I had to carefully deliberate to find something wrong with his behavior? Nah, that’s not what happened.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sure. I would say if you looked for it, you could very easily establish the existence of a physiological and neurological reaction that people have when it comes to potential future people. We cringe when we hear about one being blinded for instance.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Cite me the data proving the non-existence of a reaction when talking about future people.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Not really. It makes sense for us to be able to consider future people so that we can know when and when not to have a child. And to take into account the actual likely state of the child doesn't seem to be an extinction-causing move.
And besides, “incomparable with natural selection” is not an end all be all. It is plausible that we’d have instincts that hinder our own survival. Natural selection is not a done deal, we’re always evolving, and it’s possible we have instincts that don’t actually help but hinder that will eventually “evolve out”.
I was talking about the decision to not have a child with a high risk of a debilitating disease. I would wager in such a case that the instinct is quite the opposite, requiring a rational decision to abort.
As for someone genetically engineering a blind kid, sure, my gut reaction is that it is wicked, but not wicked on the grounds that he had a child that might be born blind, rather wicked on the grounds that he deliberately blinded his own kid.
Quoting khaled
Again, believing that it's true and therefore the evidence must exist is not empiricism, that's Trumpism.
Quoting khaled
Are you aware of the difference between evidence supporting something and evidence proving or disproving something? If so, you are being rather intellectually dishonest here.
Quoting khaled
Yes, really. It is a physical and logical impossibility that nature could have selected a gene for antinatalism. This is really a bad route for defending AN, a total nonstarter.
He didn't though. Don't you see? There is no kid! He didn't blind anybody! This is what I said a while ago by the way. I said that our empathy can extend to "future people" and you claimed it can't, yet here you are clearly extending empathy to "future people".
You have to consider "future people" if you want the sentence "he blinded his own kid" to make sense. And you don't consider them. When I say "giving birth to someone is risking harming them" you say there is no person to harm so it's ok. But when I say "He genetically engineered his child to be blind" suddenly there is a kid that was blinded. How come?
So you have to either start considering harm done to "future people" as real harm that one is responsible for, in whichcase you have to come up with a new way to justify having kids. OR you have to come up with a new explanation for why you have that gut reaction. In whichcase you'd be coming up with a new "natural instinct" that can lead to AN. I already proposed to you that AN comes out of empathy for "future people" and you claimed that such a thing was impossible, so what exactly did you just do here? What's the instinct at play if not empathy that produces this gut reaction?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
You just confirmed it:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
There is no kid right now. Yet your gut reaction was that it is wicked. As if you were able to consider the future child as some sort of entity. Else there is nothing to blind. OR there is some other natural instinct at work here. In whichcase AN is natural.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
You provided neither. You made a claim that:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I assumed by that you meant that someone actually went and did a study and found no such gut reactions occuring. If all you meant to say was "there is no data to support the conclusion" sure. I don't have any. But "the data doesn't support the conclusion" is misleading when you have no data.
Though I do know that both of us seem to agree that there exists such a gut reaction as we both have it. So I would say it's reasonable to assume that the same will be found in others.
I meant once the kid was born. Happy to agree that we judge the father before the fact too, based on his intent. That's consistent with the four core mechanisms of our social behaviour:
1. empathy
2. altruism
3. counter-empathetic responses
4. intolerance toward antisocial behaviour
The notion of empathising with fictional characters isn't absurd, but it's based on present stimulus. Ryan O'Neal's heartbreak in Love Story is no less poignant for being a cynical audience manipulation. We do feel sorry for him.
But empathising with things that don't exist and have no representation is a bizarre idea. Why let facts have anything to do with it in that case? "And why did you assault the victim?" "Because he killed Jenny-Wenny Classy-Lassy." "Who the fuck is that?" "Oh, someone I made up once "
I can agree that the defendant might construct a narrative about a fictional individual and make himself empathise with her, but we're back in the realm of derangement. And it is far from natural: it is the height of artificiality.
Quoting khaled
Yes. That is what I meant by the statement:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
The data supports (not proves) other things, but it doesn't support (or disprove) that.
Quoting khaled
Yes, but there's a difference between our reactions to someone intending ill (4) and someone suffering ill (1). And they have very different physiological responses. Empathetic responses, free from counter-empathetic ones (which really should be in the list), trigger the production of oxytocin which in turn prompts care for the subject (2). It is not the sort of reactive aggressive response we have toward someone trying to behave in some either fundamentally or conventionally antisocial way.
Then you're just wrong. He did not, in fact, blind his kid when his kid was born. So it must have been something else that triggered the gut reaction. What is it?
I bet if I say anything along the lines of "Giving birth to someone is harming them after they're born" it'll be dismissed on the basis of being factually incorrect. So I will do the same with your statement. If you want to keep your statment "The parent blinded the child after the child was born by genetically engineering them to be blind" then "Giving birth to someone is harming them after they are born" will make sense by the same token. You can't have one without the other.
You either consider the negative consequences of actions done before someone's birth as "harm" or you don't. If you do both statments make sense. If you don't neither does and you have to explain why you got that gut reaction. Because billy's parent did not blind billy after billy was born. So you can't have meant that.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Difference is Jenny-Wenny Classy-Lassy will never exist but Blind-Billy will. I'm talking about empathising with things that will exist. Because that is what you just did with blind billy.
That may be a good enough heuristic in many cases, but that doesn't make it a convincing principle.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But you apparently do not think this is because we respect other people's right to make choices for themselves. It's all only about reducing suffering, except in any of the cases where suffering doesn't seem all that important, like when we allow people to drive personal motor vehicles just for their own convenience even though doing so massively increases the risk of causing suffering for other people.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But that's just the claim you make. We aren't forced to agree with it.
Quoting khaled
That's not really how emotions work. You can't decide to not be heartbroken.
Quoting khaled
I still don't see why you say that we should care about suffering for future people and dependants, but for independent adults only their choice matters, and the suffering caused is suddenly no longer relevant.
Quoting khaled
But everything from driving your car to going mountain climbing risks other people suffering. If that was really the standard, we'd have to all lock ourselves into our rooms and interact as little as possible.
Quoting khaled
Perhaps. It might be one of those things human brains just tend to associate.
Quoting khaled
This would seem to imply that at least the ethics of reducing suffering are not monolithic, i.e. they aren't derived from a single principle, but rather multiple competing ones.
Quoting khaled
Isn't it kind of a problem to have a moral system that requires things that are practically impossible?
Quoting khaled
You can intent to harm people in the future, including people who don't even exist yet. Intent always references a future state of affairs. This is really not all that complicated. You can consider the interests of future people. You can have (one-sided) duties to them. You can intend to harm them.
You just can't treat them as if they already existed before you decided to cause them to exist. Which you do if you claim that, by making them exist, you're forcing them to suffer.
Quoting khaled
We can compare two possible existences - the one of the seeing child and the one of the blind child. Not from the perspective of either of the children, but from the perspective of everyone else. So we can ask ourselves whether the principle that "I should act according to my fancy when deciding on the capabilities of my future children" is a moral one. Can we want that to be a universal principle? I'd say no. It seems very obvious that doing so would incur various problems for anyone around all the blind, deaf, etc. children. It would keep these children from helping or inspiring people they might otherwise have.
Quoting khaled
I think the most basic thing we'd need to agree on for you to consider my view convincing is that choice is more important than suffering - that what life is about is being who you are, not just trying to get it over with as painlessly as possible.
For you. Just like you should not make a decision that affects a whole life time on someone else's behalf, you should not presume to know what others think on the matter.
Quoting Echarmion
You know my position regarding why this is different between the decision to start a life and already living in a life. De facto forced conditions living in a certain type of society creates these situations. They are unavoidable. It's just like, it's unavoidable really to either keep living to some degree of comfort slowly die trying to hack it in the wilderness trying to avoid causing others suffer. Of course there is one decision where I certainly can guarantee a person will not suffer from my decision.
Quoting Echarmion
I liken it to veganism.. They can make their argument, but cannot force others to abide by it.
That’s not what I meant. I meant you accepted the risk of heartbreak when going into a relationship. You weren’t forced into said relationship so you’re weren’t forced into heartbreak. There was a course of action you could have chosen that doesn’t lead to heartbreak. Children at no point accepted the risk of harm. At no point did they have a course of action that would allow them not to suffer at all.
Quoting Echarmion
Because in one case you’re responsible for their suffering since you caused it and you knew it was gonna happen (children) and in the other you have nothing to do with the independent adult’s decision so you’re not responsible to reduce their suffering in any way. Only responsible not to increase it.
Quoting Echarmion
False and I explained this. Sigh. If I don’t drive my car I won’t get to work. I NEED to drive my car. Therefore we do a calculation: Is the harm I avoid by driving comparable to the harm I am likely to cause by driving? If the answer is no (ie, I’m a bad driver, or I’m drunk, etc) then I shouldn’t drive. If the answer is yes then I can drive.
Sure everything you do risks harming others but you are also part of the calculation. You are part of “others”.
Quoting Echarmion
Not really. I am an AN because the requirements to have kids in my system are practically impossible to satisfy.
Quoting Echarmion
Please explain to me how it implies that because I don’t see the connection. Or more importantly, the significance of this observation were it true.
Quoting Echarmion
Agreed but that’s not what’s happening here. Billy’s parent is not plotting to blind billy at his 15th birthday. No. Billy’s parent is genetically engineering Billy to be blind. There is no billy at any point to be harmed here. If you want to say Billy got harmed or blinded you have to treat billy as if:
Quoting Echarmion
Which is exactly what you do when you claim that by genetically engineering them to be blind you blind them. Just look at the structure of the sentence. “By genetically engineering billy to be blind you blinded billy”. “You blinded billy” clearly assumes the existence of Billy. You reject this. You say we can’t assume this. So why is genetically engineering someone to be blind wrong. Because “intending to harm people in the future including those that do not exist yet” is FACTUALLY not what’s happening here. Billy’s parent has no such intentions. In fact he intends to be a model parent for his blind son.
Quoting Echarmion
Agreed. Ok now what? Because that doesn’t lead to your view. What WOULD lead to your view is something like “Choice is more important than suffering therefore I am allowed to inflict suffering on others so that they have choices”. I don’t think either of us can agree with that one.
You conflate your personal philosophy about how one should live with how one should treat others. I can consider that there is more to life than minimizing suffering. But it takes an extra step to then say “Therefore I am allowed to inflict suffering on others if I deem that it would maximize their choice”
I have no problem with you not minimizing your own suffering. I have a problem with you purposely choosing a course of action that doesn’t minimize the suffering of others when an alternative was available (again, you are part of the calculation). When they didn’t ask you to choose that.
Quoting Echarmion
Assume the parent of said child did this. And answered “Yes, this should be a universal principle”. Now what? Is it ok? Also I like how here you don’t consider the perspective of the child even though a paragraph ago you were saying that poor billy got blinded. Which is it? Did billy get harmed or not? Because if he did then you harm someone by giving birth to them. If he didn’t then you have to explain why genetically engineering someone to be blind is wrong.
It's difficult not to ascribe this to wilful misunderstanding to ill defend a bad point. We were discussing the judgment of the act, not the act itself.
Quoting khaled
Yes, barring accidents, that is the difference. Nonetheless they have in common that whatever character one is empathising with is imagined, not real. Pointing out where analogies differ is not sufficient to invalidate them. I'm not btw arguing that one shouldn't imagine the blinded child in particular, rather that it belongs to the class of non-existent things one cannot argue we *should* or even *can* empathise with.
Tricking oneself into feeling something, much as film and TV producers do to us, is not a justification because, if it were, truth is out the window and we're in definite Trump territory where outrage can be manufactured based on imaginings.
Imagining the suffering of a non-existent being and then arguing that it's existence, on that basis, should be averted is circular, again reminiscent of Republicans telling voters that there must have been voter fraud then reporting in Congress that voters have concerns about the election. It is dangerous territory in which otherwise unthinkable acts can be justified by imagining oneself into a rage against anything.
One thing that is most certainly absent from your argument is the suffering of the child whose future eexistence is apparently an argument for AN. If the child lives a perfectly happy life, doesn't matter right? He should not have been allowed to be born. This is even worse: we're supposed to empathise with the imagined suffering of an imagined thing and then use this as a justification for disallowing a real thing. Reality is disavowed; fiction is paramount.
This is such a terrible argument. Trying to compare the prevention of a future sufferer with Trump political tactics. Any sane person understands that one can consider the state of well being of a future person. Because the person will exist in the future and is not present now, doesn't negate this consideration.
If you can know that the child will live a perfectly happy life then having them is fine. It doesn't even have to be perfect, if you can know the child will find their own life worthwhile it's fine. Problem is you can't.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I just replied. False.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I took this to mean that you mean "Billy's parent blinded billy by genetically engineering him to be blind". That statement is false. There is no billy to be blinded.
Let's say the parent comes from a religion where blind people go to heaven and everyone else goes to hell or something. Let's say his intentions are benign. We also know that in the case of billy, there exists no one to be harmed. Why, then, is genetically engineering billy to be blind wrong? You can't say "Because he is blinding his child", he isn't, as at no point was there a non-blind child that was then blinded. And you can't say he had bad intentions either. So why is it wrong?
More specifically, how can it be wrong in such a way that having children in general is still fine?
Heartbreak isn't limited to relationships though, is it?
Quoting khaled
Wouldn't it be better though, if we decreased it? I don't get why I should stop worrying about suffering just becasue "it's not my responsibility". Seems selfish and jaded.
Quoting khaled
This supposed calculation is imaginary though. You're not really doing anything like comparing the suffering of the two scenarios. How would you even go about doing that? How much suffering does taking the bus or the train cause you? 10, 100, 167? How much suffering is the potential of a car crash worth? Does it matter whether you just got your license vs. having 20 years of experience?
It's no more practical than trying to figure out whether your future child will experience more happiness than suffering. So I'd argue it's not just having kids that you cannot actually justify. It's damn near anything.
Quoting khaled
Well if causality is sometimes almost enough, but responsibility needs to be additionally socially mediated, and sometimes it's only socially mediated without causality at all, then the system has two mutually exclulsive principles - reponsibility is based on empirical facts like causation, and responsibility is based on social mediation. You need at least a third principle to decide when to apply which.
Quoting khaled
Well, I don't say that.
Quoting khaled
I agree. But you do intent to have a blind child instead of one can see. That intent can be malicious, as I explained below.
Quoting khaled
What you're asking here is whether or not what I say is still true if people disagree. Obviously the answer is yes.
Quoting khaled
I think you got me confused for someone else here, because I did not write that.
Quoting khaled
I think I do agre with that. Not in any given case, but yes, in some cases it's ok to cause suffering so that those that suffer (or sometimes even other people) have more choices.
Quoting khaled
I agree with the sentiment here. Obviously one should be humble and careful, well aware of the possibility of making a mistake. But I don't think we need to avoid dangers at all costs either. Nor do you. So the difference between us isn't really that I inflict suffering on other and you don't. It's just that I consider different reasons sufficient.
But that's the point.. do not create dangers for others unnecessarily, when one does not have to. Do not assume people should be forced to play a game because you like it.
We just disagree on the "have to". When do you "have to" do something? Taken literally, you almost never "have to" do something, unless it's a reflex or urge you just cannot control. So what "have to" means comes down to your personal moral code. Some people think they "have to" have children. You may think they're wrong, but telling them "don't do it if you don't have to" doesn't help.
I mean, if it's not a reflex, and the logic of not causing harm/ starting a game on someone else's behalf wont' work, then please let me know what you think will? What's right and what's convincing are often two different things, and unfortunately, sometimes at odds.
The example you gave was about relationships so I assumed we were talking about that.
But I have to say I'm struggling to find an example of heartbreak that does not involve relationships. And I absolutely cannot find an example where you cause someone heartbreak in such a way that they could not have avoided it at all.
Quoting Echarmion
It would be. I didn't say otherwise.
Quoting Echarmion
A second ago you didn't get why we have to worry about suffering at all XD
Quoting Echarmion
We can compare two scenarios and find out which is worse. I don't get why you want to pretend we can't. But no we can't put a number on it. And no it doesn't matter if you just got your license vs 20 years of experiences for this purpose since in both cases you can drive, because you're good enough for that.
I think I am justified to drive if I have a licence. Because otherwise I will literally become homeless. That's a whole lot of harm to inflict on myself when the alternative is to do the relatively safe activity of driving to work. We can make these kinds of comparisons, we may not always agree but we largely do.
Quoting Echarmion
If they contradict, sure. But I struggle to find a scnerio where your job (socially mediated responsibillity) would require you to go around doing harm on purpose (responsibility not to cause harm to others) or vice versa. What kind of job is that? "Thug"?
But I would say if they do contradict then the latter wins out. You are responsible not to cause harm over any social responsibilities.
Quoting Echarmion
And there is the premise that I disagree with. Looks like you can't provide what I'm looking for either.
Quoting Echarmion
If intending to have a blind child instead of one that can see can be malicious intent then so can intending to have a child at all by the same token.
Either "malicious intent" applies to actions that cause harm to people that don't exist yet or it doesn't. If it does then both are cases of malicious intent. If it doesn't then neither is and you have to explain why genetically engineering a child to be blind is wrong.
Quoting Echarmion
In my system it is wrong to inflict more suffering than you alleviate from yourself. Period. We don't agree there.
But also I want to know what the sufficient reason is in the case of having children. Because it can't be for the children themselves, as they don't exist.
This is one I think @Echarmion will have trouble with, cause there isn't.
I think it's sufficient that you want to have children and honestly judge that you can give them the necessary love and resources in order to allow them to become active members of a free and equal society.
That this will involve suffering on the part of the children is not more or less relevant than that the children will be subject to the laws of gravity.
Why is that not relevant? So odd..
As I said before: I still think the game scenario is the best analogy. It's as if after being kidnapped into the game, the person was like "But I prepared you for the game, didn't I?" This seems to be enough to go ahead and create a new player for the game. But is it? Just because you think you have prepared enough, it is okay to initiate someone into the game? That doesn't prevent everything. If someone still doesn't play the game well, doesn't want to play it, or simply has contingent harms that throw off the vision of how the game was to be played, you cannot prevent that because you think you think you prepared them enough. There is a better solution.. just don't initiate them in the game.
The thing is that life isn't a game. Life isn't optional. You can kill yourself, yes, but killing yourself is, ironically enough, also something you do while living.
Your argument, in simple terms, is that people suffer if they exist, and therefore they shouldn't exist. All this other stuff about "forcing people to play games" is just a bunch of false equivalence, because it all treats life as an option for souls floating around in the aether, which it is not.
But claiming that there shouldn't be people because there shouldn't be suffering is propping up suffering as a metaphysical evil, totally abstracted from anyone actually suffering. What's the reason that there shouldn't be suffeirng? Is it because people don't like to suffer? But then, it makes zero sense to delete the people as the solution to the problem, does it?
Hahahaha. . Great option, dude.. Play this game, or kill yourself.. I mean, "It's an option!". :roll: You see how cruel that sounds? Maybe not. :meh: .
Quoting Echarmion
Oh right.. now you are ignoring the argument for why that whole line of reasoning is false, which @khaled has doggedly been trying to explain in every which way. As I myself have said repeatedly.. just because a person doesn't exist now, doesn't mean you cannot consider a person who will exist in the future. You keep ignoring that fact.
Quoting Echarmion
One can simply phrase it thus:
Once someone exists, the suffering that will incur is bad. Don't allow this to happen, if preventing this is possible.
There doesn't need to be a principle for anything regarding the case of non-existence, simply that:
IFF existence with suffering possible, THEN prevent existence with suffering.
As for WHY suffering counts more, my own philosophy is one of overlooking dignity. And same thing here...
ONCE someone is born and that existence has suffering, the dignity of the person has been violated as it was overlooked for a cause that was not considering the person's pain.
Now you can say.. but why is THAT a foundation? You have to stop somewhere.. I cannot open the universe and show you objective morality. If you do not see the injustice of it- the overlooking of someone's pain for another reason, then I don't know what else to say to convince you. If you don't think making someone play a game and then saying go kill yourself if you don't like it, doesn't convince you, I don't know what to say. Obviously you think it is okay to overlook pain for some other reason. I cannot force you to believe this principle. Obviously, you don't care if presuming someone should play a game that causes harm, and imposes challenges is okay on other people's behalf.
At the same token, some people believed slavery was justified, vegans think eating meat and factory farming are bad, etc. etc. Not everyone is convinced.. it doesn't matter what the fundamental principle comes down to. To think that antinatalism is any different than any other moral principle in this regard, would be special pleading to make antinatalism seem extraordinarily out of place with ethical principles. I am not sure @khaled's take on it though.
I mean, what I wrote kinda says the exact opposite, but whatever.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think I'll just not be convinced that the suffering is simply bad.
It is true that there are fundamental principles which can only be understood, but not proven. If this is one, I don't understand it. And if, after 24 pages of debate, I still don't, then I suppose another 24 won't help.
As is your right.. A lot of my posts aren't strictly antinatalism but general philosophical pessimism threads to demonstrate how much suffering we are often overlooking. But it's your right to believe what you want. It's your right to be able to be convinced or not of any particular argument.
I will say, I think you are overlooking the idea of things only applying if someone who could suffer could exist. It's the same thing as rights. If no person exists, rights don't matter. If someone exists, rights matter.
Had to edit that for clarity.
Oh. Interesting. So you’ll actually consider it as a harm. So then: what is the justification?
Quoting Echarmion
So if I feel like shooting someone and I honestly believe I can pay their hospital bills afterwards, and I even agree to take care of them for 18 years afterwards, I can go around shooting people? No that would be ridiculous. So why is it in this case you find it acceptable to cause harm as long as the harm causer is confident he can help out after the fact? What’s the justification?
Quoting Echarmion
That’s not what’s being said. What’s being said is that inflicting suffering without justification is simply bad. You haven’t actually given any examples where you think it’s acceptable short of birth itself which makes me suspect you agree. And moreover, this principle does NOT result from or result in “suffering is always a negative”. I agree with you that suffering is sometimes required (I make a distinction between suffering and pain, and think pain is required, but that’s nitpicky and out of scope of the reply) and that it is necessary for growth. That does not give me the privilege to go around causing it Willy nilly.
What I find good, and what I am justified in causing to others are two separate things
:up:
It’s tiring seeing all these “You didn’t give me a reason to believe your premise” arguments. That’s true of every moral theory, why do you expect it here?
Exactly.
I said suffering, not harm. And as I already wrote, I consider this merely a statement of fact, not a moral issue.
Quoting khaled
I did give you the reason. What else is necessary to turn this reason into a justification?
Quoting khaled
That seems to be saying the same thing. Whether or not we frame this as an exception to a rule or the rule itself doesn't seem to matter.
Quoting khaled
I did. Causing heartbreak. Doing risks sports. Driving a car.
Quoting khaled
You don't have the "privilege" to do things which affect other people "willy nilly". The principle I recognise here is "don't do things willy nilly", not "do not cause suffering".
Quoting khaled
"Good" is a label I attach to actions, not outcomes, so I don't really agree.
Any other situations where someone can cause another to suffer and it’s not a moral issue?
Quoting Echarmion
That the reason should not be useable to make ridiculous things moral. As I said, if A is thinking of causing B to suffer, it is not enough that that A intends to help out B after the fact in order for A to be justified in causing the suffering.
I can’t force you to work at my company no matter how much I like it simply because I reasonably believe that I can really help you out while you’re working there.
Quoting Echarmion
They’re not at all the same. “Suffering is not always bad” is entirely consistent with “Inflicting suffering without consent is always bad”. Therefore they cannot be the same. Again, what you find good and what you’re justified in doing to others are two different things
Quoting Echarmion
What I said was: “You haven’t given an example where causing suffering to others without justification is bad”
Doing risk sports is not causing suffering to anyone but yourself so idk what it’s even doing here
Driving a car is justified because otherwise you yourself would be getting harmed comparably. Same with heartbreak in most cases. People break up because they don’t want to be in the relationship anymore.
Quoting Echarmion
Where is the line that defines when causing suffering is Willy nilly and when it isn’t? I’ve stated mine clearly: When the suffering you alleviate is comparable to that which you inflict, and when the suffering you inflict is done on dependents for their own good. Those are the only two cases it’s justified. You?
Quoting Echarmion
Still, what you find good and what your are justified in doing to others are not the same thing. Masochists don’t get to go around torturing people.
I answered this question a couple of times now. Not sure what else I can say.
Quoting khaled
If you're thinking about morality as a set of general reasons that can be applied to any given situation regardless of circumstance, like the 10 commandments, what you and I think of as morality is nothing alike.
Quoting khaled
I don't know what you wanted to say here, but I don't recognize the logic. Things that are the same are also obviously consistent.
Quoting khaled
If you use "good" in the sense of preference, yes. But I don't see how that is relevant, because I haven't said that you're allowed to do whatever you like.
Quoting khaled
It's not willy nilly if you act according to a principle that can be universalised.
Quoting Echarmion
Which is? I honestly don’t remember and I can’t find it.
Quoting Echarmion
So.... you DON’T have a principle that can be universalized now? I’m confused.
There is no one principle that can be universalised. You figure it out by using something like Kant's categorical imperative, or Rawls "veil of ignorance". You ask yourself whether or not you can imaginge all of humanity as acting as you do, and then see if this results in a) an obvious contradiction and b) a world you would want to life in regardless of how and where you lived.
Quoting khaled
I have a method to check principles. The number of principles that pass the check is indefinite.
Yep, good observation. It's probably a bias and also a way to try to not grapple with the question at hand perhaps, that as you said, someone is going to be affected.
And that is? And does mine pass it? If not why not?
Quoting Echarmion
And which of those does mine produce?
But, the principle itself is only half the story as I see it. It is also wrong to unnecessarily deny pleasure (or happiness or whichever feel good term you prefer) to others. Procreating seems to violate the antinatalist’s principle, yet antinatalism seems to violate the natalist’s principle, since it’s also equally likely that a child born will experience some unknown amount of pleasure or happiness. I don’t see a way to determine which principle should be upheld over the other, as I think the asymmetry argument fails to do so. Therefore, it seems to simply be a matter of personal preference as to which principle you choose to uphold.
So if you want a PS5 I have a moral duty to buy you a new PS5 as a complete stranger? Nah, I don’t think any of us think that. If you think that tell me so I can request a PC from you which you will be morally obligated to provide :lol:
But even if we were to say people have a duty not to deny others pleasure, AN would not violate this (incredibly weird) duty.
If you have a child you cause harm, as the result will be the existence of a child and that child will be harmed. Notice how there is actually a person being harmed in this case. However, if you do not have a child, there will be no child to deny anything. So no violations.
Quoting Pinprick
I think the asymmetry argument is bullshit so at least we agree there.
That depends a bit on the exact exceptions you're going to make. I don't think "never take an action that you know will cause suffering unless you can be sure you're not going to cause net suffering" works at all, since it would make all actions impossible. There is no cutoff to causal chains, so you're never going to be able to predict the suffering you cause with any certainty.
If we're going with something more malleable like "never take actions that will cause forseeable suffering greater than the forseeable suffering they prevent", it's not going to result in something obviously self-defeating. It still fails the secon test in my opinion, since as I pointed out it'd obligate us all to avoid causing any kind of emotional distress to each other that is avoidable, and if we applied that rigorously we'd be forced to do whatever the most emotionally unstable people wanted in order to avoid causing them any distress, unless and until your distress overrules theirs.
Non sequitor. "With any certainty". Really? Be reasonable. With some certainty.
Quoting Echarmion
That is literally the same thing as the above. You just changed "be sure" to "forseeable". Again showing that you can predict these things with some certainty. I don't understand why you insist on pretending we can't.
Quoting Echarmion
We already do that. Unless they are dependents or they consent to it we do not interfere with others, furthermore we consider it immoral to do so. Doctors don't go around forcefully "curing" people, people instead come to doctors. And if a doctor was going around forcing people to exercise for their health, we'd think he's being immoral, and he'd immediately get his license revoked. It's none of his damn business.
NOT having this principle would mean that if I deem you "unstable" I am allowed to do whatever to you to "stabilize" you without your consent, and without you being my dependent. Give me one situation where we consider that acceptable.
Lol, no, you’re not required to provide my pleasure, you just have no right to stop me from buying a PS5. So trying to do so is what would be wrong.
Quoting khaled
What makes this any weirder than preventing unnecessary harm? This is why laws that unnecessarily violate our “pursuit of happiness” are considered unjust.
Quoting khaled
I do see that, but you can’t claim one the one hand that not having a child prevents harm, and on the other that it doesn’t prevent pleasure as well. Having a child doesn’t just cause harm, it also causes pleasure, but AN seems to want to ignore this side of the equation.
Because doing so would be harming you. At least the way I define it. Simply as: Doing to someone something they wish isn’t done to them.
Quoting Pinprick
That I misunderstood it.
Quoting Pinprick
I didn’t. This doesn’t violate your principle though. I have to not stop you from seeking pleasure. Sure. But that does NOT mean I have to provide anybody pleasure. Not having children isn’t stopping anyone from seeking pleasure. So this principle has no bearing on the discussion
Quoting Pinprick
Because it is irrelevant. In the same way that I can’t force you to work for my company just because “it will cause some pleasure as well” even though that is true. Point is that “risky acts” (risk causing both pleasure and pain) require consent or justification normally and neither is given in the case of birth.
You can predict the outcome of an indefinite chain of events with "some certainty"? I don't see how you could.
Quoting khaled
And "foreseeable" was the word I used to denote exactly the things we can predict. But you can't predict whether the person whose life you saved today has a grandson that murders millions, nor would anyone feel obligated to calculate the odds.
Quoting khaled
We interfere with others constantly. Casting someone a sideways glance is interfering with their emotions. Police patrols interfere with people traveling. We expect people to abide by all kinds of laws and social norms regardless of how they personally feel about doing so.
The one are where we uphold your principle is bodily autonomy, but this is a special case of strict non-interference, not the norm.
Quoting khaled
Mentally ill patients.
Quoting Echarmion
I never suggested predicting the outcome of an indefinite chain of events. But predicting as much as you can reasonably.
Quoting Echarmion
When they're travelling in such a manner as to be harmful to others. And if police patrols stop random law abiding citizens for no reason they get fired (supposedly) and for good reason.
Quoting Echarmion
Sure. But you are not entitled to people acting a certain way towards you. You accept the risk of sideways glances when you go out in public and do dumb things.
Quoting Echarmion
Because, as I said, the point of these laws is to make sure people don't harm each other.
Quoting Echarmion
How do we determine "mentally ill"? If not by them being harmful to others or themselves? In which case NOT detaining them would be the more harmful thing to do.
Is there a situation where we do something that does NOT minimize suffering of others (including yourself) and find it acceptable unless it’s dependents and it’s being done for their own good?
It seems like we're going in circles here where I give some example, and you then reject it because you deem it to minimize suffering.
Since you're willing to class everything as "suffering", including abstract and generalised harm caused by jaywalking or similar acts, it seems to me you can justify any arbitrary result. I can see no principles behind your argument other than that whatever you have already deemed to be acceptable must therefore be what minimizes suffering.
I don't just deem it arbitrarily. You haven't actually engaged with the argument. When do we label people as "mentally ill"? It is precisely when they start becoming a danger to themselves and others. For cases of mental illness where we find it appropriate for forcefully intervene, we are interfering because the person in question is threatening someone or is being suicidal due to impairment.
Find me a situation where we find it acceptable to label someone mentally ill and forcefully intervene in their lives when they are:
A- Not (dependents + we are doing it for their own good).
B- Not being harmful towards anyone or themselves.
C- They did not ask us to do it.
Quoting Echarmion
False. Try using my system to justify murder or theft. You will fail.
My point is that you don't show how any of this is related to "suffering" in the usual sense of the word. You talk about danger, harm, being suicidal. But what's the relation with suffering here? Are these all synonyms for suffering? Why is there no reference to the actual suffering of the person in question?
Quoting khaled
For murder: someone might really enjoy murdering someone, and painlessly murders a homeless person with no relations. But I admit this is a fanciful and unrealistic example.
For theft it's actually really easy. A hungry person steals bread from a large company store. It seems pretty evident that the suffering of being hungry outweighs any suffering anyone who works for the company feels due to the theft.
What I find astonishing is the amount of Pollyannaism with pro-natalism camp. Many of them think only in best case scenarios, without thinking of the worst case, or even just the actual amounts of suffering and harm that occur in a prototypically "normal" life. And then once this point of how much harm is actually present is brought up, they retreat to things like, "What is suffering really?" or "Suffering is not bad because it provides, meaning. Don't you see!". And then they claim they just "can't" understand the antinatalist's claims. I think they are either deluding themselves (less likely), have such a strong bias that they can't get beyond their own point of view, or most likely, they are being intellectually dishonest with how much they actually indeed do understand (intuitively) the arguments. It's just hard to understand the objections especially since you keep reiterating the same thing again and again.
Also the approach with antinatalism seems to be burn down the house with everyone in it too. Instead of acknowledging that you have some damn good ideas there and that there may be some exceptions, the ruse is to be completely "incredulous" and disapproving out of the gate so to make the whole argument seem species. It's a rhetorical tactic. Where do you think people learn this? Just kind of comes naturally to some? Picked up from seeing others? Taught somewhere?
Well, it depends on the scenario. AN treats the unborn as potential sufferers, so you could argue that they are also potential happy beings. By not allowing them to be born, you are denying their potential happiness, just like you are denying their potential suffering.
Also, if you want to have a child, then doing so will likely bring you pleasure. But if you are not permitted to have a child, then your happiness is also being denied. This is really only applicable if someone is trying to convince or coerce someone else that they shouldn’t have children.
Quoting khaled
Do any of these count as justifications?
I want to have a child so they can experience love, happiness, etc.
....So that life will continue.
....So that I’m not made to feel like a failure.
....Because the vast majority of people find life worth living, so the risk that my child will not is very small.
Sure. And this doesn’t violate your principle. Because your principle isn’t “denying pleasure is bad”. That would lead to the PC scenario. Your principle is “Stopping people from seeking pleasure is bad”. Even if we were to propose potential happy beings, not having children is NOT in fact stopping even these beings from seeking pleasure, it is simply not providing it for them
Agreed, not having children does, in fact, result in less pleasure existing. Point is that does not violate your principle. It violates a principle which we agree is ridiculous which states that “you cannot do anything other than that which maximizes the pleasure of complete strangers”. That’s the only thing being violated here. But we agreed that’s a ridiculous principle.
To further illustrate this ridiculousness: If I told you that your next child will have a perfect life and not suffer at all, would you be obligated to have them? I think we can agree that no you wouldn’t. Which is very weird if you consider not having children bad because it “stops someone from experiencing pleasure”. This shows that having children is not, in fact, stopping anyone from doing anything.
Quoting Pinprick
Agreed. Except having children makes THEM also have to deal with the problem as PART of all the suffering they’ll endure. So it’s a totally inacceptable solution. The suffering alleviated is abysmally small compared to that inflicted. It’s like shooting people for entertainment. Sure, if you don’t shoot people you will not be entertained, and may even suffer for it, but the solution you are proposing (shooting people) is completely unacceptable as it causing way more suffering than it alleviates.
Quoting Pinprick
No. Because they don’t exist. So this cannot possibly be for them. Making someone exist for the sake of that person is incoherent. Closest you’ll get is “So I can see my child happy” which is not actually for the child but for you.
Quoting Pinprick
Some think this is acceptable. I don’t. I think “we should continue life” has to come out of the morality, not just be assumed.
Quoting Pinprick
No. Because again, the suffering you experience is incomparably small to that which you are planning to inflict to alleviate it. There is a much better solution to this feeling known as adoption. Or volunteering in child care. Or not being self loathing and stupid enough that you let societal expectations determine how you feel about yourself to this extent. Or or or or.... All of these inflict a lot less suffering and still solve the problem.
Quoting Pinprick
“It’s bad but it’s not that bad” isn’t actually a reason to do something at all.
There is a reason I specifically say “Harm caused less than harm mitigated”. Could this murderer foresee, that he would suffer more than the homeless man by not killing the homeless man? I find this very very hard to believe. I can’t imagine someone suffering due to not killing people comparatively to how much the people suffer by dying. Unless said people are the ones causing him suffering but the homeless man is innocent as far as I understand the example.
Quoting Echarmion
Good
Quoting Echarmion
Sure. Which is why I think we can agree the hungry person didn’t do anything wrong there no? Do you honestly think that stealing food when you’re starving is wrong? The only case I think it is is if you steal it from someone else who is also starving. Because then you’re causing a lot more suffering.
Quoting Echarmion
The way I define “harm” is “Doing to someone something they wish isn’t done to them”. And “suffering” is simply the thing you don’t wish is done to you. Idk if that answers your question.
So you are harming the homeless person even if it’s a painless death (because they don’t want to die I presume)
Quoting Echarmion
There is clearly. I don’t know what you’re talking about here.
So, suffering is deontological? Only a relation between a person's will and some state of affairs, or even perhaps just another person's intentions? If so, that'd actually be pretty close to Kant. But I don't see how it squares with the way you have been using the terms.
For one, the suffering you outlined isn't quantifiable, since it's a binary relation (something is either what you wish or it isn't). So this principle needs to be backed up by some hierarchy of interests to resolve conflicts. That isn't necessarily a problem - a lot of legal systems work that way - it's just different from merely tallying up empirical suffering.
More to the point of the decision, if suffering and harm are ultimately about a violation of your will, and your will is how your self realizes itself in the world, then what you seem to be concerned is not so much suffering, but freedom or dignity. The quality of the subject to decide their own path as free from outside interference as possible. I just don't see how this squares with anti-natalism, because obviously to protect freedom and dignity, someone must exist to possess them, first.
Not really. The extent to which I wish not to die easily trumps the extent to which I wish it doesn't rain tomorrow.
Quoting Echarmion
How so? Sounds practically like the same thing to me.
Quoting Echarmion
You take it too far. Just apply the principle as it is. Does having children cause someone to experience something they would rather not experience? Overwhelmingly yes. Is there justification for it (consent, dependent + for their own good, or alleviation of suffering)? No. Therefore it is wrong.
Don't morph it into something completely different. No one said anything about freedom or dignity and they are not required to derive the principle. They just sound similar.
What's the "extent" here? The strength of the associated emotions?
Quoting khaled
In one case you have something that's measurable - like an emotional reaction. In the other, you have abstract values like "bodily autonomy" or "self-determination" which have no intrinsic scale.
Quoting khaled
I can't, though, if there is no method, or algorithm, if you want, which tells me what kind level of justification I need, or how different kinds of suffering relate.
For example: not having children also causes someone to experience something they'd rather not experience. So we have a conflict here, how is it resolved?
Yea
Quoting Echarmion
But if you were to rank these abstract values wouldn't they be ranked by the strength of the associated emotional reactions when violated anyways? I don't see any other meaningful ranking.
Quoting Echarmion
Who? The parent? Then as I said to Pinrick:
Quoting khaled
In other words, when both doing and not doing something will result in some suffering, you obviously pick the version that results in the least suffering. I wouldn't even mind valuing your own suffering above that of others when doing this.
You could, but I wouldn't. I suppose that'd be some kind of moral realism or evolutionary morality. I'd consider that an is-ought-fallacy though.
Quoting khaled
I think that this would result in us having to pay way more attention to the emotional reactions of others than is reasonable. Certainly, as we have already alluded to, property rights would be a lot weaker, since mass produced stuff would be legal to take if you really needed it. Not necessarily a terrible outcome, but I don't see why we should hand over moral authority to those with the strongest emotions.
How would your rank them?
Quoting Echarmion
I didn't say that's how they should be ranked, I said that's how I would rank them. So no.
Quoting Echarmion
Not necessarily. You could argue that weakening property rights in this manner does more harm than good since you can't really tell who has the strongest emotions, and use that as justification to keep them the same. The law, and what is moral, are different. For example: Committing suicide is illegal in most countries, so that cops can detain you. Doesn't make it morally wrong.
And this is also why I said "I wouldn't even mind valuing your own suffering above that of others when doing this". However too much would make you what we normally dub a "selfish cunt".
Oh it's not fun. Antinatalism seeks to turn the loving relationship between parent and child into one of resentment and blame, seeks to turn attention away from actual action to reduce suffering here toward some esoteric idea of non-existence, and seeks to focus the negative aspects of life, which might otherwise be overlooked, in a populace which has already a shockingly high suicide rate.
I can't speak for others, but it's not for fun that I argue against it.
It's not a factual claim. I thought that was clear from the context, but if not then hopefully this will serve to clarify. Obviously antinatalism cannot seek to achieve anything. That's why I chose the term rather than antinatalists with which I would have taken more care.
These consequences are predictions, things I'm concerned about, antinatalism is thankfully not popular enough to gather any meaningful data on current consequences.
If you want evidence of philosophical outlooks in general having negative consequences socially as they are adopted more widely I can provide that, so as to support the idea that concern is not unreasonable, but I suspect you'd already agree.
Ok. In that case I’ll add they they’re reasonable. I’ve seen them very frequently with other ANs, though mostly the ones that misinterpret the argument.
"Actual action"? What was the action that got people in the mess that they have to get out of? Tail wagging dog. The presumption is.. First it is okay to put someone in the mess.. and it is only okay after the fact, and not question whether it is okay to put someone in the mess in the first place.
Simple and straightforward. I like it. The standard argument against this is either “It’s not a mess” (false, it very much can be) or “But we need to” (False, outright). Or the worst “It’s fine to get people in messes because they don’t exist yet” which is ridiculous and can easily be dismantled with the malicious genetic engineering example or the forced to play a game example.
Yes, this is pretty much all of these arguments in a nutshell.
Yep, agreed 100%.
The more sophisticated versions will speak as if they are the representative of a club or team, "WE think it is really good to be alive, and you shouldn't prevent another person because they will want to join the team too!"
Based on relevance to continued practice of one's freedom, so life would rank highest, as the conditio sine qua non, then bodily autonomy, since you can only act through your body, and so on.
Quoting khaled
But if we're willing to allow such general and abstract notions of suffering, we might as well throw the entire principle overboard and go with "whatever we thinks is best for everyone".
As I said before, you use actual, emotional suffering as your standard for the clear examples, but as soon as the water gets muddy you fall back on more generalised notions of "danger" and "harm" to shore up the holes. And that you need to do that is exactly the reason I find your approach not convincing.
Seeing as you are happy reaffirming your view with @schopenhauer1, I think I'll leave it at that. This discussion has gone on a long while, and I think we're past the point where any of us will learn anything.
I do appreciate the calm and honest debate from your side though, thanks for that!
Don't use me as an escape hatch.. I've also been patient :D.
What do you think of people who say that people need to be born into non-ideal circumstances so they "strive" to do better, and get themselves to more ideal circumstances? In other words, they think that the value of getting out of a less ideal state to a more ideal state is a goal above and beyond not suffering? The suffering is "worth it" because one feels the accomplishment of getting out of the non-ideal circumstances?
Edit: The new person needs this experience it, which means the "need" to be born for this experience as it is above and beyond suffering.
Still there seems to be a clear contradiction. You’ve stated before that there are situations where having children is wrong. I don’t see how you can get that if life outranks suffering in your hierarchy. Same with how you get malicious genetic engineering to be wrong. Your system does not match up with your own moral intuitions.
Quoting Echarmion
There is nothing abstract about it. Weakening property rights means I’ll get random people coming into my house and taking my stuff. That causes distress. And I can’t stop them because I can’t easily prove that they don’t need the stuff. There is nothing abstract about this. There is a very concrete consequence to weakening property rights in the way you’re suggesting. So we shouldn’t do so.
Quoting Echarmion
I have no idea where you’re getting this. Nothing that I’ve said so far has not referred to very concrete suffering. I am very against the idea of referring to anything else when talking about morals.
Quoting Echarmion
I don’t see what me and shope’s talk has to do with anything.
I don’t think those are the same thing. I agree with the latter not the former. I agree that there is value of getting out of a less ideal state to a more idea state, and that that is preferable to not suffering at all (heck, I don’t think this is possible). I don’t agree that that can be applied when treating others. It is a personal philosophy to find meaning in suffering. It is problem to then go around inflicting suffering on others because you find meaning in it.
Yes, it is assuming that someone else should be put in some sort of game of going from less ideal to more ideal state. It is affecting someone else, not yourself.
But the interlocutor is going to say that the value of overcoming the deprivation is what matters, not the principle of "not putting others in the game of suffering in the first place". To the contrary, that is one of the "goods" of life, the accomplishment of overcoming challenges. Thus they think they are not inflicting suffering, because a greater good will come out of it.
I guess my question then becomes, is there a principle outside of statistical possibility that they won't come out of it better, that this is wrong? I would say putting someone purposefully in a deprivation to make them come out of it better, is always a wrong, either because of non-consent or because you simply don't put people in impositions unnecessarily, period. It is just a hard axiomatic stop.
The analogy to prove the point would be similar to the game argument.. You don't kidnap someone into a game and say, "Hey, you're going to thank me when it's over! You're going to love all the challenges and harms because it makes you better!". But there is something wrong with that besides simply non-consent to the game. Something a bit more foundational to be used in such a way, and the paternalistic presumption.
I don’t see the difference. Providing pleasure would be doing something that actually gives them pleasure. Birthing a child in itself doesn’t give them pleasure, it just gives them the opportunity to experience pleasure. So giving birth isn’t providing pleasure, but not doing so eliminates the possibility to experience it. Giving birth is like letting people in to an amusement park. Simply being allowed in isn’t pleasurable, but experiencing the rides, etc. is. My argument is what justification do we have for not allowing people to enter the amusement park? Is it potentially dangerous/harmful? Yes, but it seems more likely that it will be pleasurable, so it’s ultimately worth the risk. By “denying pleasure” you are also “stopping people from seeking it.”
I assume you will argue that the difference is that with amusement parks there is consent, as people aren’t forced to enter, and you’re right. But, there are examples in society where people are forced to do things against their will, even when there is the potential for harm. Mandatorily sending kids to school is a good example. Some, perhaps even most, do not want to go to school, but we judge that doing so benefits them, so we send them anyway. And there is definitely the potential for harm, with bullying and things of that nature, but collectively we deem the potential benefits to outweigh the costs.
Quoting khaled
I don’t consider not having children as bad. I object to propagating your personal choices, which boil down to mere opinion, as if they should be some sort of absolute rule (which is precisely what AN does, unless I’ve misunderstood something). I would never judge someone else’s decision to have, or not have, children as bad. But I also wouldn’t act as if whatever personal choice I make should be universalized. My issue lies more with the idea that it’s ok to tell others not to have children, or to have children. The actual act of giving birth is amoral, because it causes no harm/pleasure. It establishes the potential for both to occur, but that is it. Whatever unnecessary harm that may occur during a lifetime are isolated incidents that can themselves be judged right/wrong, but you can’t blame life itself. Ted Bundy’s mother can’t be blamed for the harm he caused to others, even though her giving birth to him created the potential for his atrocious acts to occur. The suffering I endure when I stub my toe is also not my mother’s fault.
Quoting khaled
I figured as much...
Quoting khaled
I don’t think this necessarily follows. I can wish good on someone for their own sake. Like wishing that my loved ones continue to have a happy life after I’m dead. I won’t be there to share their happiness, but I wish them the best nonetheless. Why can’t it be the same for a child? My offspring being happy is a good thing, therefore I have children so that this good can occur.
Quoting khaled
I can accept this. I’m basically just throwing shit to see what sticks, but this made me think of another question. Could it be argued that reproducing is a biological need, similar to sex or companionship?
Quoting khaled
It isn’t meant to be a reason, it’s a justification. When you are considering doing something, isn’t it good practice to weigh the pros and cons? If I think I want to have a child, I should consider things like my financial situation, age, health, etc.; but I should also consider the “what if’s” that could happen to my child.
There are no examples in society where people are forced to do things against their will unless it reduces suffering to them or others. Or at least there shouldn’t be.
Quoting Pinprick
There you say it yourself. You cannot logically say that being born is good for the person being born.
Quoting Pinprick
But by your own principle, if not having children is “preventing someone from experiencing pleasure” and that is bad, then it should be mandatory. So either having children is not preventing anyone from doing anything, or “preventing someone from experiencing pleasure” is not bad. There is no other way out.
Quoting Pinprick
You’ve misunderstood something. I’m not a moral realist. I’m arguing against the claim that “there is something wrong with AN” which is the topic of this post. No one so far has been able to show what this thing that is wrong is.
Quoting Pinprick
Would you judge a murderer? Probably. So the reason you wouldn’t judge someone’s choice to have kids has to be that you don’t consider it a moral issue. I would ask why. Does it not result in harm? Why would it not be a moral issue?
What about malicious genetic engineering? Would you judge someone who genetically engineers their child to be blind? Probably. But why is THAT a moral issue but birth itself isn’t?
Quoting Pinprick
False. You literally just argued a paragraph ago that not having children is a denial of pleasure. Which means that having children causes pleasure (as well as harm). Which is it? Make up your mind.
Quoting Pinprick
Yes. But they exist in this case don’t they? Who said anything about you?
Quoting Pinprick
Because they don’t exist until you make them exist. So it can’t be that you’re doing it for them. You can’t do something for someone that doesn’t exist and claim it’s for their own sake. Because they don’t have a “sake”. Because they don’t exist.
Quoting Pinprick
No. Sex and companionship are hardly needs. Food is a need. Because you die when you don’t get it. You don’t die when you don’t get any of those things.
And even if it is a need, following it in this case would be like a starving person stealing from another starving person since it’s a need that when satiated, propagates to others. Still wrong.
Quoting Pinprick
Yes but “The cons aren’t that bad” is not a pro. So idk why you’re framing it as if it is.
Yes, there seems to be this weird idea of destiny or inevitability (that isn't justified) that people "need" to experience life, partly due to the idea that they can overcome their suffering by learning to go from less ideal to more ideal states. Why not skip the whole game on someone else's behalf? I guess, my question to them is, why do they think it is justified to impose this game on someone else?
I also have a notion, you may disagree with, that existence short of being an ideal existence, would be one where someone should not be born into. I'm not sure what to say to people who then make the move to say, "But an imperfect existence of going from non-ideal to more ideal is the ideal existence". That seems like a disingenuous move to make, but if it is truly believed, then the nagging axiomatic understanding that starting unnecessary impositions on others is always wrong, hard stop, whether you think it is some great game or not. I just don't get how people can justify their way around that.
I don't agree. I think if we know the person in question will find their life worthwhile then it's fine. Problem is we don't.
Quoting schopenhauer1
They don't really I think. Only say they do. Yet they would seriously object to being kidnapped and forced to play some VR game or other.
I think it's hard to assess. A lot of times if each moment was aggregated, it would not be considered worthwhile, even to the same person when interviewed, may say "yes" in a summative way. There may be some disconnect with how people actually evaluate/experience in the moment vs. when asked to sum things up. What to trust?
The summative evaluation for me. If they don’t consider it a problem as a whole then why should I? And how do you aggregate these moments anyways? You’re suggesting some sort of objective measure of “worthwhile ness” which is different from the guy simply telling you it was worthwhile.
Well, I'm thinking this type of thing (1-10 scale). Let's say, worthwhile is 6 or above. :
Hours:
H1: 2
H2: 4
H3: 3
H4: 7
etc. etc.. and if aggregated, it looks like it's below a 6, but when asked to sum later on it is an 8 or something. I'm just saying sometimes there are biases even in answering a question like that due to social expectations, forgetting each moment actually felt, etc. You could say that this "forgetting" then clears out the bad that was experienced prior, but I don't know.
Yes and I'm saying that we should use the 8 despite of this. Because the remembering self is what really matters. Or at least, there is no reason you should favor the 6 over the 8 (experiencing over remembering self)
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yup. That's my position.
See, we do disagree. Either way, we agree that people shouldn't assume either one for their child: the lived experience or the remembered experience.
So making kids go to school is wrong? What about making them eat vegetables, or going to bed on time, or dress appropriately? What about making people pay taxes, or go to jail/prison, or pay for car/health insurance?
Quoting khaled
Yeah I can, it’s good because they will experience pleasure. More specifically, it gives them the opportunity to do so. You agree that’s good, right?
Quoting khaled
I don’t see it as black and white, there’s definitely some gray areas. Not having children does prevent them from experiencing pleasure, but sometimes doing so is justified.
Quoting khaled
It has to do with certainty. The outcome of murdering someone is certain, but that’s not the case with having children. It is certain that they will experience pleasure/pain (unless they happen to have whatever disease it is that doesn’t allow them to feel pain), but we have no real idea of how much of either they will experience. If you want to dig deeper, we don’t even know what pain feels like for other people. Do others have the exact same experience of pain when they get a paper cut as I do? We have no idea, so I find it hard to justify holding someone morally accountable for something with such a wide range of results.
Acts that directly cause harm can be considered wrong, but simply being born does not directly cause harm, or pleasure for that matter; it just creates the opportunity. Again, it is in no way your mother’s fault if you suffer, unless she is directly responsible for that suffering. That’s like saying we shouldn’t plant trees because they could potentially fall on someone and cause them to suffer 100 years from now.
Quoting khaled
Probably, but again the certainty of the outcome makes a difference. I also think intent matters to some degree, but that may be irrelevant to the discussion.
Quoting khaled
It’s a denial of the opportunity to experience either, which is fine to do as long as there is a good reason to do so. Some people should not have children, and some people probably would rather have not been born, but that doesn’t mean you should treat every case the same. This is also why I don’t think it’s appropriate to judge other’s decisions about having children. Some children go on to lead wonderful lives, and strengthen the relationship between their parents/families. At times we can make educated guesses about whether or not that will be the case, but more often our predictions are inaccurate.
Quoting khaled
It can be if existing benefits them. Besides, doesn’t AN claim not having children is for their benefit so that they won’t experience suffering? But they don’t exist, so how can nonexistence be beneficial for them?
Quoting khaled
I’m not meaning to. The pros outweighing the cons is a pro. Just like if the cons outweighed the pros, that would be a con.
Surprisingly, this is my position as well, only stated differently. If we think it’s more likely that they will find life worthwhile, it’s fine. Most cases are unclear, but data surrounding overall levels of happiness, suicide rates, etc. leads us to believe that it is almost always more likely that the person will consider their life valuable, or worth living. Therefore it is almost always permissible.
I was implying that all of these things were done to reduce the suffering on them or others. I thought that was obvious. We make Kids go to school and eat vegetables because it’s good for them in the long run. We don’t just arbitrarily make kids do stuff for no reason.
Quoting Pinprick
But not good for them. That would make no sense.
Quoting Pinprick
Oh so preventing people from experiencing pleasure is not bad now? Only sometimes bad? Ok where are these gray areas? When is preventing people from experiencing pleasure bad and when is it acceptable?
Quoting Pinprick
The outcome of pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger is uncertain, as the gun might jam. That doesn’t make it ok to do. It is ridiculous to require certainty to say that something is wrong. Because then nothing is ever wrong
Quoting Pinprick
I’m sure you’d agree that kidnapping someone and putting them in a forest to fend for themselves is wrong. Even though it doesn’t actually cause harm, or pleasure, only creates the opportunity. Why is it wrong then?
Quoting Pinprick
But a second ago you said it was fine to deny but did not provide a reason. Why is it you require a reason here? A second ago it was a “gray area”... Until you clarify exactly when denying pleasure is acceptable and when it isn’t you’re just being disingenuous
Quoting Pinprick
False. That claim would make no sense as there is no one to benefit. And no one to be harmed. Which is why not having children is a neutral act.
Having children on the other hand is a risk act that is not accompanied by consent nor can be said to improve anyone’s situation which makes it wrong. So far you have not provided an example of an act which does these things that you consider fine except having kids.
Quoting Pinprick
You cannot know that the pros will outweigh the cons. And that’s not what you said. You said “the pros are likely to outweigh the cons”.
If I happen to be a masochist and I think it’s likely that you will enjoy being tortured does that give me a right to torture you?
But you don’t know that. I’m actually a social worker, and currently have a client that was sexually assaulted at school; elementary school I might add. I’m not convinced going to school will help him more in the long run than it has harmed him. I know this is an isolated incident, and atypical, but that’s beside the point. You seem to try to argue against taking the risk that a great amount of suffering will be experienced by being born. However, there is potential suffering involved in other things we make people do because we think it’s beneficial, or because the risk is deemed to be negligible. I can make these same calculations with childbirth.
Quoting khaled
They’re the ones experiencing the pleasure, so of course it’s good for them...
Quoting khaled
It is bad when there is not a good reason to do so. It is acceptable if the pleasure they are seeking infringes on the liberties of others, or otherwise needlessly risks harming others.
Quoting khaled
Ok. Not 100% certainty, but I think we both agree that the likelihood of seriously injuring someone by attempting to shoot them is incredibly higher than the likelihood of the gun jamming. Also, perhaps intent is relevant after all. I don’t view accidentally harming someone as morally wrong, unless it’s due to some gross lack of judgment or neglect. Harming someone on purpose is wrong, except for rare occasions like giving someone a vaccine.
Quoting khaled
I’m pretty sure kidnapping someone causes them distress...
Quoting khaled
Denying pleasure is acceptable only if there is a good reason to do so, like denying someone the pleasure of killing someone because it unnecessarily harms the person being killed. It’s not ok to harm others, or to risk harming others, just so you can obtain pleasure. However, if the risk of harm is minimal, but the potential benefit is large, the risk is worth it. This is why making kids go to school is ok, and also why having children under most circumstances is ok.
Quoting khaled
Paying taxes does not improve my situation, and I’ve never been asked to consent to do so. Paying taxes also risks my ability to survive due to not being able to afford the necessities of life.
Quoting khaled
You can reasonably assume that they will by using the available data.
No, because you have no justifiable reason to believe that I too am a masochist.
And so we can agree that it’s dubious whether or not they should be forced to go to school by their parents no? Principle still seems to apply. I would say that depending on the case there are times when forcing kids to go to school is wrong. A case like yours for example is a good candidate.
Quoting Pinprick
In order for something to be good for someone that someone must exist first. If you want to say that being born is good for someone because they will experience pleasure then by the same token it is bad for someone because they will suffer. You either take both or neither. You can’t say being born is purely good.
Quoting Pinprick
If someone is harmed due to being born that’s hardly accidental. You don’t “accidentally” have kids. There is planning and a 9 month delay. You knew they were going to be harmed in some way.
Quoting Pinprick
So it’s fine if they were sleeping and didn’t feel it, and had no responsibilities to tend to and no close relations? In other words, if the act of kidnapping itself doesn’t cause any harm is it fine? I doubt it. So why is it wrong?
Quoting Pinprick
By this metric you should be obligated to have a child whose life will be perfect. Whose liberties would that be infringing on? Yours? In that case then “denying pleasure” should never be a problem in the case of having kids. So idk why you mention it.
Also by this principle: Having kids needlessly risks harming others (the kids), therefore it is fine to deny pleasure in this case making the act overall wrong.
Quoting Pinprick
Agreed with some caveats.
Quoting Pinprick
But this doesn’t follow. The potential benefit is much smaller than the potential harm. There are multiple paths here:
You consider having kids as something that can be beneficial/harmful to the kid:
In which case having children is wrong because it unnecessarily risks harming someone. In this case you cannot “counteract” this effect by saying that not having kids denies pleasure because in this case your ARE allowed to deny pleasure (which is why you don’t have to have a child even knowing their life would be perfect).
You consider having kids as something that can’t be harmful/beneficial to the kid:
Comes with a whole slew of problems such as malicious genetic engineering being ok which need to be addressed.
Quoting Pinprick
False. Or at least supposed to be false. That’s the premise behind it. If everyone paying taxes does not improve everyone’s situation then that’s a corruption problem.
Quoting Pinprick
That’s not good enough justification. For example, I know that people on average are happier when they exercise regularly. Doesn’t give me a right to force you to exercise at gun point does it?
It’s questionable in certain circumstances, but we shouldn’t therefore never send kids to school. I see having children the same way. There are cases where it is probably ok, probably not ok, and cases that are too hard to determine.
Quoting khaled
They will exist prior to experiencing pleasure. Aside from obvious exceptions, if doing X allows someone to experience pleasure (or is likely to allow them to experience pleasure), then doing X is permissible.
Quoting khaled
I’m fine with saying this. That’s why I feel that you must look at the probability of whether or not the person being born will experience enough suffering to not consider their life to be worthwhile. That’s also why I said way earlier that it ultimately boils down to making a choice of which principle you wish to uphold, because you can’t do both.
Quoting khaled
Right, well partially right, but you also know that they will experience pleasure, so you have to consider that as well. But technically being born doesn’t cause harm/pleasure, it’s just the necessary conditions for harm/pleasure to take place. Similar to how it isn’t immoral to create weapons, only to use them maliciously.
Quoting khaled
It depends on the probability of harm vs. pleasure. Is it likely that the person will find fending for themselves in a forest pleasurable?
Quoting khaled
I don’t really agree that obligations exist except in the abstract. If you so choose to follow a principle, then your obliged to do so, but you’re not obligated to choose to follow a principle in the first place. IOW’s it’s permissible, but not obligatory.
Quoting khaled
I don’t consider the risk to be needless if its probability of occurring and causing life to be deemed not worthwhile is negligible. Much like the school example. If it’s more likely that the benefits will outweigh the costs, then it’s permissible.
Quoting khaled
I don’t think so. It seems much more likely that a person will judge their life to be worthwhile than not. Or do you mean that the potential worst suffering is greater than the potential greatest pleasure?
Quoting khaled
No, in which case having kids is permissible, because it is more likely that they will experience more pleasure than harm. And I’m not claiming that therefore it’s impermissible to not have children either. Neither is obligatory.
Quoting khaled
No, because people on average aren’t happy when they’re being forced at gun point to do something against their will.
I didn’t say that. You should examine it situation by situation. Sending kids to school is not always right and not always wrong.
Quoting Pinprick
My point is, there is never a case where you can 100% say that the person will live a worthwhile life. So why are you taking the risk for them?
This is different from sending kids to school. If you DON’T send kids to school then you INCREASE the risk they suffer. Sending them to school is usually the least risky option. And when it isn't the least risky option, we have agreed that sending kids to school would be wrong in that instance. However if you don’t have kids you don’t harm anyone. There is no obligation to have kids. There is no need to take the risk. So don’t
Quoting Pinprick
What if you don’t know? Heck, what if it’s a 98% chance they’ll like it? Does that make it moral? I’d say no. Because there is absolutely no need to take the 2% risk.
If there was a button I could press that has a 98% chance to give you 1000 dollars and a 2% chance to kill you, should I press that button without asking you first? No. Because there is no reason I should take the risk when I’m not the one paying the consequences.
Now, if “do not deny pleasure” is your principle then there would be some sum of money at which pressing the button is MANDATORY and similarly, kidnapping the person to put them in a forest is MANDATORY. Otherwise you’d be denying too much pleasure.
Quoting Pinprick
Huh? But you’re the one that proposed the principle. Are you saying you don’t actually follow it? That you don’t actually think denying pleasure is bad?
Quoting Pinprick
No. It is not like the school example. Because with school, NOT forcing a child to go to school IS the risky option. Even there you’re minimizing risks.
Quoting Pinprick
You’re trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Either “do not deny pleasure” is a principle or it isn’t. If it is then having kids is ok BUT there are situations where you MUST have kids. Heck, it would come out that in most situations you must have kids. If it isn’t then having kids is not ok, because you’re taking an unnecessary risk, and denying pleasure is not a factor.
1) There is rebirth, then you have to compare the probabilities of what the child will be reborn as, because life is always lived. Do I give the child better or worse conditions than the average?
2) There is no rebirth. Then one is non-existent before and after life. One compares existence with non-existence. This comparison is impossible. Mathematically speaking: Is 42 greater or less than 0/0?
No, not exactly what's going on. One way to answer this is the Benatarian Asymmetry argument.
Essentially his idea is that if there is no actual person, not experiencing good is neither good nor bad (as there is no "one" to be deprived). It is neutral. However, if there is no actual person, not experiencing bad is a good thing, even if there is no one to benefit from that good.
Now, you do not have to agree to that formulation for that to work. You can just say this:
1) IFF there is a capacity to cause unnecessary harm to a future person, do not go ahead and cause this this for that future person, as causing unnecessary harm is in and of itself wrong. There is no collateral damage of "no good" because no actual person exists for to be deprived of good.
Similarly..
2) IFF a person is born, that birth automatically was an event that was non-consensual. Do not cause this violation of the individual born to occur.
Similarly...
3) IFF there is a capacity to cause unnecessary impositions to a future person, do not go ahead and cause this for that future person, as causing unnecessary impositions on behalf of another person is in and of itself wrong. There is no collateral damage of "no good" because no actual person exists for to be deprived of good.
But doesn't this "more likely" lead to a repugnant conclusion whereby if we believe 51% of people find their lives worthwhile whereas 49% don't, procreation is permissible? What is the cutoff? I can imagine a world of 10 billion people, 5.1 billion are happy, whereas 4.9 billion live in abject misery. The odds in this world favour a worthwhile birth, so is it therefore permissible to "roll the dice? Intuitively, the answer seems to be a resounding "no". These 'odds' are after all based on fallible human judgment. Not to mention the absurdity of using the amount of people who resort to lethal self-harm as a parameter of a "worthwhile life"...
It's also worth pointing out that the pleasures in life do not cancel out, nor negate the suffering experienced. There is no scale at the end of ones life our good and bad experiences are stacked upon, with the balance determining the worth of ones life. I think the best we can do is suffer, subsequently experience pleasure and then retrospectively tell ourselves that it was "worth it" in the end. Point being the experience of suffering isn't erased or negated - it was still endured. It's also interesting to note the deprivational language used here - "worth it" is in some sense referencing whether a bad or harm is "worth" enduring or undergoing. We aren't speaking about an objective good here, but rather a trade-off. And who am I to impose this "trade-off" on another person? I couldn't imagine justifying this with, "well, I guessed it was more likely you'd find it worthwhile, so I did it".
Quoting Pinprick
I don't see how any analysis of embodiment itself doesn't lead to the conclusion that it is a burden and a harm. Human embodiment is a locus of perpetual, pressing, potentially lethal biological need, which ends in inevitable death. Babies are after all born crying for milk and comfort. Why is it a good thing to create the conditions of harm to take place, for another person? There is zero need to do so, from the 'perspective' of the unborn.
Say in my power is the ability to instill within you a 6th sense, which has both the capacity to be experienced as painful or pleasurable. I guess that you are 51% likely to judge this added sense as "worthwhile" to have. Do I therefore have the right to bestow this sense upon you, without your permission? How wouldn't this be immoral? What's the difference between me instilling an extra sense upon you, and instilling the (traditional) 5 senses upon a fetus?
Doesn’t AN think it’s always wrong to have kids?
Quoting khaled
Because it isn’t that big of a risk under “normal” circumstances. So why not take the risk? All this is predicated on the person actually wanting to have children, so that is the initial default position. There could be a million reasons why someone might want children, some reasonable, some not so much. But the only way this discussion even gets started is by positing this as the default position.
Quoting khaled
Ok, you’re right about this. But maybe prison is a better example. If someone is sentenced to death, there’s no way that is for their benefit, or that they consented to it. Therefore, it must be for the benefit of others. So, in this particular circumstance we find it acceptable to force someone to do something against their will, that will assuredly cause them harm, strictly for the benefit of others. So then forcing children to be born without their consent (which is different than being against their will), knowing that they may not find life worthwhile due to suffering, should also be ok as long as doing so benefits others.
Quoting khaled
If taking the risk will benefit yourself or others there is.
Quoting khaled
This isn’t really a comparable analogy. There is a difference between potentially taking life and creating it.
Quoting khaled
I think the rest of what I said was “without good reason.” That last bit should clear up most of these scenarios for you. Generally speaking, the risk of significant harm (dismemberment, lobotomies, disabling injuries, etc.) trumps any potential pleasure. Although, surgery is a sort of gray area at least, or maybe even a counter example.
Quoting khaled
No, I’m saying obligations are stupid. Obligations amount to being compelled to act a certain way, which unnecessarily limits our freedom. I personally think these things, but they aren’t facts, and you’re free to disagree. I have no desire to try to force others to agree. You have no obligation towards me whatsoever, nor I to you, but if we both choose individually to follow certain principles in our personal lives, then we owe it to ourselves to follow those principles. But I would never consider you to be obligated towards me due to a principle only I hold.
Quoting khaled
Ok, consider the example of being sentenced to death then.
Quoting khaled
It isn’t an absolute principle. If there’s a good reason to deny pleasure, then it should be denied. This is why things like murder are illegal.
I don’t have a specific answer or number in mind, but if it isn’t obviously clear which is more likely, you should err on the side of caution.
Quoting Inyenzi
I’m open to using any data that’s relevant and available. Suicide’s just an example, and a clear indication that a small number of people do most certainly consider life not to be worthwhile.
Quoting Inyenzi
Why not? Is it ok to risk feeding my child peanuts (or anything else for that matter) without knowing if they are allergic to them? If not, then are you suggesting it’s better to submit them to the harm caused by getting a complete allergy test done?
Quoting Inyenzi
To be succinct, because it’s most likely worth it.
Quoting Inyenzi
Aside from your percentage being what I would consider “too close to call,” sure. If I’m in somewhat intense pain 50% of the time, and there’s a surgery that can reduce that number to say 10%, but comes with a 2% chance of increasing the percentage to 75%, would you advise me to get the surgery? What if you find me unconscious and covered in bee stings, and you have an epi-pen that will most likely rescue me, but I could be allergic to it, which would cause me to die. Do you stick me with it anyway? Even without being able to obtain my consent?
The criteria required is basically impossible. I’ve gone over it before with echarimon. You would need to show that having kids is the less risky option. IE: That you need kids SO BAD that you would suffer more from childlessness alone than your kids are likely to suffer their entire lives. This becomes impossible if your kids are to have their own kids. That’s also on you (though you’re a lot less responsible)
Quoting Pinprick
Because it’s not you paying the consequences. You have no right to endanger others. Like with the button example I gave. If one day you woke up 30000 dollars richer and later found that it happened because I pressed the button 30 times without telling you, I think you would be furious at me. I risked harming you. And this is EVEN IF you would have personally pressed the button 50 times.
Quoting Pinprick
No it’s for the PROTECTION of others. Not their benefit. Humans like to get revenge but that’s not the primary reason we put people in jail. The primary reason is that we need to protect others. We judge the people in jail as dangerous, which is why we put them there. Letting them walk around is the risky option. We don’t put them there for the population to have fun indulging in a feeling of righteousness.
Quoting Pinprick
You can’t prove that your next child will benefit others. And this isn’t something you can even refer to statistics for. It is possible they’ll be selfish assholes despite your efforts. We have plenty of selfish assholes in the world with parents who had good intentions.
Quoting Pinprick
Ok make it 2% chance it breaks a random bone in your body. I don’t care. Point is, we don’t take risks with others. Even if we think they’ll think the risk is worth it. We ask first. And when we can’t ask we don’t do it
Quoting Pinprick
It doesn’t. You said the good reason was that it infringes on liberties. I don’t see how the button examples is infringing on anyone’s liberty. It REALLY doesn’t take much to press a button. I wouldn’t count it as an infringement on liberty to say that I’m obligated to do so.
Quoting Pinprick
Wow, crazy what that thought might lead to :rofl:
Seriously though, how do you say this and at the same time say having kids is ok. And don’t go back to the “actually having kids doesn’t harm anyone” BS. We already know there are problems with that, such as not being able to say malicious genetic engineering, or kidnapping people to forests is wrong (since technically neither harms, only creates conditions, but then again, same with shooting people in the face, since the gun might jam)
Quoting Pinprick
Sure, agreed. The principle of “do not deny pleasure for no good reason” is very weird. If “good reasons” include “it can harm the guy in question” then the principle just becomes what I’m saying anyways. How do you differentiate?
Quoting Pinprick
We sentence people to death because we deem them too dangerous to keep around. NOT sentencing them to death is the more risky option. Obviously we’re not considering harm done to them, as that is irrelevant. They didn’t consider the harm they did to others, so we don’t consider the harm we do to them as part of the equation at all. They lose the right to be treated as a human in a sense
Excellent point. It deals with affecting ANOTHER person.
Quoting khaled
:rofl:. Trump would not be a case of this though.. He was bred from the start to be an asshole it seems. But he sure took it to the next level.
Quoting khaled
Prize for most succinct framing of a very basic and intuitive concept that people are doing summersaults to try to bypass.
Quoting khaled
And you have to repeat this yet again.. I hope it sinks in this time!
That seems impossible to calculate if you’re going to consider all the pleasure your child could cause others. I don’t think there’s any reliable way to tell if your child will become inspirational to others. But, I suppose that means the argument for that possibility being likely could be made.
Quoting khaled
We do not live like this, considering the possibility that each act could cause harm to someone else. If we need bread, and there’s only one loaf left, we buy it regardless of the fact that the possibility exists that doing so means someone else is doing without. We routinely risk endangering others if we perceive the benefits to outweigh the costs.
To give a real life example, currently where I live a natural gas pipeline is being constructed underground. This has the potential to explode, and pipelines have in fact exploded before. Were that to happen, the damage could be catastrophic, as this thing runs beneath our roads, near private property, etc. No consent was required, yet this project is occurring nonetheless.
Quoting khaled
You don’t think being protected is beneficial? Either way, we justify ALMOST CERTAINLY harming someone against their will (the prisoner) for the sake of others. Why then can we not do the same with childbirth?
Quoting khaled
The parents will be benefitted. If they actually want a child, then having one will benefit them.
Quoting khaled
Performing CPR on an unconscious person risks breaking their ribs. We do so anyway. Victims that are discovered unconscious often get surgical procedures that have risks. The underlying assumption here, I think, is that life has intrinsic value. My guess is that most people agree with that assumption. If that is the case, then that in itself could justify natalism, because it is better to create value than not to.
Quoting khaled
Quoting Pinprick
Quoting khaled
Because having kids very rarely risks significant harm. Very few people get dismembered, lobotomized, etc. Most people get scrapes and bruises, and maybe broken bones, but these relatively small sufferings do not make most people feel like life is not worthwhile.
Quoting khaled
The likelihood of the harm occurring, and the severity of it. If we could only experience the pain of stubbing our toe, and every other experience was either neutral or positive, would you still conclude AN?
Quoting khaled
I don’t see their harm as irrelevant. We should be above the “eye for an eye” justifications of revenge. But if you feel that way, then you’re agreeing that sometimes it’s ok to harm others for the sake of other people? If so, what is the caveat in your principle?
You can't even say that much for certain. Many parents regret having children, because they weren't actually prepared.
Quoting Pinprick
Because in this case if we don't buy it we ourselves get harmed comparably to how much we can expect the other person (who now can't buy the bread) to be harmed. I don't understand what's so difficult about this.
Quoting Pinprick
If we perceive the costs of not doing the act to outweigh the costs of doing the act*
Quoting Pinprick
Why is this pipeline being built I wonder? It's definitely not being built for no reason. Or rather, the main question is (as always, I don't see what's difficult about this): Is it more harmful to not build the pipeline than it is to build the pipeline? I bet you the answer to that is yes. Or at least it should be.
For example: If the pipeline was being built because some rich guy wanted to have a pipeline there, that connects to nothing, and helps no one, I am pretty sure we can agree that building it in that case is wrong. Because then the frustration of some random guy not getting his arbitrary desire doesn't compare to the risk of someone dying to an explosion.
Quoting Pinprick
Because you cannot say that childbirth is the less risky (likely to cause harm) option. It is basically always the more harmful option, because you're comparing a lifetime of suffering to the suffering of childlessness. Obviously the former is greater, because the latter is literally a subset of it. Whereas you can say with near certainty that throwing someone in jail is the less risky option.
Quoting Pinprick
Because not doing so risks killing them. Which is a much greater harm than a broken rib for most people. I don't understand what's so difficult about this.
Quoting Pinprick
Not necessarily. If you go by my definition of harm "Doing something to someone that they would rather not be done to them" then that provides justification for CPR. Most people don't want to die. So not performing CPR would be the more harmful option.
Quoting Pinprick
Would you mind if I press the button that has a 2% chance of killing you or breaking a bone for a 98% chance of giving you 1000 dollars without asking? Most people walk away 1000 dollars richer.... Heck, most people who have gone through the experience say that it was worth it!
Quoting Pinprick
If it is possible that someone will find life not worthwhile because they stubbed their toe once, yes. Though in this case while childbirth would be wrong, it would be a very very small wrong. Akin to pirating a movie or something.
Quoting Pinprick
........
I have already given countless examples of this. Like throwing people in jail as letting them go free risks even more harm. Or killing in self defense as not doing so risks comparable harm to yourself. etc.
You minimize harm done. That is all. That is the principle. For a more thorough explanation refer to my talk with Echarimon. Specifically where I talk about what my "tests" are. Search for the word "car" it should be around there.
On the other hand you are suggesting that benefits should also be factored in. That would mean that you are obligated to have children in many scenarios. If you can show that it is likely that they will be beneficial to have overall, then it becomes a duty to have them. But you don't agree with this. Which is weird. Furthermore you say that the risk of significant harm outweighs any considerations of pleasure. I don't see how you balance this. You have two different "variables" whereas I have one.
I say: It's best to do the least risky alternative at all times. And you haven't given an example so far that results in contradictions or ridiculous scenarios by applying this.
In this "neutral" lies the problem. If death is self-non-existence, how are we to imagine it? Seeing nothing and hearing nothing? But the perception of blackness and silence is also a perception. One has to imagine this perception away too.
It is not the same as a dreamless sleep, because one can speak of that after awakening. Personally, I find the indefinable self-non-existence frightening and not neutral.
Are we? What is being "traded" exactly? This is at the core of the disagreement here, that one side views life as an option, like a game or some other activity, while the other side is saying that this isn't so, as nonexistence is not actually an alternative.
So did you read the two reformulations that I wrote below this? I purposely added that in anticipation of this kind of objection. Benatar takes a view that prevention of harm is always good, even if there are no subjective entities to know this. The reformulations below this reformulate this for people who do not have this point of view of the absolute "goodness" of "no harm".
Good point.
Quoting Inyenzi
Exactly.
Quoting Inyenzi
Yep.
Quoting Inyenzi
Yep. The only thing they are going to keep doing is make the move to say, "But they don't exist yet, so you can cause anything to happen, because as of the decision, there is no "them" yet". As if this negates that the decision will affect someone in the future. It's mind boggingly bad argumentation, stuck on self-righteous "case closed" ignorance.
@khaled and I have been saying over and over how making a decision that affects someone in the future, still affects someone in the future. Your argument is specious.
Someone is either affected negatively, or no one is affected negatively. The fact that someone is affected negatively is what we are pointing to. Antinatalists are saying, don't do that. It matters not that the alternative is "no person exists".
Further, Khaled explains over and over how when we "do" cause negative harm, usually it's because of some instrumental reason where the person being harmed is already in a negative situation, and there needs to be some amelioration of this. This is not the case with birth, where there is no person already deprived of something that needs to be ameliorated out of a situation.
Of course I read it. Nevertheless, everything depends on the evaluation of self-non-existence.
If self-non-existence is like hell, then you save someone from that hell by bringing him into life.
A personal question, how do you imagine death, are you afraid of it?
I don't really understand the context, now. I thought you were trying to do the same thing all the other people are doing.. "No person exists at the time of the decision to procreate, so no one is being affected!" Or "No person will know that they were being prevented from harm!".
What you are saying is odd. Non-existence is non-existence. No subjective point of view of an individual. Existence in the "birth" sense, is some sort of point of view of that organism. There is no metaphysical entity that exists prior to its birth.
Let's assume that's true.
Children often say to their parents, "Why did you give birth to me?". The parents might reply, "What would you be if you had not been born, would that be better or worse?"
This is obviously a comparison of existence with non-existence. In this comparison, non-existence does not win over existence, but the comparison is invalid.
What is wrong with my argument?
Because of the way you formulated it. It is about the parent making the decision that affects someone negatively. Don't do it. It doesn't matter that there is no person who is the recipient of not being affected negatively. Otherwise, you have the absurd idea that in order for us to realize harm is bad, someone needs to be born, so we can then say, "See harm is bad!".
I recognise this is your position, I just wanted to point out that it is, in my estimation, the source of the fundamental disagreement between natalists and anti-natalists in this discussion.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The quintessential problem here is that if I don't agree that this is absurd, there is no further basis for discussion. You think it's absurd, I think it's rather reasonable. Insightful, even. I suppose many of the people who disagree feel the same. There is no easy way to bridge that conceptual chasm.
We could start an interminable series of threads sneeringly implying that anyone thinking the opposite "just doesn't get it" for 27 pages before finally admitting it's just a personal feeling without any objective validity. That might work...
Suppose there were a pill that killed instantly, should parents be allowed to bring children into the world if the children were allowed to take that pill at any time?
Surely that would be in accordance with your logic?
But again, @khaled and I have been agreeing with this sentiment.. It's debatable, hence we are debating. I think it's kinda rich that you are implying rhetorical tactics of "we are already correct", when you and that other guy do exactly that yourself. Pot calling kettle black.
Quoting Echarmion
Yes agreed that you think it makes sense and we think it doesn't, and think it not insightful or helpful at all. I gave an extreme example for example, that if a baby was born into torture, and we prevented this, we wouldn't go ahead and say, "Well, it didn't exist to know that it wasn't tortured". That harm was prevented is what matters. No one needs to be around to know that this is the case. Don't cause conditions of suffering unto another, unless you are trying to get a person (already existing) out of a worse off situation and you try to get permission, if it's possible. Certainly in the case of birth, there is no need in the first place to get someone out of a "worse" situation, and certainly one cannot ask the future person retroactively. This is a case where this is completely unnecessary unlike some contingencies of people who ALREADY exist and you have to make a judgement call without permission, etc. etc. et al, conversations already had.. point to those arguments etc etc. in finitum.
No, procreation isn't justified with faster ways to commit suicide. It's like a game that you start for someone else, and death is an escape. The very fact that you have to do this harm of death, is enough reason not to start the game for that person. It is quite presumptuous to assume, "Well, you'll just endure it.. death is your only option". Something wrong about that. Never existing and existing and then dying are two very different cases.
All your arguments are of the form " but you wouldn't do x, which is similar to conceiving children in ways a, b and c...so you're obliged by reason to not conceive children"
Either you need to claim some objective validity to features a, b and c, or you have no argument (of that form), because the ways in which x is dissimilar from conceiving children could otherwise be held as rational reasons to absolve such an obligation.
Protestations to the contrary aside, your approach implies an objectivity you've not demonstrated to be there.
So are all the other alternatives. Which makes the statement “There is something wrong with antinatalism” false.
Correct but not very convincing. I don’t think anyone here is willing to say something like “Birth, although similar to malicious genetic engineering in every respect, is fine because it starts with a ‘B’”
IF someone were to say that I would think they’re being crazy and ridiculous. You would probably also think so. And no I would not try to appeal to some sense of objectivity to get them to change their mind. No “I think that’s ridiculous” isn’t necessarily said to change people’s minds and neither does it imply any form of objectivity.
And might I point out that this:
Quoting Isaac
Is EXACTLY how you would go about trying to show there is something wrong with AN. You would try to show that there is a situation, where the application of its principles leads to conclusions that are deemed by both sides to be ridiculous. No objectivity required. And that’s as far as you can take it.
Quoting Isaac
This thread was started by the other side. The burden is on you to show that there is, objectivity, something wrong with antinatalism.
Though as usual you fail to do so then run back to “Ok but it’s all subjective anyways”. Agreed, but that’s not something wrong with antinatalism. That’s true of all alternatives.
As I said quite clearly, it is not the fact that an argument is being presented that I take issue with but its form. Are you seriously suggesting that all argumentative forms are value regardless? That would leave us with very little to do by way of analysis.
Despite the title, the OP makes it clear that it is the form of argument, not the subjectivity of the premises which is being taken issue with.
Quoting khaled
You can't be seriously saying the only difference anyone could point to between malicious genetic engineering and birth is the initial letter? Ridiculous.
Sure and I discussed that with Benkei for a while until he stopped replying. But it was clear he had an arbitrary premise as well, despite claiming that he was attacking the form. Page 12 if you’re interested. I don’t think there is anything wrong with my form of the argument at least. Heck, remember the other thread? Where you kept saying “If I have unreasonable premises I end up with unreasonable conclusions” in reference to my argument? That means not even you think there is something wrong with the form, just the premises. That is a failure to show that there is anything wrong with AN.
Quoting Isaac
I’m saying that if they were to use the first letter as a reason birth should be treated differently in a moral sense, everyone would agree that they were being ridiculous. Although it is a valid moral claim. This was in response to you saying that any way that they are different could be reasonably held as a reason to absolve the obligation. Sure, technically true, but that doesn’t make any difference convincing. Or reasonable in any traditional sense.
But I would be interested in what features about malicious genetic engineering and birth make one ok and the other not, for you. Because all the features I’ve heard so far have seemed ridiculous to me. Not as ridiculous as the first letter, but still ridiculous to think they should matter.
I don't really want to rehash all the same arguments again. It's just the disconnect that I find kinda fascinating. I believe you that you're honestly not seeing the flaw in the reasoning, it's just so weird to me that someone wouldn't. Perhaps you feel exactly the same way. Usually, things like this happen in political topics, were some group affiliation is at stake and the entire thing is really just a song-and-dance routine to affirm your group identity. But there aren't really any strong group identities involved here, so it seems like a geniune breakdown of communication.
I can tell you a hundred times that we can only compare situations of different existences (tortured child - not tortured child, seeing child - blind child), but never compare an existence with a nonexistence. But you just somehow don't see it. And I just somehow don't see why it's just as bad to cause common suffering as it is to inflict special suffering. If I am against suffering due to torture, I must be against suffering due to being born. And I just am not. Weird, right?
I think you are not seeing the one last step the ANs are taking. Causing the conditions of suffering can lead to any number of harms, many of which were unforeseen. Any and all harms can be prevented, not just the possibility of torture.
Quoting Echarmion
From what I see from @khaled, he's not comparing to non-existence, just saying, "IF there is a situation to create unnecessary suffering and there is a lack of consent that can be had (and he gives the contingent circumstances of not improving a situation, permissions etc.), don't do it as that will affect a person negatively in the future and violate consent". It is about preventing bad circumstances and violations, not comparing them to non-existence.
Quoting Echarmion
Yup.
Quoting Echarmion
False. It’s simply that it is not what’s being done. Shope just explained to you well what is being done. And so have I countless times. I don’t understand what’s so difficult about it. And I’m not trying to be rude I just genuinely don’t understand how this:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Can ever be interpreted as “comparing existence to non existence”. The word “compare” doesn’t come up once in any shape or form. Neither does “existence”
Everyone here agrees that comparing existence to non existence makes no sense. It’s not that “non existence is better for the child than existence”. I have insisted that that makes no sense.
Quoting Echarmion
Wtf is common suffering and special suffering? Suffering is suffering.
Quoting Echarmion
So being born results in suffering now? I am seriously confused on your position here. Does it or does it not? Oh but it’s “common suffering” so it’s ok I guess....
Quoting Echarmion
Yes, weird until you can explain what “special suffering” and “common suffering” are. Heck, this particular form of “common suffering” is the source of ALL “special suffering” regardless of how you may define the concepts. So does that make it “special suffering”?
Still waiting on what makes malicious genetic engineering wrong and birth not.
This is the best summary so far. No mention of metaphysics anywhere so no pointless nitpicking possible.
I think that's abundantly apparent.
Quoting khaled
How so? There have been several arguments put forward, that was an opposition to one of them.
Quoting khaled
What does make a difference convincing or reasonable?
Quoting khaled
I find this quite disingenuous since you've literally had to make a moral judgement in order to even describe the situation. 'Malicious genetic engineering'. One is malicious, the other isn't. Maliciousness is a bad thing, it's what the word literally means. If you really are so sociopathic as to need a fuller explanation (which I don't believe for a minute) -
In the example of malicious genetic engineering there is an intention to cause harm above a threshold level of non-triviality without a counterbalancing intention to mitigate harm and a reasonable expectation of compensatory benefits.
With birth, there is no malicious intent to cause harm above a threshold level of non-triviality, there is a counterbalancing intent to mitigate harms and there is a reasonable expectation of compensatory benefits.
If you can't see that those factors make the two situations meaningfully different with regards to the premises of virtually all ethical approaches, then I can't help you.
Depends on the person. But I don't think anyone here finds
Quoting khaled
reasonable or convincing. So not just any difference can be used.
Quoting Isaac
Doesn't matter what I call it. I think it's wrong definitely and I know you do too so I didn't expect you to nitpick here. I was just too lazy to write "Genetically engineering your child to be blind".
Quoting Isaac
Harm who? There is no one to be harmed. This is a consequence of the insistence that having children is not causing harm "because there is no one to be harmed". Either the argument applies to both cases or doesn't. Either both are a form of causing harm or neither is.
Also, what if the intention was benign? What if the parents come from a religion where blind people go to heaven and everyone else to hell? Or what if the parents just arbitrarily like blind people? In both cases consider that the parents intend to be model parents for their blind child. Does that make it fine? I doubt it.
So your "difference" fails on two fronts. Firstly, you cannot say that there is intention to do harm, as no harm is being done. This is what you say to me when I say that having children is intentionally doing harm. Secondly, intent is clearly not the main factor here, as even with benign intents I think we can agree that genetically engineering someone to be blind is wrong.
Quoting Isaac
Really? What happened here then?
Quoting Isaac
From the other thread. "that's just what my unusual premises lead to" implies that the premises logically lead to the conclusion.
Quoting Isaac
I don't remember putting forward multiple arguments for AN I've been harping about the same one since I found it. But this is also to say that there exists one of them which you consider internally consistent, at least, if your only objection to it is "the premises are weird". Which is all I'm saying. So you clearly don't consider it abundantly apparent.
Also, again, this is not in opposition to anything I'm saying. I'm not here trying to establish that AN follows form any universal beliefs and that everyone who doesn't believe it is deluding themselves or anything to that effect. On the other hand YOU are trying to demonstrate that there is something wrong with the form of the argument. Saying "The form is fine but the premises are weird" is clearly not demonstrating that something is wrong with the form of the argument.
In what way is someone dead in a different way if they are not born than if they have lived and died?
If a child is born with the exit-pill and it is happy, then it will not take the pill, if it becomes very unhappy, then it can take the pill at any time and is dead in a second, as if it had never been born.
I already explained my contention in what you quoted.
In line with what I have already written, I don't see how you could expect a sentence like "don't cause unnecessary suffering" (shortened for emphasis) to resolve any argument about a specific moral dilemma. It's the kind of statement that is easy to get the gist of, but hard to pin down, because all of the key words, "cause", "suffering" and "unnecessary" have a large frayed edge to their common definitions. And you require all three to agree on a specific issue.
Do you see the problem here?
Quoting schopenhauer1
This just goes back to my first point: I do literally believe that someone needs to exist in order for us to conclude that there was harm.
This is true in the literal sense that obviously if no-one was around at all, "harm" wouldn't exist, since it's a human concept.
It's also true in the sense that harm is something that happens to discrete, existing individuals, and so of course only exists when they do.
And it's also true when we consider the hypothetical future person, because to conclude that they will be harmed, we need to imagine a second counterfactual future where they exist but whatever harmful thing we imagine didn't happen to them.
Now you'll dispute this last point and say that no such comparison is necessary, since we can just look at the amount of harm in the abstract and see that, in the world where a person is born, extra harm exists.
That is wrong, I think, because this abstract position is fictional. But I can't think of a way to explain this in a way you're likely to find convincing.
Quoting khaled
I think you're wrong about that. Even though the word "compare" doesn't come up, that's nevertheless what's happening.
To establish causation, we need to compare different potential timelines. Some event A is the cause for B If B would not have happened without A (conditio sine qua non). This implies we're looking at two timelines: one where A happens and one where it doesn't.
"Unnecessary" also implies a similar, but inverted, kind of comparison. Because an event A is necessary for an event B if, in the absence of it, event B doesn't happen. Of course we'll first have to decide what events, or attributes of a state of affairs, we consider important so that we think their presence necessary.
And lastly, the notion of suffering also implies a comparison. This is more or less what I've written to Schopenhauer above with respect to harm. We don't just conclude that bad things are bad in a vacuum. If something had happens to someone, [I]they wish it didn't happen [/I]. And since there is no simple absence of events, that means they wish for something different to have happened instead.
Not my insistence, nor anyone here, as far as I can tell. I think everyone's agreed that we can imagine a future child and mitigate harms that might befall them. It's only your lazy strawman arguments that suggest otherwise. The issue with non-existence is about consent to risk harm, not future harm itself. But this has been made abundantly clear many times, I don't suppose you'll take any more notice of it now than you have done over the last 27 pages.
Quoting khaled
Then you have the recklessness argument, as I stated in my actual definition of the differences which you've just ignored. It is insufficient to have good intentions, one must also have just cause to believe those intentions will yield the expected result. An arbitrary and unevidenced belief in the benefits of blindness does not satisfy this requirement.
Quoting khaled
I cannot be expected to argue against the position you think you're putting forward, I can only argue against the one that actually seem to be written. That you think you've been presenting the same argument is irrelevant.
That is pathetic. When someone is at a loss, they refer to an ominous have already explained.
The status "not born" and the status "already dead" should be the same (in this moment).
You didn't go into the rest with the exit-pill either.
Echarimon is as far as I can tell.
Quoting Isaac
I haven't mentioned consent in like 12 pages because of nitpicking like this. I'll ask you the same question I asked Benkei. First off, we can agree that having children in some cases is wrong right? Like for example in severe poverty, or if you know they will have some terrible genetic disease or other.
Benkei for example says in the OP that if it is a near certainty that the child will end up more unhappy than happy then it is wrong to have them. AN (a form of it) is simply moving the bar from "near certainty" to ">0%". What is wrong with that? You have to find some logical inconsistency in moving the bar to ">0%" instead of near certainty.
No mention of consent anywhere. Because it is not required for the argument.
Admittedly this is not the system I normally use so I’ll restate that one too:
First: Check if you’re responsible. “Would this harm have happened had I not been there, and if yes could I have reasonably expected it to?” If the answer is no-no you are not responsible. If the answer is “yes” you are not responsible. If the answer is no-yes then you are responsible. You can also be responsible if you have a duty to do something due to your job, that you are getting compensated for and are expected to perform.
If you are responsible you are obligated to pick the option that does the least harm. If you are not responsible you are not obligated to but it’s still good to do so. Harm done to yourself is optionally part of the calculation.
You can only pick the option that does more harm with consent, if it is available. If it isn’t then just pick the option doing the least harm.
“Consent of non-existent people” is not required. Nor has it ever been.
Yes, I get that flawed reasoning.
Quoting Echarmion
So maybe I can help.. IF the capacity exists to cause unnecessary harm that affects someone else, don't do it. You don't look at the reformulations but the straw mans you want to see so you can knock down the straw.
Quoting Echarmion
Let me repeat.. IF the capacity exists to cause unnecessary harm that affects someone else, don't do it.
Once there is no capacity for this to exist, this ethic doesn't apply.
Quoting Echarmion
It's because you are looking for ways to move the argument of existence vs. non-existence. You are trying to do "If a tree falls in the woods..". Do you exist? Do you have the capacity to cause this to happen? Yes? Prevent it from happening. If no person exists, then this ethic doesn't apply, as there is null sets that this applies to. If one person exists in the world, it doesn't apply. If there are two people in the world that cannot reproduce, then this doesn't apply. It only applies, if the capacity is there. But you knew this and are looking for more straws to grasp and build stuff with.
I think I defined all three pretty precisely.
Cause: Would it have happened if you weren't there.
Suffering: Something you don't want done to you.
Unnecessary: Does not mitigate any larger suffering/Is not the least harmful option
Quoting Echarmion
Correct. And concluding that one of the causes of timmy breaking his arm was that he was born. Because if timmy hadn't been born he wouldn't have broken his arm. What's wrong with this? Where is the mention of non-existent timmy? Where is the comparison between timmy and non-existent timmy (whatever that is)?
Quoting Echarmion
That's not really how I use the term. The way you put it I would say A was a cause of B.
Quoting Echarmion
Sure but I don't see how this is any hindrance to the argument. Timmy wishes he didn't break his arm and wishes instead to have stuck the landing from the tree perfectly.
Still, the point is it is wrong to cause Timmy something that Timmy wouldn't want done unto him for no good reason. Timmy being born was a cause of this. And it did not need to happen, nor was there a good reason for it. You need some justification to do something that you know will cause someone to suffer. That justification is what is missing here.
It's ridiculous. No-one normally sets the bar that low. If that's all you're saying then we're back to ridiculous premises leading to ridiculous consequences. But you keep trying to make your premises sound less ridiculous with examples of the form I outlined above. Examples of this form are logically flawed in the way I showed.
To be honest this has been the pattern for the last 27 pages and is the reason I stopped responding. You start out with some ridiculous premise, for which it is shown to be trivially true that it leads to ridiculous conclusions. On being shown this you add a load of caveats to your ridiculous premises (like the special status of dependents, assumed consent of the unconscious, avoidance of greater harms, lack of duty where there's no causal responsibility...) to make the premises seem less ridiculous. But in adding these caveats, you change the nature of the argument. When these altered arguments are shown to be flawed (as I've just done), you revert back to the original ridiculous premise and we start all over again...
Really? I would say we set the bar pretty low when dealing with others. We certainly don't need "near certainty" that our actions will cause more harm than good to do them normally. So let's take the example of shooting someone for entertainment. At what percentage chance that the gun would jam does it become acceptable? And assume they don't know you're doing this so you can't say "they get shocked and that's a harm in itself" or anything. If the gun has a 1% chance of jamming is it acceptable? What about 30%? 80%?
I'd say we need the gun to have a 100% chance of jamming for the act to be considered neutral. Extreme example, sure, but it goes to show that we don't take dumb risks when dealing with others usually. Which is why it's puzzling to me why Benkei requires a near certainty in this one specific case. I'd say we require a "sneaking suspicion" that our actions will hurt someone in order for doing them without consent to be wrong.
Quoting Isaac
Sure but that's not a critique of the form.
Quoting Isaac
Still not a critique of the form.
Quoting Isaac
You didn't show much. Again, not any old difference will do. Birth is not fine because it starts with a "b" as that would result in Burglary being fine too, which is an unwanted side effect. I use these examples to try to find a premise that makes having kids ok, without any unwanted side effects. Just out of curiosity. I haven't found one that satisfies me yet.
Quoting Isaac
Try it. At least with my own system. The >0% chance thing isn't mine it's something I found online. It's edited into the same comment.
Quoting Isaac
What do you mean "change the nature of the argument"?
Quoting Isaac
You didn't. You said it's trivially easy then proceeded to not give an example.
Also I want to point out:
Quoting Isaac
Is not something I ever add but something NAs add often if anything.
And: It's not that I add these caveats on a case by case basis haphazardly. I add the same caveats and start with the same premises over and over. Because I have my "system" figured out already. I just don't present all of it because I don't want to dump a wall of text on someone. I present as much as needed.
No intent to mitigate non-trivial harm, no reasonable expectation of counterbalancing benefits, no reasonable expectation of consent.
So not an example comparable to conception.
Quoting khaled
That's yet to be established as you've not yet offered any counter-argument to most of my points and have not pursued my response to those to which you did, instead choosing to switch lanes again, back to the ridiculous premise.
Quoting khaled
Most people consider ending the human race as an ethical outcome prima facie ridiculous.
Quoting khaled
X > y is one argument. Both x and y might be shown to be ridiculous, but the argument valid. Xa>y (in certain circumstances) is a different argument and depends on the circumstances, the discussion of which always seems to cause you to switch tack back to the original form, making it impossible to ever properly address.
Quoting khaled
The difference between malicious genetic engineering and birth is trivially easy to show once you allow the kinds of caveat to a single maxim which you allow. That is what I showed in my example.
I should add that I'm also trying not to just repeat what @Echarmion is saying, much of which classes as further examples of where the added caveats undermine the force of the argument.
Quoting khaled
Well, I'll take your word for it, I thought I recalled a response to the 'unconscious patient' example where it was argued that we could assume consent. I must have misremembered.
Who's adding caveats now?
Quoting Isaac
I didn't mention conception. I was just saying that setting a low bar when it comes to "how likely it is that our acts will harm someone" is the norm, and not ridiculous in any way.
Quoting Isaac
That you think this is the case is not sufficient for it to be the case. Your claim was that any difference between the two acts in question can be used to make one ok and the other not. I showed that this is ridiculous with the "Birth starts with B" example. I only give these examples to try to find a premise that leads to having kids being ok without any bad side effects. Not even to make my premises seem less ridiculous, but to find how you can keep yours together. Because oftentimes I find that the differences you cite between birth and MGE (malicious genetic engineering) ridiculous.
Quoting Isaac
You did a terrible job at it then. Let me re-examine this for a second because I meant to reply but I completely forgot:
Quoting Isaac
So if we can imagine a future child and recognize that an act done now, that will result in harm later, is considered "harmful" and therefore shouldn't be done, that would apply to both. If the only reason MGE is wrong is that it is harmful then by the same token having the child in the first place is wrong because it is harmful. So what caveat will you add now? I am not saying this smugly or anything, I am curious as to how you resolve this. Because, as usual, the argument as to why MGE is wrong is applying to both MGE and birth in general, you haven't actually said what it is about MGE that makes it different from birth.
Intent doesn't work, because:
Quoting Isaac
The recklessness argument also applies to birth in general. Birth will cause harm in the same way MGE does. So it can't just be harm or intent to do harm, because both are present in both cases. What's the difference still? Amounts? Pleasure caused? Something else?
I suspect you will in the end resolve it with "The survival of the human race makes it worth it" as usual.
Quoting Isaac
I did so to demonstrate your inability to find anything wrong with the form of the argument. You still have not provided anything wrong with the form of the argument.
But I didn't mean to switch lanes I genuinely forgot about your reply because it didn't differentiate between MGE and birth in any way. Everything you said applies to both.
Quoting Isaac
Not me. Or else I obviously would not have had a system that leads to it. Look, if you're not a moral realist, which you're not, you can only argue against an ethical position in two ways.
1- The argument logically makes no sense. For example: Saying that not having kids is good for the kids. Makes no sense as there is no one for it to be good for.
2- It results in outcomes that the proposing party finds ridiculous. For example, if my system brings about that "Murder is fine on Wednesdays" then something is wrong with it and I cannot use it to argue for AN. Because I find that that is a ridiculous outcome, so I have a contradiction on my hands that needs to be resolved, either with more caveats or a complete overhaul.
You are not doing either.
When I give an example I am trying to do 2.
I'm not opposed to adding caveats. On the contrary, I think it's absolutely essential to any ethical approach. The point is only that adding caveats changes the force of the maxim to which they're added.
Quoting khaled
But it is ridiculous in some circumstances. That's the whole point. We do not simply have one unadulterated maxim which we apply in all cases. You yourself admit that when you add the caveats to your own. In a scenario like the one you present, where there's a non-trivial harm involved, no counterbalancing benefits, a seemingly very selfish intent, no reasonable expectation of happiness, no shared goal etc... then yes, we might have a very low bar. But in other circumstances with all those features, it would be ridiculous to have such a low bar.
Quoting khaled
No. I never claimed that, only that it was disingenuous of you to ignore differences.
Quoting khaled
Only we can't agree. Not even you agree. When pressed on "we should not cause harm" as a maxim you add a load of caveats, we all do. The maxim is unworkable on its own. So whether the harm ought to be avoided does not necessarily apply to both because it only applies given certain caveats and those caveats depend on the circumstances.
Quoting khaled
I listed them right from the outset. Non-malicious intent, reasonable expectation of counterbalancing benefits, intent to mitigate forseeable harms, mutual goal, expectation of duty...
Quoting khaled
You're simply confusing sufficient with necessary. The fact that it alone cannot account for the difference does not mean it's not a contributory factor.
Quoting khaled
No, again, you're either just not reading carefully or you're being willfully stupid here. Why would you think, when given a list of factors, that each factor alone is sufficient? Recklessness matters with non-trivial harms you've no intention of mitigated less than it matters with trivial harms or those you fully intend to mitigate. To say the birth will cause harm in the same way MGE will is again monumentally disingenuous. Of course it won't. The 'way' in which each cause harm, the types of harm they cause, the circumstances surrounding that harm... all hugely different.
Quoting khaled
I've never claimed there is anything wrong with that argument, so I don't know why you might have done that. The argument "we should not cause any harm under any circumstances, birth causes harm so we shouldn't do it" is valid as far as I can see. Utterly ridiculous, but valid. The argument that "'we should not cause any harm under any circumstances, birth causes harm' - is not a ridiculous premise because we generally agree to something similar" is not valid. It assumes a similarity with other moral dilemmas without taking any account of the circumstances which make them different.
Quoting khaled
I understand that. And your examples fail, as I've shown, because they fail to take into account differences between your examples and birth which render the examples ridiculous, but birth not - according to the proposing party - the party you just specified was relevant to the discussion about ridiculousness.
It feels far more like you're trying to sneak in an argument in favour of AN by suggesting some inconsistency between our response to your examples and our response to birth. But no such inconsistency can be shown once you allow for caveats to the maxim, and you have already agreed that caveats are required.
Sure. And I don't intend to defend that line further. Because it's not really the argument I use. I stated which one I use.
Quoting Isaac
Or maybe I don't find the differences you cite important? Like spelling for example, if you were to cite it.
Quoting Isaac
Sure and I already said what those caveats are. I am not opposed to adding caveats either.
Quoting Isaac
Malicious intent has been shown to apply to both. Since in both cases you intend to do harm. Just in one you intend to mitigate it as much as you can.
Quoting Isaac
I don't find convincing. Because I find that in every day life this is never used. When dealing with others we only concern ourselves with how much harm doing the thing vs not doing the thing will bring about then pick the one that does less. We don't force people to exercise for example, even though we have a reasonable expectation of counterbalancing benefits. Nor do we force people to eat foods that we like because we think it will be good for them. Etc. Don't bring up children, I have a way of dealing with that if you were to actually apply my system.
Quoting Isaac
I don't find convincing because it is never used in daily life either. I can't break your leg because I intend to pay your hospital bills later...
Quoting Isaac
With who? The child? That would make no sense. If you mean the mutual goal of keeping humanity afloat you already know my position on that.
Quoting Isaac
Sounds like "intent to mitigate forseeable harms". Same treatment. I can't break your leg because I intend to take responsibility and fix it later.
So it's not that your caveats aren't working, it's that I find none of them convincing. You probably do have a self consistent system, that has premises I don't agree with. I don't intend to change anything about that.
Quoting Isaac
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that both birth and MGE are examples of malicious intent. Because they both have the willing intention to do harm. What differentiates?
Quoting Isaac
I don't actually think so obviously I just want to see how you resolve it without side effects.
Quoting Isaac
Oh, I just realized I misread. I thought you meant "I think that's abundantly apparent" that there is something wrong with the argument.
If your goal isn't to say that there is something wrong with AN then what are you replying for?
Quoting Isaac
I don't care to make that argument. I don't care to convince you.
Quoting Isaac
Not to sneak in an argument, just to see how you resolve the inconsistency.
Quoting Isaac
Yup. I just want to see what caveats you use. If someone can come up with caveats I don't find ridiculous that can deal with the examples then I probably wouldn't be an AN anymore.
Causing non-trivial harm directly is sufficiently different from causing trivial harm (or causing non-trivial harm indirectly whilst pursuing other reasonable goals) that we do not use the term malicious to describe both. again you seem to be going down this weird line that if two things are similar in one aspect, they must be the same thing. Both birth and malicious genetic engineering result in harm to the subject. Just because they share that one thing in common, doesn't mean you can just treat them as if they were identical.
Quoting khaled
As an aside, I find this a really bizarre argument that both you and schop frequently use. I give an example of the way people think about birth and you say it's not convincing because it's hardly ever used. It's used all the time - justifying giving birth. It's like you look to normal attitudes as a measure of what's convincing morally but then refuse to allow conception into that set of normal attitudes. Like saying "there are just no examples -apart from the example you just gave". What kind of counter-argument is that?
Anyway, that aside we do use the counterbalancing benefits equation all the time (aside from to justify birth, which is the main one). We've given loads of examples, surgery, imprisonment, laws, childcare... That you phrase these as greater harms is irrelevant. The point is it still serves to differentiate MGE from birth. In MGE there are no greater harms being avoided, with birth there are.
Quoting khaled
Of course we don't. Because as I've said for like the hundredth time we do not decide moral dilemmas by applying a single maxim. Honestly - if we could just get past that one point I think we'd make some progress. You keep presuming you can apply some maxim to another situation and expect it to yield the same result. Different situation, different sets of maxim become relevant. It's not rocket science.
With exercise, the benefits of coercion would not outweigh the harms, given the methods we'd have to use. Not so with birth, where the method of coercion is harmless. With exercise, there's and alternative method (persuasion). Not so with birth. With exercise, failure to achieve the benefits is remediable. Not so with birth. With exercise, the benefits accrue mainly to the individual. Not so with birth... I could go on.
And when the befits do accrue to society in general (like severe health service impact) we do coerce - mandatory PE lessons, removal of health services without commitment etc.
Quoting khaled
I'll do one more of these, but I'm not going to just point out the actual differences all the time when the whole "this is a bit like that so it must be the same thing..." argument is flawed. Paying hospital bills is not the same as mitigation. Mitigation would be knowing you've created a risk of a leg breaking but being committed to doing everything in your power to prevent it. Like putting in a flight of stairs, or building a motorbike, or advertising a skiing holiday. All completely normal things were a person creates a risk of harm, but does everything reasonable to mitigate it.
Notwithstanding that, we can go through the differences. With breaking a leg, there's no given reason why you'd do it. Not so with birth. With breaking a leg, the damage is painful at the time regardless of later mitigation. Not so with birth... I could go on.
Quoting khaled
See above.
Quoting khaled
I do think there's something wrong with AN. Just not that. A valid argument with ridiculous premises is 'something wrong', in my book. Plus, very little of the discussion here has actually been taken up with the ridiculous but valid AN maxim. Most has been taken up trying to show that it is commonly held but inconsistently not applied to birth. Those arguments are flawed, and it is those I've been mainly opposing.
Plus I think most AN arguments are just different ways to push neo-liberalism, which I think is wrong because of the consequences on society - consequences America is reeling from right now.
That's actually a good analogy. The problem in the "falling tree" thought experiment is also one of communication, namely that it's unclear what "a sound" is. Is the sound just the movement of the air molecules, or does it require a human mind to actually be affected by and interpret these molecules.
The problem here is similar: when you say "harm", you mean an objective state of affairs, i.e. "the amount of harm in the universe has increased". I don't think "harm" or "suffering" can be meaningfully assessed from such a (imagined) objective vantage. Because to me, the moral relevance of "harm" or "suffering" is the effect it has on people's ability to make decisions.
Quoting khaled
The point wasn't whether you can come up with definitions. The point was that in order to be convincing, you need people to agree to your definitions not just set them out.
Quoting khaled
Nothing. It's just that causality is usually amended with additional stipulations precisely to avoid it being this far reaching. So when people talk about "causing suffering" they ain't usually use this definition of causation.
Quoting khaled
What I wanted to point out is that you figure out whether something was necessary by making another comparison. Your definition actually makes this pretty explicit.
But that's why I mentioned capacity to do harm. Does the capacity exist? Then don't do it. That capacity exists, even if there is no one benefitting from not being harmed. That is the focus in these formulations at least.
But then, as I said, if the focus is on protecting people's ability to make their own decisions, there is no reason to have a rule that no-one benefits from.
If they’re not prepared, I doubt they want them. But I’d wager that most of us have pretty good idea whether or not having children would benefit us.
Quoting khaled
But you can’t be certain about this. The next family may very well be starving to death. Remember, this is strictly about risk. You’re unwilling to risk harming someone without their consent, even if the risk of significant harm is small, when it comes to childbirth. Yet you seem willing to do so in this situation. What’s the difference? And the argument you give here could just as easily translate to childbirth. Parents who want to have children risk significant harm to themselves by not having children (as evidenced by the suffering endured by people who want children, but are unable to have them), yet you would encourage them to take that risk. I don’t see how you can be sure that whatever unknown harm may befall the child will be less than the harm the hopeful parents (as well as hopeful grandparents, siblings, etc.) will experience.
Quoting khaled
I truly don’t know. If the thing blows up and kills people, then yes it is. I doubt not having a pipeline would result in any loss of life. Either way though, the amount of harm doesn’t seem to matter to you regarding AN, it’s that there is any risk at all, regardless of how small. But in this situation, you prefer to compare potential harms. Why is that? Why is it ok to risk harming others while building a pipeline without their consent, but not ok to risk harming another person by having a child? It can’t be because of the likelihood of harm occurring (as your button example demonstrates), and it can’t be because of the potential good it can cause (as you’re unwilling to take that risk with childbirth), and it can’t be because of the amount of harm not doing so could cause (we’ve lived this long without a pipeline, so building one is more for convenience than anything else).
Quoting khaled
This question is about how you measure harm. If you only want to look at the harm the child will experience, and the parents will experience, you may have a case (but then again, maybe not). However, not having a child will cause more people to suffer. At the very least there are two parents, even more if you consider grandparents, siblings, etc. that may be negatively affected by the parents not having a child.
Putting exact numbers on things is ridiculous, but to illustrate the point, let’s say if I have a child it’s likely that he/she will suffer 20% of his/her life. Let’s say that by not having a child, I, my wife, and our parents will each suffer 5% more than we would if we had a child. Cumulatively, this amounts to an increase of suffering of 30%. Which is the better option in your opinion, and why?
Quoting khaled
So it’s ok to do because you think it will benefit them?
Quoting khaled
Presumably because they find life valuable, right?
Quoting khaled
Personally, I think my life is worth more than $1000, but everyone has their price. I’m willing to risk dying in a car wreck every day I go to work, with much less to gain btw.
Quoting khaled
I guess we’re just different in this regard then....
Quoting khaled
What you’re missing is that the benefits are for everyone involved. So if there’s a situation where someone would benefit from being born, but the parents would not, then that would need to be considered. Hence no obligations. So, if these two parents are considering having a child, and one parent states that they will kill their self if they have a child, then they shouldn’t have the child, regardless of how beneficial doing so may be for the child. This is due to the risk of significant harm.
The capacity to harm someone in this fashion exists, no? If the person uses this capacity, harm will incur, no? Not hard.
No, it won't. Or, more specifically, there is no capacity to harm people by making them exist. That's not harm. No moral subject is limited in it's ability to exercise it's choice by being created in the first place.
So the possibility of any of the very wide range of harms don't have the possibility of befalling the person born? And via experience, not only any of the possibilities, but inevitably some of them won't befall the person born?
I'm disputing your definition of "harm", so I am not sure what to do with that question.
Ah you would quote the prior version I had :D.
But what are you disputing about harm.. Does that even matter? You don't think people get harmed after being born? I know you can throw out some wild scenario of a perfectly charmed life but if you do, I won't take it seriously. And if you try to say there is mostly trivial harm for most people, I would dispute that and we can spend some pages on it cause what else do we do here, right?
What I am saying is "harm", in a moral sense, isn't simply you having a negative emotional response to something. If you trip over your own feet and fall, that will hurt, and you won't like it, but that isn't relevant in any moral sense. Tons of people can be involved in the relevant causal chain that lead to you falling - not just your parents, but anyone who had any interaction with you whatsoever. That doesn't mean any of them harmed you.
But if someone does intentionally trip you for fun, that is harm. The difference is not that tripping you is somehow more causal, or that it hurts more to get intentionally tripped. It's that you don't want to be afraid of constantly being hurt by people for fun, and so hurting people for fun is wrong.
Oh this stupid thing...back to Benkei's OP of causation. So, there are levels of nested causation. If you can prevent ALL instances of harm from befalling someone, do it. (Cue more stupid argument about someone not existing now but only in future which has been argued already).
You're not reading it properly. I am not saying nested causation doesn't count. I am saying causation doesn't count, period. It's not enough to be merely part of a causal chain that led to a bad emotional response. That's morally irrelevant.
It's not morally relevant to prevent unnecessary harm to another person (especially keeping mind contingencies discussed already about ameliorating from worse harm for people who already exist to be harmed)?
Given your definition of harm, yes.
How so? And how would your answer not relate to Benkei's OP about causation? Cause that's where I see this going...
I think the conclusion is somewhat similar, but the OP seems to be arguing from an utilitarian perspective that accepts the idea of objective, measurable suffering as the basis for morality. It then distinguishes bewteen "entails" and "causes".
My position is more that utilitairan perspective doesn't work as the foundation of a moral philosophy, and instead of going the roundabout route of distinguishing between different kinds of causality, I just put the value judgement at the center. First comes the question of what outcomes you should will, and only then can we look at what causal chains might be relevant with respect to that outcome.
Even if you define it this way, surely you agree that harm happens once born, right? And I already made references to charmed life response to this, or my willingness to dispute the response that only trivial harm occurs in a typical life. Keep em coming.
Until the difference is stated explicitly they are.
Quoting Isaac
Because it is the topic of debate....
Quoting Isaac
False. That they can all be phrased as avoiding greater harms makes it dubious that “greater benefits” is the significant variable here.
Quoting Isaac
What is the greater harm being avoided in birth?
Quoting Isaac
For fucks sake I know. I am giving examples that break it so that you continue to add caveats until you have a self consistent system with no side effects. Then I look to see if I agree or disagree with that system. That’s the point of these examples. I am fully aware that there are a 100 caveats you can use to resolve this. However I want to see which you actually use.
Quoting Isaac
Now you have to lay out exactly when this is the case and when it isn’t.
Quoting Isaac
And when that fails it’s justified to force?
Quoting Isaac
No? What?
Quoting Isaac
Even though you constantly point out flaws in my argument until I add enough caveats until you’re unable to. But when I do the same you stop.
But yea I’m getting tired or this too. All your caveats I can easily think of exceptions to. You seem to just be making up caveats as you go, relevant or not. What do you do when these caveats clash? When there is a reason to do something, but no desire to mitigate harm or when the benefits outweigh the costs, but there is intent to do harm, etc. It’s getting too complicated to keep track of.
Quoting Isaac
It points out that maybe you’re using the wrong principle. For the case of “benefits outweighing costs” for example I’ve already given examples where we do not follow this. We do not force people to exercise or diet, even though by this principle alone we should. So you introduce 3 more caveats. Point is you introduce so many caveats and do not show how they relate or what to do when they clash. You don’t show which are actually more or less relevant. And it’s getting to be too many to keep track of so I don’t care anymore.
Quoting Isaac
I’ll take your word for it that you actually have some consistent system that can make birth ok and MGE not. But I will point out that, again, “This principle would lead to this or that ridiculous conclusion if applied in this other situation” is the argument used by BOTH sides. I have gone through the motions and given a system that works (or at least that people stop challenging) every time.
But no one here has argued that the AN premises are commonly held. That would be stupid. They’re clearly not. All that’s been argued is that the premises and their caveats result in a succinct and self consistent system that leads to birth being wrong with no weird side effects elsewhere. And that no one has presented an alternative from the other side that can differentiate between MGE and birth well. You at least tried but it’s getting way too complicated for me to follow.
Quoting Echarmion
The comparison is between: Harm done when doing the act vs Harm done by not doing the act. Not between existent and non-existent Timmy whatever that is. That's the point. There is no weird metaphysical mumbo jumbo going on here.
Use the reply function please so I get notifications
Quoting Pinprick
You'd be surprised. For the record I'm not referring to my own parents I had a normal childhood.
Quoting Pinprick
But that is incredibly unlikely. In other words, the chances that I cause more harm than I alleviate from myself here are very slim. It is far more likely that not buying is the more harmful choice.
And if they were starving they’d just buy any other food. It doesn’t have to be what I’m considering
Quoting Pinprick
Very simple: Would Adam and Eve suffering from childlessness compare to the suffering of all mankind thus far? No. Clearly not. Heck they caused more suffering due to childlessness alone than the suffering due to childlessness than they would have experienced themselves.
There is no mathematical way that not having children is the less harmful alternative.
Quoting Pinprick
I am doing so in both situations. Try comparing potential harms in the case of birth. There is no way having children is the less harmful alternative.
Quoting Pinprick
It is NOT always okay to risk harming others by building a pipeline that was my point. It matters what that pipeline accomplishes. If it alleviates more harm than it is likely to cause then it's fine. If it doesn't (say, because it connects to nowhere and some rich guy is building it for literally no reason) then it's wrong.
Quoting Pinprick
The benefit isn't for you. But I doubt that pipeline is useless. That it is not needed by someone else. But if it is purely for convenience then I'm not sure it should be right. We pay a lot more attention and condemn people when a forest fire occurs due to a gender reveal party than if it occurs because of a construction mistake when building an orphanage. Why? Because in the former there was no need for the party, but in the latter it was an accident that happened while doing something that alleviates harm from someone else. People would not blame the construction worker for the damages as much as people would blame the people holding the party.
If it's purely for convenience I think they would need consent from the people living in the neighborhood.
Quoting Pinprick
Still shouldn't even be close.
Quoting Pinprick
The calculation is incomplete. Think about it. Parents (2 people) and their parents (4 people) each suffer 5%.
We know the child suffers 20%. Let's assume THEY don't have kids. After they grow up, we can assume 5% of that 20 comes from them not having children. Then we take into account their spouse, another 5%, and the parents of the couple (in this case you are part of them), another 20%. So it comes out to: 20% + 5% + 20% for a total of 45% total for having a child that then doesn't have a child.
Let's assume they DO have a child. Then the percentage is still bad. 15% from the person themselves (since I counted childlessness as 5% and that won't be the case here) and 20% from their child. 35% right there. Not even considering whether or not this child will have kids or not (both will increase the percentage)
Both cases are larger than not having a child and taking the 30%.
And this is WITH counting childlessness as 25% of a person's suffering throughout their life which I find inaccurate in the first place. Never mind the fact that if you adopt you don't even have to deal with the 30% and you don't cause any extra harm.
Quoting Pinprick
Because I think the alternative is even worse for them*
Quoting Pinprick
Yea.
Quoting Pinprick
But your principle would imply that if I think I know your price I MUST press the button for you. I don't think either of us thinks so.
Quoting Pinprick
A bit extreme eh? What if the parent says "I kinda don't wanna have a kid". By your principle that would not be enough to outweigh the "benefits to the child" (still think this doesn't make sense but ok). So in that case they should be FORCED to have the child. That's the consequence of requiring that people don't deny pleasure.
Yes. And it's predictable, too. But the responsibility for that harm doesn't lie with just anyone who causes it. It only attaches to specific acts, in the same way that in a legal system, only specific acts are illegal.
Quoting khaled
This comparison, yes. But I earlier pointed out there different comparisons. And the one where we establish harm/suffering in the first place does require us to compare two different versions of Timmy.
Huh? In order to say “My child will suffer” I have to compare two different “versions” of him? No.
That doesn't justify the approach. Prima facie, if all the balls in a jar are blue except one which is red, that fact alone doesn't have any bearing at all on whether that ball is supposed to red, or is 'really' red, or morally out to be red, or any other such thing... Until you've demonstrated an underlying reason why you'd expect there to be no aberrant cases, pointing out that they exist carries no weight at all.
Quoting khaled
Differentiating 'benefit' from 'lack of harm' is not a matter which can be settled objectively. Desire creates mental pain no less than actual physical pain (in fact uses the same circuits in some cases). So frustrated desire is a 'harm' in no less a sense than a broken arm. Unless you want to make neuroscientific case for a substantial difference, the terms are just vague synonyms in most of the caese we're talking about here.
Quoting khaled
We've been through this. For many the simple lack of a next generation is a harm. It's a harm to the older generation that there will be no younger generation to care for them, depending on your estimation of your own children's contribution it may be a harm to the new generation that they are without your children (note - your children don't have to be superstars to achieve this, only better than average). There may be problems the next generation will face which won't be solved without some 'hands-on-deck'. Human life has an intrinsic value and its absence from the universe is something most people think of as a harm. But the harms reduced by birth needn't even be that great because the circumstances in which our imagined future child may find themselves will (according to the intention of the would-be parent) will be overall pleasant.
Quoting khaled
But they don't 'break it'. That;s the point. What you're doing is presenting situations for one maxim in which it is insufficient on its own to explain the result. That's entirely to be expected if we use more than one maxim. Nothing's being 'broken'.
Quoting khaled
That would takes far too long. We weigh each moral dilemma as it arises depending on the factors which seem to us to be relevant to it. That's largely why we come up with different answers a lot of the time.
Quoting khaled
Why? Why would you expect there to not ever be any single exceptions. We've established that differnet scenarios introduce different factors to consider. What's so special about the number 1 that it can't be the sum total of cases with some given set of factors?
Quoting khaled
That is exactly what you are de facto arguing by using examples of the form "but you wouldn't...". You're appealing to a commonly held premise, showing it's similarity to the premises of AN to lend them support. It's the standard response when I raise the 'Ridiculous premises, ridiculous conclusion' argument.
-----
I think there's a fundamental error you're making here. At least twelve different brain regions have been shown to be involved in moral decision-making, some say more. Different specialised regions get involved in different types of moral decision-making ranging from empathy, social status, prediction, disgust, goals...and more. Joshua Greene's paper is really good on this if you're interested. The point is each of these regions has tens of thousands of neurons, even millions. Apart from managing our body, working out social/moral dilemmas is the biggest job our brain does. It's occupied with it almost all the time at a tremendous rate of calculations per second. The effort is literally exhausting (one of our biggest calorie demands) and is most probably the reason why our brains barely fit through the birth canal (at huge survival cost). That anyone would expect the answers to be writable in a few pithy maxims is absurd. It's fiendishly complicated. Luckily for us we have the most integrated supercomputer the world has ever seen working on the problem almost every second of our waking day. The problem arises when, instead of trusting the results of that network, we ignore all but one region and expect the results to be anywhere near as good.
The comparison is hard to notice, because it's such a natural thing to do. But when you say "I wish this didn't happen to me", you're not wishing for an absence, an empty set, because you cannot actually imagine the absence of a state of affairs. What you do instead is imagine a different state of affairs that the event isn't part of. Absence is always relative.
And when I say "My child will suffer" I am saying "My child will do this comparison you are speaking of and wish for a different state of affairs". That's it. No metaphysical mumbo jumbo.
Seriously, do you think the sentence "My child will suffer" makes no sense?
Quoting Isaac
Call it what you will. In my book that's called "breaking". Because until caveats are introduced your system is insufficient.
Quoting Isaac
Nothing weird about it. But I haven't seen a combination of factors that actually succeeds in doing this that don't break elsewhere.
Quoting Isaac
False. I only say the "but you wouldn't..." when critiquing the premises you present me. So you say something like "Denying pleasure is wrong" and I reply with "But you wouldn't just give me 100 bucks if I asked you even though that would be denying pleasure". You then have to go back and add caveats to the original premise of "Denying pleasure is wrong". Etc. Until you can actually come up with something that is surgical enough that it makes birth ok and MGE not and doesn't have weird side effects elsewhere.
But you add 3 different caveats every time I give a point at which they don't work. Like a hydra, you cut one head off and 3 more pop out. At this point you have like 15 different completely unrelated factors that go into what makes something right and neither of us can be bothered to clean them up. So I'll just take your word for it that you have some consistent system or other there that somehow incorporates all these factors and makes birth ok without coming up with weird results like "but eating skittles on Christmas eve is wrong".
Quoting Isaac
And when the network is indecisive what do we do? Or when it produces different results for different people like it is here? We try to find the most important factors. I have done so and come up with a system that I haven't seen critiqued successfully so far. You have started to do so but stopped because you keep adding factors on factors on factors and it is too much to keep up with.
And I think it's fallacious to say that because the problem is computationally costly, that the answer has to be complicated. Maybe a few pithy maxims IS all it comes down to for a certain individual. And the other factors in the network are just never prevalent enough to overcome those few important maxims. It's not that they're being ignored it's that they're insufficient to change anything.
This is not about law, so not sure why we need to make those comparisons. Clearly, the law doesn't prevent a lot of things people find immoral or wrong. For example,the law doesn't consider procreation to be illegal, so anything you analogize from this system will of course already be skewed in favor of what you are saying. But you know that. Hell, in 1857, just before the American Civil War, the Supreme Court considered someone a slave no matter what they did otherwise, according to the Dread Scott Supreme Court case. Law changes with attitudes and judges' own propriety. It's not the universe handing down what is right.
I don't get your claim here "It only attaches to specific acts.." You just said earlier you understand nested causation. ALL instances of harm will follow if someone is born. I asked you earlier whether you believe harm occurs after someone is born? The trivially true question is at the heart of the matter. Of course it does. One can prevent all instances of harm. And again, we can debate all day whether a typical life has more than trivial harm, but first I'm trying to understand your evasion of the fact that we all know being born creates the conditions for all the causes for harm in a life. Do not create unnecessary harm for another without cause (ameliorating a worse situation). Same for the axiom of unnecessary impositions and violations of consent.
The responsibility to have prevented this unnecessary harm, in this case lies with the person who creates the conditions for all other harms (and impositions) to occur for the future person who will be born from the decision.
Note, this doesn't mean that the parent is the cause of all specific harms, simply that the parent is the cause of not preventing (and more accurately, enabling) the conditions for these unnecessary harms. There is a difference you are conflating
Edit: Also note, that the condition of being born, in order to "know" one is being harmed and imposed upon, doesn't compute in this argument. It is simply about not creating conditions of harm and impositions for someone else. Period. The person who would have been affected, does not need to be born to know that this was prevented. It is simply about that situation not occurring for someone else. It is about not creating a future condition. You certainly do not need someone to exist currently for this condition not to be created in the first place. The thing is, it really is not a hard ethic. It's certainly not the only one, but it's not a difficult one to put into practice. Just don't do something that is easy to prevent.
It was an analogy, to explain the principle.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Does the universe do that, in your opinion?
Quoting schopenhauer1
What's so hard to understand about the fact that I just don't agree with this principle? You keep repeating it like some sort of magic incantation, but I already stated outright that I disagree.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's the disagreement again. I don't think it does. There is no general responsibility for all possible harm. Rather, there are specific responsibilities towards the people you interact with.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm not. I just disagree that the parent has that responsibility.
Quoting khaled
But then doesn't preventing harm here turn into preventing the conditions that allow harm to be assessed?
I guess if it is just "Look something else that is similar" rather than "Look, because it's the law this must be the best way to look at it.." The implication could have been the second.
Quoting Echarmion
Nope, just hope you weren't inadvertently implying that about law.
Quoting Echarmion
Just making sure you know there is no moving target. What we are discussing is what we are discussin and not some other extraneous factors.
Quoting Echarmion
Yes and now you are repeating your claims like an incantation. I already acknowledged this and gave you an answer for the difference.
Quoting Echarmion
Why? Your answer will be truly telling if you understand the difference I explained.
@khaled will probably answer this in his own way, but I believe I have answered this above:
Quoting schopenhauer1
It is both. Still, better to prevent harm than not to. In absence of a justification to do otherwise. What’s difficult about this.
The "conditions that allow harm to be assessed" are precisely that someone is harmed for you. Which I find so weird. This quote amounts to "But then doesn't preventing harm here turn into preventing harm here?"
"Harm assessment" happens when you wish for a different state of affairs because of what just happened to you. In other words, ANY prevention of harm would amount to "preventing the conditions that allow for harm to be assessed" by this definition. Let me give an example:
A considers punching B, then chooses not to. IFF A had punched B, B would have thought "damn this sucks, I wish this didn't happen". But A did not punch B. Therefore A eliminated the conditions that allow harm to be assessed. Since B will no longer go into "harm assessment phase". Since B did not get harmed. This is because, again, the way you define the"conditions" is precisely that someone is harmed.
Quoting Echarmion
What do you mean here exactly? Because I like to point out that there is no such thing as “guaranteed harm”. There is only ever “possible harm”. Pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger is not guaranteed harm, as the gun might jam. It’s still all “possible harm”. So if you mean to say that you need harm to be guaranteed for the act to be wrong then that’s ridiculous.
Where is the hard line between "general" and "specific" responsibilities? Also what happened to "special suffering" whatever that was?
I don't know what you're referring to here, can you quote it?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I have already explained that I think suffering is only relevant insofar as it affects people's ability to practice their freedom. It follows naturally from this that there wouldn't be a general responsibility to prevent all suffering altogether.
What point do you want me to expand on?
Quoting khaled
I see your point. And I agree that in order to make assessments before the fact, we necessarily need to compare hypothetical examples.
That said, there is a difference between imagining a scenario where B is punched and compare it to one where the punch doesn't not happen, and comparing it to a scenario where B doesn't happen.
In the first case, we're comparing two instances of the same thing - Bs feelings about the state of affairs. In the second, we're comparing Bs feeling to nothingness. You can't very well arrive at the conclusion that B would rather never have existed, because that's inherently contradictory.
Quoting khaled
The two discussions we're having assume different premises. So if I talk about suffering here and responsibility there that's the reason.
As to the "hard line", it's between saying something like "one has to always minimize suffering" and saying something like "you're responsible for protection this person from suffering caused by getting lost because you're their tour guide".
Quoting Echarmion
False. We are finding that in one option B will have negative feelings. In the other he won’t. So we pick the one where he won’t. We are not saying that “if B is not born B will feel neutral”. Or anything to that effect.
Quoting Echarmion
“Rather never have existed” makes no sense. B was never in a position to choose. He couldn’t have rathered never existed, or rathered existed at that. That is not what is being used as justification for not having B. What is being used is that having B caused unjustified harm, whereas not having B doesn’t. It is irrelevant HOW it doesn’t cause unjustified harm, only that it doesn’t whereas the alternative does.
Quoting Echarmion
If you only care about suffering that requires: A- a specific person who exists now and B- a specific harm then you will run into a lot of trouble.
This has malicious genetic engineering come out as fine. Since there is no person who exists now that you could harm. Nor is there a specific harm. Blindness in itself isn’t harmful, it just makes it more likely you’ll run into harm.
So how do you have MGE come out to be wrong in light of these requirements?
I literally just explained to you, and you agreed. So I am confused why you're now turning around and telling me that, no, we don't need a comparison of different states of affairs that B experiences.
Quoting khaled
My point exactly.
Quoting khaled
And we're back to repeating the same sentences over and over again. Maybe if you say it another 100 times, it'll suddenly be convincing.
Quoting khaled
We've been over this, and I already gave you my arguments for how it can nevertheless be wrong. Shall I look them up and re-quote them for you?
You weren’t using this highly limiting definition for the word “harm”.
Quoting Echarmion
Do you want to argue that having B does not cause harm? Because I think we agree that it does. What about that not having B does not cause harm? I think we agree there as well. So what is there that is not convincing?
Quoting Echarmion
It depends on what you mean by “we are comparing B’s feeling to nothingness”. I was making sure you don’t mean this: Quoting khaled
But yes, we do NOT need a comparison of different states of affairs that B experiences. That is NOT what is being done here. Because in one case there is no B to experience anything. So what is happening is clearly not a comparison of two different states of affairs that B experiences. It is simply the recognition that a state of affairs includes harm. So don’t bring it about.
Here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Echarmion
But then, procreating someone will lead to this scenario, even as you have defined it thus: "Affects people's ability to practice their freedom".. And again.. I'm ready for your (eventual) response to the tune of "Not many people experience suffering". I mean I can define anything so it evades a certain principle. Suffering is generally a negative experience of pain, distress, hardship, etc. that one does not desire. But again, I can still stick to your peculiar definition and antinatalism applies.. Prevent this (your definition) from happening.
Why though? I mean what's the point? Why would I conceive my relationship towards other people as primarily negative, in the sense that any interaction basically requires justification because of the potential of some future condition of harm? Who benefits?
Quoting schopenhauer1
The solution you're suggesting amounts to protecting freedom by preventing any freedom, which is obviously self-defeating.
Quoting khaled
I was using my own definition of harm, but the problem doesn't even come up because I constructed the entire argument by reference to people other than the one potentially being created.
Quoting khaled
Sure, it's part of a causal chain that includes harm at some point.
Quoting khaled
No, I don't agree, as I have explained. If harm is "doing something to someone they do not want to do", then the absence of harm is "doing something that is not going against anyone's will". The amount of people doesn't seem to matter here.
And concerning suffering, which you seem to use interchangeably with harm: if suffering is "something you don't want is done to you", then not suffering is "nothing you don't want is done to you", which is the same as "you want the things that are done to you". If you don't exist, none of these sentences makes any sense, so not existing isn't the absence of suffering, it's the absence of existing. Given you definitions, the two aren't interchangeable.
The argument that nonexistence is equivalent to the absence of suffering would require treating suffering as something that can be assessed irrespective of any human perspective. In other words suffering would have to be an objective property of the universe, like mass or electric charge.
And when you write the following:
Quoting khaled
you do really seem to treat harm as an objective fact as opposed to a human judgement.
What I do is: I treat it as an objective fact that there is a chance my child will subjectively judge a majority of his life to be bad. Because that is an objective fact. And based on that fact some justification should be required to do the thing that could lead to this negative subjective evaluation in the future. That justification is missing. So having kids is wrong. Where exactly do you have a problem?
Quoting Echarmion
And does this not entail some responsibility? It's not like you couldn't have predicted your child would be harmed, no you knew it would happen. And continued with the course of action that would lead to it anyways. Why? Normally we'd need some justification when doing something harmful to others.
Quoting Echarmion
What? If "Not having B does not cause harm" is false then "Not having B causes harm" is necessarily true. Who, exactly, is harmed due to someone not having a child?
I'm saying precisely that "Not having children" is "Not going against anyone's will". Do you agree? If you disagree tell me whose will it is going against.
Quoting Echarmion
Or nothing is done to you. Period. When nothing is done to you "something you don't want done to you" is certainly not done to you. So you are not suffering. In that case I agree that it makes no sense to really say "you are not suffering" since there is no "you". But whatever is happening here, it is certainly preferable to causing harm knowingly.
This is what I find so weird about this specific nitpick. We agree that "having children causes harm" is true. I think we agree that causing harm would normally require some justification for the act. But your critique is with the statement "Not having children does not cause suffering". It is based on the fact that there is no one that suffering is "alleviated from" in this case.
Ok, assuming this is valid..... Who cares? You have not by saying this removed the need for justification when considering doing something that will result in harm. This is such a pointless critique, because whether or not it is valid doesn't even matter. Even if it is valid, it is not enough for having children to come out right. Because you haven't dealt with the main issue. Having children causes harm. We need some sort of justification to do this. The claim is that that justification is not present. Saying "But not having children is not alleviating harm from anyone" is not justification, and I agree with it. So what's the point of saying that at all?
Because you cannot predict what behaviors cause harm, it is a fact, once born you will cause unintentional harm. However, would you willingly try to cause unnecessary harm (assuming you knew what you were doing was indeed harmful rather than something else like "just punishment" or corrective action)? I think not. However, procreation is a situation where it is absolutely 100% known you can prevent future conditions for all other harm. This indeed is a case where it is perfectly known that all suffering can be prevented.
Quoting Echarmion
Why would some abstract cause like carrying out freedom be more important than affecting someone negatively? Nazis had a slogan of "Work sets you free" for example. The notion that some positive duty abstract thing is more important than the negative duty for not creating someone else's conditions for negative experience/outcomes seems wrong.. I can say because it uses people or that it violates their dignity once born because it puts some reason above the person's pain affects them.. but you will just keep asking for why that is wrong.. so I will just leave it at that.
Exactly. @Echarmion seems to try to overlook the fact that it is perfectly known that all harm can be prevented in the decision not to affect a future person by procreating them. So he is going to worm around this idea by saying that parents must create people to create conditions of "freedom" (??) so that this can be carried out.. You see, the parent would be preventing these conditions of freedom and thus it is justified, as freedom (of choice?) needs to exist for some reason in the first place and is more important than the negative duty to not cause unnecessary harm somehow.
Quoting khaled
Because he's fishing for a "gotcha" on the non-existence front. It's like one of the few tactics trying to be used: Can't compare to non-existence, denying nested causation, antinatalism isn't even considered under morality.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This. He has yet to give an example where “maximizing freedom” trumps not causing harm either. Which makes me doubt if he actually believes this or is just using it as an exception in this one case arbitrarily.
This part:
Quoting khaled
It strikes me as completely absurd. There is a risk some action might cause a negative subjective evaluation in someone, and so it needs justification? Why on earth would that be the case? A little thought experiment: let's say we have a population of 10.000 people who keep 100 sex slaves around. The 10.000 people really like their sex slaves. So much so that they're extremely upset if we take them away. Do we tally up the negative subjective evaluations of the 100 sex slaves Vs the 10.000 people? Or can we just say prima facie that the 10.000 slave owners can go fuck themselves regardless of how intensely they want to own sex slaves?
Quoting khaled
"Doing something harmful" isn't the same as creating the conditions for harm. In the same way that stealing something isn't the same as creating the conditions for stealing. This weird kind of logic would mean you're responsible if the person whose life you save ends up a serial killer. Clearly that's a possibility. Not to mention that causal chains are indefinite, so whatever you do, you're basically guaranteed to cause something horrible eventually.
So you necessarily need to add caveats like there needs to be a certain probability, which are ultimately arbitrary.
Quoting khaled
I have no idea what logical operation you're performing here. I clearly didn't say "not having B causes harm" and given your other replies you do realize I am not saying the statement is false, but rather that the statement is meaningless.
Quoting khaled
I do, but this is only a necessary prerequisite for your argument, it's not sufficient to reach your conclusion.
Quoting khaled
But if you agree that not existing isn't the same as not suffering, how can you then be certain that it's nevertheless preferable to suffering?
Certainly most people wouldn't say that they'd rather not exist than exist and suffer. So where do you take this idea from?
Quoting khaled
This entire paragraph reads like gibberish if I try to plug in the definition you have earlier supplied for "harm", so I can't really see how this is anything other than you again repeating the claim "you need justification".
Quoting schopenhauer1
Which would seem a further argument against your position, since it makes it even harder to justify ever taking any action. Why single out childbirth?
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is essentially asking "are you evil"?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yeah, at the price of total destruction of everything else that has any value whatsoever. A weird trade to make.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Because freedom is the thing that makes us human. It is the thing that gives our lives meaning as individual subjects. That we experience ourselves as actors is the basis for our self-awareness, from which everything else follows. Insofar as we give it up, we turn into just a part of nature, a thing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The Nazis did not posit duty to an abstract thing though. Their duty was to the "Volk" and the "race", which in their view were not at all abstractions, but real objective entities fighting for survival with other such entities.
And of course the slogan was cynical. It was nothing but a cruel joke.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Out dignity is our dignity as subjects, as ends in and of themselves, not subject to nature of outside forces. So it's subjecting ourselves to some seemingly objective measure of suffering that is against our dignity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There is no "justification", as there is no need to "justify" an action that is according to a maxim can be universalised. So long as people remain ends in themselves, rather than being subjugated to an outside force or another will, there is nothing that needs justifying.
Quoting khaled
I gave you a bunch of examples. But you simply always redefined harm to cover all kinds of abstract concepts which have nothing at all to do with the supposed prevention of negative emotions.
If someone kills their partner in a one-time emotional meltdown, do we still punish them? We do, but this cannot be justified by the prevention of harm, so you'd somehow have to class "justice" as the prevention of harm.
Are we allowed to cause people emotional pain by rejecting their love, regardless of our reasoning? We are, but this also cannot be justified as prevention of harm, so now we need to class "freedom of choice" as the prevention of harm.
Do we allow people to ride motorcycles for fun? We do. But clearly this creates the conditions for harm. How do we justify it? Freedom? The economy? Motorcycles are cool?
The list goes on.
Because it's a foregone conclusion you are always going to unintentionally cause some harm once born. Try your best, but the outcomes simply won't pan out. Once born into existence, compromises are necessary, and those compromises do indeed lead to harm. So, if anything, I see this as more reason why childbirth leads to inevitable suffering and thus more of a reason prevent it. You can prevent all conditions for harm instead of yet another person who will compromise and will be affected by others having to compromise to live.
Quoting Echarmion
Well, I'm not going that far, but you can prevent unnecessary harm if you prevent birth.
Quoting Echarmion
Weird (to you) but doesn't mean wrong. Nothing needs to exist simply because you like the notion, especially so if it means causing unnecessary negative experiences/outcomes for someone else. That person's eventual harm should not be some sacrifice you make (on their behalf) so you can have X thing carried out.
Quoting Echarmion
The point was that your idea seems cynical as well, "No pain, no gain".. which is essentially what it amounts to when you put anything other than consideration of someone else's harm/suffering/negative outcomes in a decision that affects them. So you will put some fluff around it, still the same, something like, "Pain is necessary because I want X thing to be played out by someone else". You can insert anything in X you want from something as banal as "more plastic being made" to "happiness being experienced". It's all put above and beyond causing unnecessary conditions for someone else to be harmed and imposed upon (situations of "dealing with", etc. which I have explained in previous posts).
Quoting Echarmion
It doesn't matter because we know suffering/harm befalls everyone at some point- even right at the moment of birth much of the time. But yes I know you will try to make everything harmful seem necessary, not so bad, etc. A form of gaslighting but keep em coming.
Quoting Echarmion
Ironically, since procreation is something that is subjected from an outside force, your maxim might be used against yourself. The only move you can make here is to do the usual, "But no one exists prior", yet this doesn't negate that an outside force will affect someone. It's like saying if someone decided to immediately punch the new person in the face once born, that this is okay, as it was pre-planned (before there was a person with a "will") :roll:. Clearly not.
Anyways, not sure why this odd cause of yours (Kant's) needs to take place if the outcome is harm. It is yet just another maxim put above and beyond causing unnecessary conditions of harm for someone else. That's the main objection there.
Quoting Echarmion
If you knew the person whose life you save will end up a serial killer, then yes it's absolutely your responsibility. I already told you how I deal with this: By taking into consideration what you can predict. You could not have predicted that the person whose life you save will end up a serial killer. If you could have then you shouldn't have saved them.
Quoting Echarmion
But better not to do so knowingly, surely?
Quoting Echarmion
Or the caveat that it depends on what you know. In other words: Try your best to not cause harm. Doesn't sound crazy does it?
Quoting Echarmion
You agreed that there are certain situations where one shouldn't have kids if they will likely suffer too much. So does it matter how I can be certain? We agree here. Non-existence is preferable to suffering.
Quoting Echarmion
What does this have to do with anything. You were the one that just said "I prefer not to have been born" makes no sense. Neither does "I prefer to exist and suffer". Because at no point were they in a position to choose.
Quoting Echarmion
You don't know it's one time. And that we do punish them by law doesn't necessarily make it right (I agree it's right in this case though)
Quoting Echarmion
If you don't want to be in a relationship and you are obligated to be in one that would fall under "Having things done to you that you wouldn't want done to you" I think, no? So it is prevention of harm. From yourself.
Quoting Echarmion
Depends on how good they are at them. If they're good enough that they will not really risk harming others then it's fine. If they are riding for the first time for fun in a public area, that's wrong, clearly. Point is, there is a breaking point at which you cannot seriously say that they are causing harm by riding. A point at which frustrating their desire to ride a motorcycle arbitrarily can be predicted to cause as much harm as actually riding the motorcycle. Until that point, yes it is wrong to ride the motorcycle. That point is around where they get a license
Quoting Echarmion
Huh? Does it now?
Quoting Echarmion
So why did you call doing harm without justification "evil"?
This makes no sense at all. If I've just explained how circumstances and caveats are essential to understanding morality, it's nonsense to maintain that their presence can be described as 'breaking' it. Your maxim has caveats too. Is it 'broken'?
Quoting khaled
They don't 'break' elsewhere. They just don't apply. Why should a single factor be applicable to all cases?
Quoting khaled
But it's not a critique. To say factor A needs to be taken into consideration in case X but it's not so relevant in case Y is not a 'critique'. It's just a representation of the fact that morality is not a 'spot-the-pattern' book written for three year olds, it's a bit more complicated than that.
Quoting khaled
If fifteen factors to consider is really too complicated for you then I can see exactly how you've ended up with the arguments you have - it explains a lot.
Quoting khaled
'We' don't do anything. 'we' are the network. It's your brain I'm talking about here, the centre and sum of who you are, it's not some tool that something else ('we') make use of. It is us. I'm demonstrating that regardless of your armchair protestations, what actually happens when you make moral decisions is that a whole slew of mechanisms are initiated taking into account dozens, possibly even hundreds of factors at a blistering rate of calculations per second in the worlds most integrated supercomputer. That's what actually happens, and it happens in your brain, schop's brain, my brain regardless of whatever pubescent philosophy you want to claim you follow. If you genuinely believe you're the exception then I seriously suggest you offer yourself up to the various research units studying the phenomena.
Quoting khaled
No we don't. There's no evidence to support the theory that we perform some global weighing exercise. That would require regions of the brain to be involved in orders in which they're just not involved.
Quoting khaled
Again, if you really believe this is how your brain works you'd be an asset to the research establishments, because it's not what has been seen in literally every other brain studies, but rather a very complex rendering of factor where (using signal blocking technology and, earlier, lesion studies) we can show that the removal of any one system changes the result.
This is a fundamental issue which stands apart from the other points about complexity.
Your ethic is about reducing harm, you even argue that most other ethical positions can be reduced to this maxim (like your motorbike example). So most ethical people, in your view, are reducing harm.
When faced with complex situation, you revert to the net reduction in harm - surgery, laws, parenting etc.
When faced with uncertainty, you revert to "the best you can predict with the knowledge you have".
So how is it that in conceiving a child (who, by your own notion of ethics will spend a good deal of their time reducing harm), I can somehow be certain that the net effect would not be to actually reduce harm?
Obviously if everyone agreed to not have children, then the net effect would be an overall reduction in harm eventually (once everyone living died), but it only takes one accidental birth and you could argue that your own child could then justifiably reduce the net harms in the world, and so could others and then we're back to square one again.
Continuing to have children (who work to reduce harm) is the only way to ensure the net harm in the world is reduced short of actual 100% immediate genocide.
If and when life becomes a curse, there's a very simple and radical solution to it: death.
“It’s fine to hurt them cuz if they don’t like it they can just kill themselves”
Do I need to say more? What does this NOT justify?
Check my reply to pinrick for this. It’s mathematical. Assuming you don’t assume your child will cure cancer or do any such amazing feat. Which is just as unreasonable to assume as it is to assume they will do some large harmful feat like become a criminal.
Quoting Isaac
How so? Again, check my reply to pinrick. It is very difficult to say that having a child will reduce net harm.
Quoting Isaac
Problem is, it is just as unreasonable to assume that they will work to reduce harm as it is to assume that they will work to increase it. Which is why I don’t consider the child’s effect on others. Too many unknowns to accurately predict either way.
Then your grasp of mathematics is as flawed as your grasp of ethics. It is only necessary that your child is above average for it to be the case that their net action is to reduce harm. Unless you have some harm-o-meter data you're not sharing with us?
Even for those below average, action to improve the likely net ethical activity of their child will have just as positive an effect on net harm as not having the child.
Quoting khaled
Se above. You're just misunderstanding what 'net' means.
Quoting khaled
You're just being disingenuous now. Previously when uncertainty was raised as a critique, you rallied to "we can be sure of the overall picture". Why are you now avoiding that? We can be sure - from the general life satisfaction measured in every survey on the matter - that people's general harm-reduction activity must be substantial, certainly net positive. We can be almost certain that an average child will do a substantial amount of work reducing harms.
Again, there's thus duplicity. When we talk about harms birth brings about, the most trivial of harms are invoked. When I talk about new generations reducing harm suddenly they've got to cure cancer before it counts. If any of life's trivial burdens counts as a harm, then just smiling at someone to make then feel better counts as reducing that harm.
Quoting Isaac
Huh? "Breaking" is when your supposed maxim, caveats and all, results in something you find ridiculous. For example "Do not deny pleasure" results in you being obligated to give me 100 bucks if I ever ask. So you amend it by adding caveat X. "Do not deny pleasure unless X" may or may not break elsewhere. Add as many caveats and maxims as you want. Point is to arrive at a system that is surgical enough to make MGE wrong, birth ok, and not break elsewhere. I haven't seen anyone do that so far.
Quoting Isaac
No because with the caveats it produces no inconsistencies.
Quoting Isaac
But to say that you have no way to distinguish between X and Y is a critique. So you have to introduce some factor B that is present in X and not in Y, that together with A makes X wrong and Y ok or what have you.
Quoting Isaac
Sure. Yet in my brain it always seems to come down to a few important factors that make almost all else irrelevant.
Again, just because it is computationally expensive does not mean the answer has to be complicated. It is computationally expensive to determine which action results in the least harm as well.
Quoting Isaac
It's 15 unrelated factors with no indication about which can be applied when and why that is too complicated. Because at that point you're just doing intuitive morality, with no real system.
Of course you haven't, if three caveats in you throw your hands up and say "oh it's all too complicated for me".
Quoting khaled
Neither does mine.
Quoting khaled
Yep. And when I do you complain about the multiplication of factors. I can't win.
Quoting khaled
No, it doesn't. Unless you are an exception to every other brain studied.
Quoting khaled
It basically does. It's a fairly strict rule of evolution.
Quoting khaled
Possibly, but why are all those other brain regions involved?
Quoting khaled
As I said, explains a lot. How many factors do you think are involved in, say, economics?
Quoting khaled
There's no difference. All systems are either descriptive or pointless. It's your brain that's coming up with these systems, motivated by the same processes it's trying to describe. You can't get outside of it and make it want something else. Where would you get the motivation to do so from?
When have I said otherwise? Did you actually read my reply to pinrick?
Quoting Isaac
Because we can't be sure of the overall picture of the child's impact on others. Learn to read please. This is tiring.
I am saying that the child's impact on others cannot be predicted as net positive or net negative throughout his life. Though we have enough data to conclude that in all likelihood a child will have a net positive life, we do not have enough data to conclude that in all likelihood he will not be an asshat.
Quoting Isaac
How does a survey about how happy people are lead to the conclusion that my child will not be an asshole? Assholes can be happy. This is a non-sequitur. It does not follow from a general satisfaction measure that people's general harm-reduction activity is net positive.
Quoting Isaac
Agreed. But I do not see the data to conclude that your child will have a net positive effect on others. This is not to suggest that they will have a net negative effect. Just that there is not enough evidence to conclude that, in total, your child will alleviate more suffering than is caused by having them. So let's just focus on the system including the child, and yourself. In that system, having a child is certainly the more harmful option.
It's not the admission that they only need to be above average, it's the failure to grasp the fact that approximately half of all people will have children above average. That justifies half of all births, for a start.
Quoting khaled
We can. I just explained that. Most people are satisfied with their lives. So overall people's harm-reduction activities must be sufficient to render an overall satisfaction. So we can be sure that overall a child's net effect on others is going to be to reduce the harms that those other would otherwise feel. Unless you're claiming that most people would be happier alone?
Quoting khaled
Of course we do, what a ridiculous thing to say. Most people are not asshats (whatever one of those is, but I'm presuming it's a bad thing) that alone is sufficient to demonstrate that your own child is more likely not to be one than to be one.
Quoting khaled
Are most people happier alone? No. So it follows from this fact alone that most people's happiness is generated by others. Without society we'd die. Something you neo-liberals seem ideologically blind to. So yes, the fact that most people are happy is exactly and precisely an indication that most people are working hard to reduce the harms that would befall others without that work.
You threw your hands up first with "I'm not just going to do this everytime"
If you want to do this: State your system. Clearly. All the factors. Just dump a wall of text. Then we'll see if it doesn't break. It probably doesn't, but on the account of having something like "The survival of the human race is paramount".
Quoting Isaac
You haven't presented yours. So I'll wait to see it.
Quoting Isaac
As I said, you do first.
Quoting Isaac
False. The answer to mathematical problems can be incredibly simple. Yet the calculation can be grueling.
Quoting Isaac
Jesus. Even my own system is computationally expensive. Determining which act does the least harm is expensive. I am proposing that when my brain is doing any moral calculation, that is effectively what it is doing. Factors such as "the good of mankind" don't appeal to me. They are processed just the same, but are never enough to overturn the most important factors.
Quoting Isaac
They are still involved. But they never manage to overturn the main factors.
And, again, computationally expensive =/= cannot be reduced to a simpler answer. Just because all those brain regions are involved does not mean you cannot come up with a system that yields the same answer as your natural brain processing, that is a lot simpler. In the same way that the function ((x + x^(3/2)*x^(3/2)/x^3)^(3/2))^2 is very computationally expensive but can be reduced to: (x+1)^3
Quoting Isaac
When did I do that? I am not going outside my brain when I intuitively find that employing intuitive morality, without any analysis or attempt at systematizing your view, is moronic and dangerous. It's why we make laws. Because with intuitive morality, there is no real rhyme or reason to do anything, you just do what you feel like.
Quoting Isaac
Non-sequitur. You make it sound like the only factor at play in people's happiness is the actions of those around them. That is ridiculous. If it were true, it would be impossible to find someone who is happy in spite the negative actions of others.
Quoting Isaac
Most? I don't really buy that but sure. Let's assume your child is likely to have a net positive impact, on himself and others. It still is not enough to make it right. Because "alleviation of harm" and "happiness" are different. Let's just compare alternatives:
Have child:
Likely will not be overall harmful to himself or others
Do not have child:
Definitely will not be overall harmful to himself or others.
This is because you can't really argue that I have harmed someone by not having a child even if my child would have helped them. Even though my child helping them would have made them happy. In the same way that if, say, you had my Paypal account, and you chose not to send me 100 dollars daily, you're not really harming me are you? In any traditional sense of the word. Even though I would certainly be happy to receive 100 dollars daily, since I have no entitlement or need for those 100 dollars, I would not be harmed not to get them.
So in this case you should not have a child. Because that is definitely not harmful. Whereas the alternative is only likely not to be harmful. And there is no need to take the risk. This is why I say "alleviation of harm" and not just "benefit"
Net harm reduction is the measure you use elsewhere. Net harm reduction. The net harm reduced by having a child is something which is at least arguable. Certainly requires actual empirical data and is not this ridiculously simplistic equation you would have everyone use.
But yes, best we don't continue this, you're just either not debating honestly or not capable of following the arguments.
This is true of everything you do, not just of having children. At the very least, you're probably a cause for a lot of children to be born, even if you don't have any yourself. Did a couple meet at one of your parties? You have created the conditions for harm.
There is no evading causing the conditions for harm, whether or not you personally have children. So you are forced to draw arbitrary lines somewhere in order to be allowed to do anything at all.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I reject this. The opposite is true. If I make my decisions solely based on "negative outcomes", then all my decisions are dictated by other people. And this, if applied universally, turns everyone into a zombie only ever reacting to other people's emotions.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's true. You don't get to dismiss true statements merely because you do not like them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I didn't say "affect", I said "subjugate". Different words.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not only is this sentence self-contradictory, it doesn't follow from anything I said, nor is it in any way related to the kind of moral philosophy I outlined. You don't get to punch people in the face for no reason. Nor did I ever claim that future people can't be part of consideration. You're just making stuff up.
Quoting khaled
How do you judge what someone "can predict"? I came up with the example, so clearly it is predictable, since we can think of the possibility. What else is required?
Quoting khaled
But it is knowingly if you understand the logic. It's a certainty that the actions you take cause indefinite causal chains and therefore also cause harm.
Quoting khaled
How is it possible to "do my best" if I know I'll inadvertently cause harm by seekingly innocuous acts? Like if I celebrate my birthday, there is a significant possibility that by having a party, I cause not just one, but possibly several children to be born. I know this to be the case, it's not some outlandish scenario. So no parties?
Quoting khaled
I am asking how you arrive at the conclusion that preventing people from existing is morally equivalent to preventing some particular instance of suffering, since you agree they're not one and the same.
Quoting khaled
But if just potential avoidance of future harm is sufficient, how does this not apply to children?
Quoting khaled
Does it matter here how strong the feelings are? Maybe you don't don't find the other person objectionable, you just don't think you'll be as happy as with someone else. But of course you don't know that. So why cause the immediate, certain harm?
Quoting khaled
Noone is good enough not to risk harming others. And even if only the driver is hurt, that still causes suffering to a bunch of other people (their family, the other driver, medical personnel, people stuck in traffic etc.). You seem to ignore these obvious consequences.
Quoting khaled
And we determine this breaking point how? What's the mental operation here? Because from the outside, it looks like you're just taking the status quo and then saying "this is what causes the least harm". Wouldn't it at least depend on the driver? Like if someone really wanted to, we'd have to allow it, but is someone was only lukewarm about it, it'd be immoral?
Quoting khaled
Given all the qualifications, it's just a "gotcha" question. If you pile on enough modifiers, you can make it say anything.
And that's the one I used here. What are you on about?
Quoting khaled
I am saying that EVEN IF the child is likely to have a net harm reduction effect, that does not make procreation right.
Yes, I gather that. Which is inconsistent with your response to surgery, laws and parenting where in those cases you use the net harm reduction to justify the action to take on another's behalf.
Why does net harm reduction apply in those cases but not birth?
This again? We already went over this.
Quoting Echarmion
I'm saying it's surely better not to do something that you know is way more likely to cause more harm than its alternatives.
Quoting Echarmion
You likely haven't increased the number of children in the world in any way, so no. But there is also a chance that by not holding a party, your depressed friend kills themselves. But there is also a chance that by not holding the party, one of the people you would have invited gets killed in a house robbery as opposed to just being robbed. But but but.
Point is, you're being ridiculous by taking a single possibility and based on that concluding that the thing is wrong. At the level you're talking at, with things that have incredibly low chances of happening, no amount of processing the possibilities will yield a very clear answer. Which is why I don't think having the party is wrong. It doesn't do any clear damage. You can think of a million ways it can harm and I can think of a million ways NOT having it can harm. So don't be outlandish and try to only highlight the bad.
With birth, there is no way not doing it can harm. That's the point.
Quoting Echarmion
It isn't. Because in the once case (preventing an instance of suffering) that's usually seen as a good thing. You helped someone. But not having kids is not a good thing. Not a bad thing. The point is "Not a good thing, not a bad thing" is better than "A bad thing" which is the alternative.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't get what you mean here.
Quoting Echarmion
Because otherwise you'll be causing certain harm later to yourself since you're not with the person you like.
Quoting Echarmion
I said "not really risk harming others". You know what I mean.
Quoting Echarmion
It's more like, I find the point at which it becomes acceptable around the point of the status quo.
How is it inconsistent?
With surgery: NOT doing the surgery is the more harmful option.
With laws: NOT having the laws is the more harmful option.
With parenting: NOT sending your kids to school is the more harmful option.
With having kids: Having kids is the more harmful option. EVEN IF it is likely that it won't be harmful. It CAN be. Because NOT having kids guarantees 0 harm. Except to yourself that is (and only if you don't adopt).
Yep. And with having kids (of above average ethics) not having them is the more harmful option. Same as with law. Not having children increases the likely harm everyone will suffer who will not have their suffering reduced by your ethical harm-reducing children.
Quoting khaled
No it doesn't because it exposes to harm alk those people whose harm your children would otherwise have reduced/eliminated.
Quoting khaled
Absolutely absurd thing to say. I can think of a hundred ways not having a child might cause some harm.
The answer always seems to be arbitrary fiat.
Quoting khaled
That's not telling me anything useful. What kind of consequences do I need to consider? Is there some cutoff?
Quoting khaled
This is an entirely unfounded assumption.
Quoting khaled
Yes, that's the point.
Quoting khaled
Oh, now a new standard: "clear" damage. That's helpful.
Quoting khaled
That's patently ridiculous. Your child could be the one to cure cancer. Or invent mind uploading. Or just be someone's happy spouse. Obviously them not existing can do harm.
Quoting khaled
Hmm, fair enough. So there is, good, bad and neutral.
Quoting khaled
If it's enough to say "well it's possible locking them up is necessary to prevent harm", why is it not enough to say "it's possible my child will do something very important that alleviates lots of harm"?
Quoting khaled
No, not really. As I have pointed out, I don't know what your standard for "really" or "clear" or "predictable" is.
Quoting khaled
But what are you actually doing? What principles inform your decision? Are is there some hierarchy of harms? Some pages earlier you said it essentially depends on the strength of the emotions involved, but everytime I bring up the question of how much the emotions count, you simply ignore it.
Wow. You would be about the first person I've ever debated with on here that's even considered the possibility of changing their position in response to an argument put by the other side. Regardless of what you come up with in response, I'm impressed you'd have the intellectual honesty to do so.
Quoting Isaac
I wasn't always AN. I moved to AN from the standard view and haven't really had a reason to move back. But hey, good to know that I'm not an intellectually dishonest spawn of Satan :blush:
I remember hearing a similar objection a year ago, but it didn't quite click. Now it does. Consider my mind changed. Though I'm sort of at a "cusp" here and might change back easily. I try not to grow attached to my ideas.
But yea I am not quite at "standard" level yet. I would still want to see some proof that the parent can actually parent before considering having kids to be right. That they actually are likely to produce ethically good children. But this has always been the case. Even before AN I thought people should have to take a "parenting certificate". Nothing too difficult to get, just don't be a cunt basically. Though I have no idea what the practical ramifications of that would be or how it would be enforced.
I think the main reason it didn't click the first time was that in the other cases (parenting, surgery, laws) the effects of not doing them were immediate. It never occurred to me that that was the ONLY difference and it's not one that I think should be significant. In the case of not having children, people will still be harmed, just way later, and way more indirectly. I was only considering the parent and the child as part of the "system".
But then how do you deal with a The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas situation? By this logic, it would be fine to do what was done in the book. Imagine for instance, that you knew your next child will be absolutely miserable, to a point where normally you would consider it wrong to have them, but would cure cancer. Is it ok to have them?
Kinda glad I procrastinated and didn't leave when I did actually. Didn't think you'd be able to change my mind.
The claim is that, by not having children, you are harming those they could have helped. And I don't really find "You couldn't know that having children will result in them helping people more than average" convincing but it was my first line of defense. Most people have a positive impact overall I'd say.
And if you want to commit to "It is not harming them since you were never responsible for them" then that would put you in a weird situation when it comes to saving drowning people. Because then it becomes wrong to save them. They could have been trying to commit suicide. And by saving them you risk harming them. However, if not being responsible for someone means you are not harming them, then by not saving the drowning person you are not harming them (since you can't really argue that you have a responsibility there, unless you're a life guard). So it becomes: Save(risk of harm) or Don't Save(No risk of harm) and by that logic you would be obligated to let them drown.
Point is that it becomes similar to the situation of finding someone drowning. I apply my system:
Would they have suffered if I hadn't been there? Yes. Ergo, I do not have to pick the least harmful option (because it's not my responsibility), but I still can
Now we consider alternatives:
1- Save the drowning person / Have children:
Likely to be good overall. Small chance of being bad overall.
2- Do not save the drowning person / Do not have children:
Likely to be bad overall. Small chance of being good overall.
The key is that option 2 is actually more risky. And is not 0 risk, if you consider the "system" as comprising of everyone not just the parent and child.
So the less risky option is clearly 1. But you do not have to pick this.
Consider me impressed as well. It's indeed quite rare to see someone actually be open to changing their mind. And I admit being angry and combative on my part probably only makes it harder.
Lol. You think that is angry and combative? You were the nicest guy I disagreed with in a while on this site.
I find that it's a trend that the more posts you have on this site the more combative you become. Looking at you Isaac. And the departed S.
Sorry if my response came out a bit condescending. I just wanted to say something positive. Hope you weren't offended.
Quoting khaled
Yeah. I agree. I'm not really a consequentialist at all, so don't normally look at things this way, but it's an interesting exercise.
So the idea that your children are overall slightly more likely to produce a net reduction in harm than not is not something we can just take for granted.
If you're a pretty bad parent, it's a less reasonable assumption (though becoming a better parent would be a better ethical choice here).
Having loads of kids is less justified, a reasonable assumption might be that society's general harm-reducing effects might only require a threshold 'new generation'. Excessive birth rates might not be justified.
The dynamics of the society you bring children into might have an influence. Excessively bad societal influences might make an ethical child increasingly less likely.
And your example of the war zone. If a child's really going to suffer badly during their life, they'll have a lot of harm-reduction work to do to make up for that. Not impossible, but increasingly hard to justify.
So yeah, not my cup of tea exactly, but an interesting way of looking at it, with some useful explanatory power with regards to our instincts.
Guilty. In my defense, I've lead rather a blessed academic life, replete with ivory tower. I'm not that used to having to discuss issues in a 'public forum' kind of way. Steep learning curve perhaps.
It's not that it's just the change of tone that's funny.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
All good man.
Still:
Quoting khaled
Quite apart from this particular discussion, I think when we say things like "clear harm", or "reasonable prediction", we're not actually using any standard. We just appeal to an (assumed) shared hierarchy of values. It's basically a reversed reductio ad absurdum.
So in a western, very individualistic society we automatically assume that things like "the honor of the household" are not examples of "clear harm" and that events that require the independent intervention of several people (as in the "your grandson is Hitler" scenario) don't count as "predictable". But that's not because we're doing something like calculating the probabilities. We just imply "clearly that result is absurd".
This is why I don't particularly like consequentialism. I believe that if we were ever capable of such certain predictions we would have evolved mechanisms to make decisions in the light of such knowledge. We aren't, so we haven't.
In the spirit of hypothetical musing though, I think you'd have to have the kid. If we assume nothing but a requirement to not increase overall harm.
And once alive, of course, they'd have the same obligation and so ending their own suffering would be disallowed.
But this is one reason why I don't think least overall harm is a good thing to have as one's sole objective.
My comment was more general than that: if life becomes unbearable, there's always the suicide option. This is true for antinatalists themselves. Of course it's easier said than done, but it's done all the time.
You see, most people see life as a good thing per se and hence they see death as a bad thing. But to those who disagree, and who see life as full of harm, to them death ought to look pretty good. And yet you don't see many antinatalist suicide notes... Why is that? I suspect because quite a few antinatalists are like the rest of us: they either like their own life enough not to quit it yet, or hope it's gonna get better.
To be fair, this has already been addressed. The argument presented was about not committing to courses of action which lead to a net increase in harms/suffering. A person's suicide would arguably do that to those left behind even if they themselves would thereby no longer experience harms themselves.
I mention this just so we don't get caught up in that particular quagmire again. Not committing suicide is perfectly consistent with the form of antinatalism presented here. Thankfully.
Yes, but living doesn't only entail suffering, but rather it enables it — in humans, anyhow. This is not saying that living is suffering or life is suffering, but only that when one is consciously alive in the world as a human being, they are subjected to suffering through what is unique to living as one. Particularly, they are agents.
I'm not sure how this follows your previous points, life is a broad term and not the same as living. I understand living to be more than just being alive (life), but instead in the context of philosophy, thriving in the environment as a complexly conscious moral agent. When this occurs, and we introduce ethics, it is not a matter of cause/effect, but of enable/disable. "Death" doesn't stop suffering, for example. It disables it - akin to deep sleep.
I do think this is a strawman.
These are very isolated events that don't seem very informative when discussing something as broad as suffering; it is posing a personal/subjectivist take on objective causes of harm and hurt. But suffering is not "unique" nor dependent on the person and how one experiences or remembers it, because what causes harm and suffering is not determined by the person, nor is deciding such a thing dependent on their understanding of it.
I think the fact that you can utilize "all other animals get diseases as well," demonstrates this point.
I just don't buy into this kind of aggregated utilitarianism. My view has always been person-affecting. That is to say, the locus of ethics is at the level of individual, not an aggregate. Using this kind of aggregation puts some abstract cause above and beyond the individual. In a less absolute argument against it but still relevant is that it relies on probabilities and contingencies one can never know for certain regarding how it affects the aggregate (however, we do know how that birth affects the person being born, almost certainly negatively to some degree).
However, the practical application of the probabilities issue, is not my main contention. Again, it is not recognizing that the locus of ethics lies with individual experiences. When I want to prevent suffering, I am preventing unnecessary harm from taking place (for what would be that future person presumably). I am not doing it for some overall scheme. Conversely, having a child to help some aggregate scheme, is using that child's negative experience for some cause. That is using people, and as I've stated before, I believe this violates their dignity (once a person is actually born), to put some other cause above the harm/suffering/impositions put upon the person that would be born.
So no laws then, no taxation, no parenting, no charitable work for whole communities, no overseas development aid, no welfare, no health provision... I'm afraid your president has just left office, you'll have to try again in four years' time.
It follows that they see their own life as inherently good and good to hold on too, like many other people do. And the children of the once antinatalists -- if they ever get conceived and born -- will probably cherish their own life too. And curse it also sometimes, but often enough they will cherish it. And they might even teach their once antinatalist parents a thing or two about the beauty of life...
Hi Cobra, really good points.. And I agree with most of them, especially the specific causation issue being a strawman in that OP. Can you elaborate on your idea of objective suffering? Also, you will more likely get people's attention to respond if you quote them and mention them. These features will allow the person you are responding to, to see that they have a response or a mention. To respond to someone, simply click the "Reply" button (curved arrow) on the bottom of a post. To mention someone, click the @ symbol on the editor tool when typing your response. To quote a specific point, you can click and drag over someone's text and then click the "quote" button that displays.
The argument would be that it is not ethical to force someone into such a position. Like forcing someone to play a game. Just because most people like the game most of the time doesn't give me justification to force you to play it. When the alternative is completely harmless (supposedly).
The point is that we certainly do know how not having a child will affect others. Almost certainly negatively to some degree.
The point is not that having children is no longer harmful, or that there is some "greater cause" that justifies it, it is that the alternative, not having children is ALSO harmful. Not to the child, but to those the child would have helped.
In both cases, we cannot pinpoint the harm being done. I know my child will be harmed, but I don't know how. Point is, I also know that the people he would have helped would be harmed by him not being around but I don't know how, in the exact same way. So now EITHER option is risky. Either option harms people.
The point is that the only difference between causing harm by having a kid and causing harm by not having a kid is time, and the degree to which the harm was caused directly. But in both cases harm is caused.
Again, this isn't even my main contention. I was almost not going to bring it up due to this kind of response. But where the probabilities of how it affects the aggregate is practically immeasurable (the butterfly effect), the actualities of birth negatively affecting the individual that will be born is 100%.
It is no less individual people being harmed by the lack of harm-reduction activities of the theoretical child than it is the theoretical child themselves. In each case we're postulating an actual single individual who will be harmed by your actions. One by your bringing about their birth, the other by the lack of harm-reduction your future child would most likely provide.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nonsense. Most people are satisfied with their lives and most people would be significantly less happy living as hermits. The means it is virtually a certainty that other people in society are responsible for reducing the harms you would otherwise suffer in their absence. There's no ambiguity about it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What about the people who would otherwise rely on that future person to reduce their own suffering? Why do they not feature in you calculations?
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's not 'conversely'. It's the same scheme. Avoiding courses of action which result in harms to actual people.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So, take laws specifically, on what basis do we arrest murderers?
Quoting khaled
And the reason I don't buy it is what Isaac basically just said.
The comparison is not correct because the someone in question does not exist before conception. Parents give life to their children, their force no one, they give life to one. And if that one rejects the gift, then that's his or her choice.
This said, I understand the position of someone who would rather not bring a child in today's world, why with climate change and all that. "Let's not add to climate change by having children who might in any case end up living a life much worse than ours. There are too many people on earth already." That's an argument I can hear.
But to think that to give life is always inherently morally wrong, in any time and at any place, to me that's courting the kind of (admittedly flippant) response I gave you: if you hate life so much, you're welcome to quit. Will make room for the rest of us.
Yeah, but this again, is not my main contention. If you are not convinced that the efficacy of using probabilities is not a good argument against aggregate utilitarianism, that doesn't bother me much because even if we were certain of knowing the probabilities of aggregate utilitarianism, I think it is wrong to use individuals for some cause beyond the individual (which is my main contention).
As far as how it fits into things like political actions.. I think politics supervenes on ethics, but is not the same thing. Politics is a way of survival whereby we put people in charge of the group to make these decisions on an aggregate level. However, I would hope while functioning in the role of politician that they keep to some personal ethical guidelines. So that same individual functioning in the role of political decision-maker also when interacting with people on an ethical level, does not use people, treat them as means to an end, etc.
The problem is you CAN'T reject the gift. Phrasing suicide as "rejecting the gift of life" is disgusting. It's a bit more than that. Rejecting implies that before the imposition was made you were able to will that it is not made. That is not what happens. The imposition is made. And there is no obvious, or easy quit button. If "quitting life" was as easy as pressing escape and hitting "quit" I would never have been AN. The problem is it is a grueling task to quit.
Quoting Olivier5
One can love life and still be AN. I know. Shocking!
This is the exact callous thinking that makes procreation wrong. Forced into de facto circumstances of survival..etc. But if you don't like the game-system, go kill yourself. What great alternatives you have now imposed on someone!
As @khaled brought up, procreation can be a kind of kidnapping into a game. You force them to play, and then you try to justify it.
That's a big assumption you're making here. You've seen that movie?
Life is often better than the alternative. That's my point and it is indeed a very simple point.
But hey, ANY justification is better than "Oh we'll do it and if they don't like it they can just kill themselves so it's fine"
Quoting Olivier5
Key word: Often. What justifies taking the risk? When the alternative is harmless? (supposedly)
Not that I can see. That's an incorrect conception of conception.
You are not getting the point, sir. The fact that someone was put into the situation of "play the game or kill yourself" is the point. You have to take one step back and see the whole picture from a procreation decision-making point of view, not just "once already born" point of view.
And great point.
So how do you justify imprisoning a murderer? That would be unethical by your standards. As would taxing anyone, as would providing unitary aid of any sort. Sounds monstrous.
The fact is that nobody was technically 'put' in such position, because to exist is to be in that position, and no one even existed before they were in that position. It's not like you can summon the soul of your future child and ask him whether he wants to exist or not...
Ok. Even though I don't even argue for the side anymore this is still BS to use as any meaningful critique.
Is genetically engineering someone to be blind wrong? If not why? Nobody is technically harmed by the act. So why is it wrong?
This not-replying-to-me-but-really-replying-to-me just looks childish. Grow up.
It's not about political actions. We could restrict it to an individual taking down a would-be suicide bomber. No politics involved. By your measure it's unethical to interfere with the bomber's personal agenda purely for some aggregate goal like saving everyone else's life.
Oh I'm not going through this again. You have to do the hard work of reading what we wrote on this already, so not giving a full response to it. What I am trying to say is that once born, you de facto have to follow the dictates of what it means to survive as a human. You do not like this? Go kill yourself, right? However, this in itself is a bad situation you are putting someone in. If you do not like the game you kill yourself, but exactly as you say, there is no way for the person to preview all the things about the game and decide on if they want to play. So do not make the decision for them that affects them so, and puts them in this "Do the game or die situation", as far as the parent making the decision for someone.
Dude you lost your chance to argue with me, as you have completely disrespected me and attacked me personally. In these debates, you can debate the argument, but you have argued in complete viciousness against me, that I can't pretend like debating you would be fair to myself. So no.
Because it is destroying a major part of why life is worth living, of the beauty of life, for strictly no reason.
Why is that such a bad situation, may I ask?
No it isn't. Nothing is destroyed here. The child never experienced the beauty of life for taking it away to be in any way destructive, heck nothing is being taken away here at all. To destroy something, it had to have existed first. Saying this is "destruction" is exactly like saying that having a child is an "imposition".
Perhaps you can try to answer that first based on what I said. If you get it wrong, I will correct you, but I believe I have stated it already.
In order to make a human embryo grow blind, you have to destroy something. At a minimum you have to take a huge number of genes and delete them from someone's gamete, knowing full well that the result will be a blind child, who would see perfectly well if you hadn't edited out hundreds of genes from his genome...
This is just a really weird thing to say as a justification for not allowing individuals to exist.
Like your argument is that we must respect the individual, and you express that respect by making sure no individual ever gets the chance to be.
Quoting Cobra
The question then is how "enabling suffering" is equivalent to causing suffering in moral terms.
Quoting Cobra
This implies you have a moral system which is distinct from the traditional utilitarian perspective I associate with AN. Can you expand on how your system works?
Quoting Cobra
This seems a questionable assertion. How is suffering not dependent on the person experiencing it? Is there some empirical or otherwise objective way to measure suffering?
Quoting Cobra
When we say that animals suffer, we don't usually refer to anything objective though. We're merely projecting our own self awareness on the animal and concluding that we would experience suffering in their place. But that is a fiction.
Just imagine you are not debating me, your bitter opponent apparently- can you see ways, even if you cannot under "Echarmion" just somehow, looking beyond what you think to be the case, see how possibly "already existing" and having to compromise to survive in a community is not the same as starting a completely new person, where we indeed do not have to compromise? This is not special pleading either. That would be if the situations were truly the same. They are not. I'm not asking you to agree with me, but to at least see where I'm coming from with the difference. I'm not even asking you to reiterate your claim, as I've seen it several ways.
Quoting Echarmion
I can see how this does seem weird at first. However, if the axiom holds true to "Not cause unnecessary conditions of harm that affects other people than this isn't so weird. People don't need to exist for any X reason. But one should not start the conditions for harm on others. Doing anything outside of this would be violating the axiom.
Again, going back to compromise. Once born, survival, etc. becomes part of the game. We do have to make compromises to survive. It's not ideal. Starting a new person is something where no compromise on another's behalf has to be made. Remember, this is coming from a person-affecting view. It is absolutely unnecessary for the person this will be affecting to cause this condition for them to be harmed. If you want to take it a step further, they then in turn will not be born to violate axiom of harm in the less absolute state of affairs of someone who exists and has to live in the world. So to sum it up surely, once alive, it is best not to violate harm knowingly, but it will happen. This ideal simply will not be lived up to once alive. It is almost in conflict with how survival is carried out. Here is a case, however, where a very simply non-action leads to no harm for someone else.
And I know where you are going to take this..
How can an ethic be right if it can never live up to an ideal except in one instance? But I will let you predictably ask it.
How convenient. This way you get to just avoid having to deal with any lines of argument you can't answer.
I tried to ask you to stop with the vitriol and you refused. That's your deal.
I will say that I do think you want the right thing, in your own way. You want to protect people from harm and protect their dignity. That I can get behind in the abstract, and you don't seem at all disagreeable in terms of what you think we should do concerning the problems of the already existing.
So I don't think of you as an enemy, but I do think of you as an evangelist. This one issue is obviously very important, and arguably too important to make for good discussion, to you.
As to your question of whether I can see it, I have to say I really struggle. Perhaps in glimpses. But it's difficult for me to wrap my head around the framing. It's not so much that I can't see that, while you're alive, you're bound up in lots of relations which of course mean you have to compromise. But I don't see not existing as an alternative to compromising. Not existing is simply absence. It's not an alternative to anything, because it is not anything. And the decision to not have children happens in the sphere of existence, so it's itself part of the compromises. How could it be any other way?
Quoting schopenhauer1
But "not ideal" is still better than nothing, is it not? I mean at least people that exist have some choices. They get to experience sone happiness and exercise some freedom. It's not like we're yanking them out of paradise to incarnate them on earth. They get something. Maybe what they get is nasty, brutish and short, but it cannot be said that this makes it worse than nothing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But at least while alive, we can strive for the ideal. At least when alive, the ideal exists as an ideal. Without that, not only is the ideal unfulfilled, it's gone. Nothing there to have ideals in the first place. Isn't it better to strive constantly for the ideal, rather than fulfill it in some tiny way, only to destroy it utterly?
I actually don't think it's a problem to strive for unattainable ideals. I actually think it's one thing that possibly makes life worth living - to have this goal always to guide you. It's perhaps what people look for when they look for "spirituality". What I don't see is why giving the next person the chance to strive for the ideal is not worth something to you.
Yeah, except that was always the case. Has been since the beginning if the thread. Yet when you think you have a counter to any point I raise you're happy to put in one of your 'to whom it may concern...' type of posts. When you can't answer the point raised you ignore it a cry faux calls of 'bad sportsmanship. It's transparent.
The point, lest it get lost, was that your supposed 'ethics' requires that if we see a man walking into a school with a gun we must not interfere with his chosen purpose because the harm we're predicting will befall non-specified persons, a mere aggregate benefit to us stopping him, not worth striving for, ethical at all.
Quoting khaled
It’s also incredibly unlikely that someone born will end up not finding life worthwhile. However, it is at least somewhat likely that someone who desires to have kids, but does not do so, will become depressed, which can in itself lead to suicide. Which is more likely is debatable, but risk of serious harm is involved regardless.
Quoting khaled
How are Adam and Eve (whom I hope you refer to metaphorically) responsible in any way for harm they did not directly cause? Adam and Eve’s choice to have children in no way influenced anyone else’s decision to do so. You can’t reasonably compare sufferings after someone is already dead. IOW’s someone’s birth can only affect those people that are currently alive, and vice versa.
Quoting khaled
If not having one child causes at least one suicide, then having a child is less harmful. And that is a genuine risk, perhaps not that likely, but that’s beside the point.
Quoting khaled
Didn’t your objection to pushing the $1000 button show that you’re NOT ok with risking harm, even if the risk is small and the potential reward is great?
Here you seem to be ok with risking harm if the probability is small and/or the reward is greater.
Quoting khaled
To begin with, having a child created 20% suffering for one person, and 5% suffering for 4 people for not having a child. This totals out to 20% for having a child, and 30% for not. If the child does not have a child, then he, his spouse, and both of their parents suffering would increase an additional 5% (I wasn’t considering this to be included in the original 20%). This equals an additional 30% for everyone involved, which comes out to 60% total when the original 30% is added in. If we assume stable percentages, then every choice to not have a child creates an extra 30%, this is also assuming everyone involved does desire to have a child.
Quoting khaled
The 15% (20% the way I calculated it) isn’t caused by having a child. So the only additional suffering caused by having a child is the 20% the child will suffer. I’m using 20% as a sort of baseline that everyone will start at regardless of their choice to have children or not.
Quoting khaled
That’s not how I was meaning to count it. Childlessness should only increase suffering by 5% for everyone involved. The 20% is just meant to be a baseline.
Quoting khaled
Which means that you think the act will benefit them. Why resuscitate someone knowing that doing so will cause them to just experience future suffering? They’re already dead, so it isn’t like doing nothing will cause them any harm. Sure, they may prefer to be alive, we’re they able to actually have a preference, but the same can be said about the unborn. Is being dead somehow worse than not existing? If being dead is worse than being alive, then not existing is worse than being born.
Quoting khaled
I’m not actually into arguing that life has intrinsic value. I don’t see a way to evaluate life objectively. But assuming that it is, wouldn’t it be better to create life?
Quoting khaled
The principle isn’t to provide pleasure, so there is no “must.” You just have no right to stop me from pushing it if I want to.
Quoting khaled
No. The principle is passive. It isn’t about forcing anyone to do anything, it’s about not interfering. That’s it. If a couple wants to have a child, and they believe doing so will cause less harm than not doing so, then I have no right to object. They’re free to pursue pleasure. The only caveat would be if I thought their analysis was wrong, and that having a child would cause more harm. I’m not obligated to force people to experience pleasure, or pursue it. The act of forcing someone to do something itself causes harm, so should be avoided except in those rare circumstances that doing so actually reduces harm (I.e. school, prison, and childbirth in certain situations).
The odds are good enough.
Why of course, it’s not your decision to make. I trust that the AN are not trying to stop other people from conceiving children, and that they are just personally opposed to it for themselves.
Is having children more that a theoretical possibility for you, Khaled?
One needs to trust life a little. As I said, it’s often better than the alternative.
It's bound up for us, the already existing.. We essentially have the binary existential choice of keep existing or die. We don't have to put a new person into this choice. We don't have to put a new person into the game. We don't have to make that decision on someone else's behalf that will affect them, and as you mentioned, cause conditions for harm and violate their dignity by putting some goal above and beyond that of simply preventing suffering. It's not a hard ethic to follow, which is why I wonder why so much vitriol. It is simply, don't procreate. Not so hard. I'm not saying, "Don't save that drowning person". I am not saying, "Don't punish that criminal", I'm not saying, "Don't do X to already existing person". Rather, here is a chance to cause absolutely no unnecessary harm. Why would you not make that choice, if it is available?
Quoting Echarmion
I actually think that unless existence is an absolute paradise, it is not appropriate to bring someone into it.
So here is basically how people justify this existence...
1) People are not committing suicide left and right, so it must be better than immediate want for suicide.
Suicide is not a reflex that we have for harm. It is inbuilt that harm to the body is scary and painful.. this goes for supposed "painless" methods that intellectually, we might understand from afar, and becomes scarier as one might try to do it. This is not a good argument why existence must be good "enough".
2) Harm/suffering creates meaning (I call this the Nietzschean stance).
To me, this sounds like post-facto justification. Since we can't get rid of suffering, we need to do the less optimal choice of making friends with it and incorporating it in our credos. So, "No pain, no gain" or "Life is meaningful only after some hardship" becomes the norm. I have a problem with bringing people into existence knowing that they will experience hardship and then justifying this as "not bad" because they will find meaning in it. It does violate the axiom of dignity/harm, and it seems just a way to make this seem not so bad.
A utopia/paradise is indeed something that is pretty much unimaginable. Why? Because even the harm/suffering that one needs for meaning in this world would either be a) irrelevant in the paradise (and we don't know what it means for suffering to not exist), or b) it would exist but only if you wanted it, and can be turned off at any time. Boredom would also be irrelevant, so the whole, "But suffering makes us less bored" doesn't hold up in this context.
This brings me to another problem.. Because suffering in this world cannot be turned off at any time, people think that it must be a good or necessary thing. That's not true, just because it is the case. Just because there is no alternative, doesn't de facto make it good or necessary.
Also, putting this scheme of overcoming harm/challenges/suffering as above and beyond the actual harm/challenges/suffering is putting again, another thing above the dignity of the person. All that matters is no unnecessary harm befalls someone, when you can prevent it. Here is a chance to do that absolutely, no compromises.
Quoting Echarmion
The ideal for not causing suffering is not procreating. Once alive, the ideal of not causing suffering is broken down into necessities of survival in a community. It then turns into the compromises I am discussing. Are there better modes for our community? Perhaps, but that's another discussion. I personally think we can do better acknowledging that we are in conditions of harm and form communities of pessimism that acknowledge this case. Gripe away everybody, gripe away.. But not man people will agree with me on that.. You see, more compromises.
I would just say that perhaps you might want to look at the original foundations on which your particular AN stance was using. I find there to be a lot of problems with aggregate-style utilitarianism.. You start getting things like Effective Altruism movement, and all that which when taken to the extreme, makes us become slaves to the best outcome, no matter what.
However, even if we were to use your aggregated scenario.. by putting more people into harm's way (birthing them) you are just perpetuating the situation in the long term which is not fixing it.
Also, I would say that in the realm of ethics, using someone for some greater good, is a violation. Giving to charity is a good thing. Duping someone to give you money so you can give to charity is not, cause you are using someone, even if it is supposed to help a greater amount of people, or some abstract cause. So rather, I would not think so much on the aggregate level, but on the person you are affecting with your decision. That person is the one whose whole life will be affected by this decision. All instances of harm will befall that person. An abstract group of people might benefit from this person being born, but you now using this person's harm for this cause. Rather, we should help those people in need without using someone else, similar to taking someone's money to give to charity situation.
We do because suffering is no more prevented by avoiding birth than it is by giving birth, as I've already pointed out.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No it isn't. Avoiding birth causes the harm that the child would otherwise have mitigated. This has been explained. The vitriol is because you avoid this counter-argument by trying to claim that avoiding aggregate harms is not ethical. A a fundamentally antisocial attitude "I only care about me and mine".
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's already the case. Again, I've explained this. There us a real already existing person who will suffer harm because of the lack of a next generation person. That is just unequivocally true. Ignoring is not a satisfactory counter-argument. We don't even need aggregate suffering. Pick one actual person. Whatever potential suffering prevents them from just becoming a hermit, that is the suffering that a child can grow up to reduce. And it's not 'using someone for some esoteric goal' it's the same goal - reducing suffering.
The only way around it is to say that only the person who's being interfered with is relevant. Which leads you to the absurdity that it would be immoral to stop a gunman heading towards a school. Something you've still not denied. And you wonder why the vitriol? Seriously?
You only have to pick the best outcome if you are the one causing the harm directly.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The line is blurry. And the group isn’t any more “abstract” as the suffering of the child themselves. I’m not sure that the system under consideration should not include the aggregate. If it doesn’t, we can’t get taxes, or laws, or a whole lot of other stuff. When should we favor the individual over the aggregate? I’ll sleep on it.
Point is that I can flip this to say “This group of people will suffer if you abstain. By abstaining you are harming this group of people for a cause that goes beyond each of them individually. That cause being: not harming the child”
It’s not clear to me why the child should take precedence.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Which is fine. As long as at every step of the way we know that having a child is the less risky option. In the same way that extinction was fine since at every step we were making the right decision.
Sure, we don't have to but that's not saying anything about whether we should. You're just short-circuiting ethics by making you preferred outcome also the basic ideal. And so you arrive at ridiculous claims like "Me having any goal apart from preventing suffering violates the dignity of future persons".
Claiming that your, and only your, moral position is the one with only positives and no drawbacks is a good sign that you're no longer actually saying anything apart from "I am right because I am".
Quoting schopenhauer1
But an "absolute paradise" is just a meaningless phrase. Not only can it not practically exist, it doesn't even have theoretical properties. It cannot be defined. You're comparing existence to something incoherent.
You even realize this yourself, but somehow this has no implications for your position. You just gloss over it and change the topic. That should be a further red flag to you that your position is no longer rational.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Do you literally believe this? That all that matters is that no unnecessary harm befalls someone? Did you arrive at this conclusion by some process of reasoning of is that just what you personally consider to be the meaning of life?
Before I rebut this, do you have any comments on this part:
Quoting schopenhauer1
You do realise this is exactly what taxes are? The idea that taxes are immoral has an unpleasant pedigree.
But you can say that about any ethical claim.. Why? Why? Why? Why? So then, let's turn this a bit and look at your thought process.
First, why would causing unnecessary harm, absolutely (and I defined that versus relative once born), not a good thing?
Quoting Echarmion
I don't think it is meaningless. I don't see why just because that world doesn't exist or is not the actual world means that it is wrong to compare with this world. That is to simply say that, there may be a world where it is good to bring people into but it is not this one, and I gave the major reason why not this world. Just like the case of existence vs. non-existence, then don't even bother defining the paradise world, just look at this world as sufficiently not paradise.
Quoting Echarmion
IF there is a chance to cause unnecessary suffering, than don't cause it, sure. That's not all that matters though, clearly. I have to eat if I don't want to starve and die, for example.
Assuming you are asking me under what circumstances causing absolute harm can be a good thing.
For example, if you can expect that the person will be equipped to deal with all the common harms and will themselves act morally most of the time.
This seems entirely consistent with everyone's interests, and so would be "good" in my estimation
Ah, so I just think that
a) We can't know if they will be equipped (that's more the approach of @khaled, but I agree.. there is that 10% or whatever figure it is). Also, it is hard to really know how to judge this. At some points someone might be okay, others not, and then there is total evaluation which is separate than the individual experiences. Which version is it? I don't think we can say, and there are certainly times one someone would ideally rather not have had those experiences.
b) Even if I equipped someone, putting them in the game in the first place is wrong.
The question is not now that, because this not conducive to my previous post, and seems to be another strawman.
I did not say that - nor is that what anti-natalism claims. You are construing this from poor arguments of anti-natalism that may be formed off a weak understanding of it.
Once you are born (or rather reach a certain stage in gestation), you become a moral agent, meaning constrained by homeostasis - as a conscious agent that must maintain ones well-being and health, harm - pain - suffering is then enabled because consciousness is enabled. Obviously, you must be reach a certain gestational point - or be born - to be eligible as an inevitable sufferer. not "suffering".
I also stress that 'denying people the ability or capacity to reproduce' is not a antinatalist position, just another strawman.
This does not mean "living is suffering" as I stated, but instead that you now exist in a world as a (human) moral agent to which you are constrained by agency that constantly says "If I do not do this, I will inevitably suffer" or make suffering worse.
Arguments from anti-natalists you simply don't like aside, anti-natalism at minimum does not say 'not giving birth' prevents suffering or that 'living is suffering', it says that, to my mind anyway, that once you cross the threshhold into a personhood you are then eligible to be an inevitable sufferer because you are constrained by your human - biological, physiological, psychological, cognitive, etc flaws (and other elements).
Quoting Echarmion
Because these things are orthogonal to human ecology regardless of partial human non-compliance, subjectivity and what is personal, human homoestasis demonstrates a race toward optimization independent a few rebellious individuals that believe they are immune to languish and mortality.
It is a fact that lack of vaccinations for deadly disease will kill the majority of us, so the majority of humans getting vaccination optimize public health and well-being. This demonstrates that a species not working toward optimization will inevitable languish. It does not vary from 'person to person', nor is it just subjective.
This is does not imply that subjectivity has no place. Clearly, you do have some say on what hurts you as an individual, but I do not see why this is relevant to ecological discussions on mass scale. As demonstrated in your same argument, you recognize that anti-natalism (denying someone's biological desire to reproduce cases harm) on the objective level distinct from what is observable in the object, and that is why we are debating here today.
Quoting Echarmion
Of course it isn't a fiction.
Slicing a dog's head off as being 'harmful' is not not merely a projection of self-awareness nor empathy. It is determined by the fact that the animal will inevitably languish (thus increasing it's suffering) aka "bad", rather than optimizing to assist it's will to live.
Hard to sell. No taxes, no laws, no jails, etc. Also can be taken to many unpleasant extremes. Say I want to donate to charity. But there is someone in my family who is a strict capitalist and very much against the idea of donating to charity. If I donate, I would certainly be harming that person for a purpose outside themselves. Heck, I would say MOST of what we do is harming someone out there for a goal outside of themselves.
What I definitely agree with however is that appealing to goals like “For mankind” or “For the country” as justification to hurt someone is utter BS. If you want to harm someone, the alternative has to also be harmful to specific people, not to some abstract cause for the act to begin to be considered acceptable. That is exactly the case with birth however.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure. And this makes it risky to do so. Problem is, there is also a very high chance someone will get harmed by NOT having children. Which makes having children acceptable in cases where the latter trumps the former. Aka, when someone can be a good parent.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What if the current players need them? Then not putting them in is harming the current players. I would say that there comes a point where it becomes acceptable to put them in in that case. Because in this case it is not some abstract cause that they’re being used for, it is the same cause: To ensure I do as little harm as possible.
Seems unconvincing or at least over dramatic considering most people are happy. Despite the fact that people have to constantly do things to live, I don’t think that in itself can be used as an argument when most people are fine doing these things, heck, prefer to do these things. This sounds like a pessimistic argument for AN which I never bought.
Unless you're apolitical or abiotic, I find this optimist argument to be completely delusional. Personal (happiness/personal desires), do not inform public health and public safety.
I don't know what to tell you, but this thinking is insane to me.
Hey, thanks. I just answered E. Maybe you can extract from that. By "objective" I mean constrained by homeostasis and ignoring this inevitably leads to languish or frustrates the biological need to optimize and "live". The acts that mitigate or optimize are not a matter of opinion.
I wasn’t referring to my personal life, but to the fact that surveys of happiness often (I think always) have the population being overall happy or at least satisfied.
I am not talking about "you" in specific, I use it a generalist fashion.
The fact of the matter is "happiness" does not solely inform public health or public safety; cancer patients can be happy but this is irrelevant to the fact that a cancer patient will inevitably languish (and suffer), without medical treatment.
I am not saying that there is no subjective or personal basis, I am saying that is not just these things, and understand subjective and objective to not be mutually exclusive with one another. Clearly, those with personal preferences for X can still coexist with objects.
If 200 people get together and take a survey on whether or not 4+4 = 8; and all vote that is actually 3,000, and are satisfied with this 3,000, clearly from what we know of mathematics there is an objective basis without being merely a subject to what everyone 'thinks'. The same can be said here. Anyone can vote and say they are "happy" in North Korea; yet it is demonstrated the citizen are suffering and being harmed from lack of proper medical care.
But this is off topic. I'd like to stay on the topic of antinatalism, not veer off into your personal opinions of feeling unconvinced. You are more than welcomed to refute my previous post, otherwise I'll be moving on from the discussion.
Really? It seemed to me that you wanted to use the fact that in life you are constantly striving merely to survive, as an argument for AN. I’ve heard it before and was not convinced by it. Being in a state of constant striving is not clearly a bad thing if you enjoy said striving.
Quoting Cobra
Fair enough. Point still stands though. Being in a state of constant striving is not necessarily a bad thing if you enjoy said striving.
Well, "seemed" is idly speculative and not to be confused with the actual case, the facts of the case, analyzing or interesting information. Put what I just said into context of my original post. I already said in that post at minimum, what anti-natalism is.
If you are a human agent, you belong to human ecology and are constrained by human flaws i.e., biology, physiology, psychology, cognition, etc. These are facts not determined or dependent on 'personal human happiness.' or 'personal feelings' .. so I don't get why you keep bringing it up. It is a fact that we are constantly driven (biologically), ecologically (morally), and so forth to optimize because if we do not languish occurs. How this relates to antinatalism involves you reading my post, contextualizing and understanding what is being said.
Like the mathematics example, reality does not care what a bunch of non-mathematician optimists say 4+4 is or how they feel about it, because there exists an objective basis.
Quoting cobra
No point stands at all, because this is not any point I was making nor have you made any point whatsoever.
Even so, this is just a repeat of what you just said were 'fair points' and were in agreement with. Enjoyment/happiness, blah, blah. Buzzwords with synonymous meanings that do not negate the fact that what is good for the well-being of everyone is not solely dependent on whether or not someone enjoys or does not enjoy it. Ethics does not care if you're a masochist or not.
Sure.
Quoting Cobra
Which is what I tried to do but apparently incorrectly. It would help if instead of restating what I already understand that you state how it relates to AN.
Quoting Cobra
Sure. And I don’t see how the objective basis can be used to argue for AN. It is a fact that we have to continually strive not to suffer. So what?
No one knows what happens after we die. In the Christian theology I grew up with you were either a born again Christian or you would spend an eternity in hell. But no one knows a) what their death will be like or b) what happens after
The pronatalist's on here are Clearly in denial about the extent of suffering and their involvement in it.
No one should have to suffer to keep the species going.
"“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
Well, seeing how these are not refutes to the argument nor have you made any argument, just responded with a matter of your personal dislikes, I'll be moving on to others.
I really don't care what you personally believe or feel convinced by; this is irrelevant to the discussion if you are not going to refute. I am extracting justifications for anti-natalism via centuries of science, history, and more - and only here to present arguments, not convince you of anything.
Additionally, you’re not even referring to any suffering in particular when you say this. It can be known that your next child will not suffer at all, and it would STILL be wrong to have them, because life is full still of strife.
I didn’t rebut anything because I expected that you’d have more premises than “life is full of strife”. If that’s your only premise then there is your rebuttal.
It's not an "is-ought," fallacy and now I'm not convinced you have a clue what you're talking about, since you have completely personalized the debate to one of convince/unconvince you, instead of refutation of points or lacking the ability (or willpower) to compose counterargument as opponents.
Semantics, simplification and lack of contextualization. Imagine thinking I'm referring to "the world" or universality - which you seem to be confusing with objectivity, instead of directly discussing the ecological basis (of humans) to where it is actively demonstrated by anthropological, biological, sociobiological, ecological, medical and cognitive sciences (and beyond) - that certain things are objectively optimal and sub-optimal to biological (human) moral agents in terms of well-being. This does not require composing a list of 'particular sufferings' simply because you personally cannot apprehend what is being said; nor is your lack of apprehension a warranted refute or doubt.
You then replied with, "but there are people that are happy and enjoy living," which is not only not being mutually exclusive to my points as stated which is an indicator to me you are refusing the process of analysis to simply reaffirm your own beliefs and assertions over mine, but also lacks in holding any interesting relevancy to my arguments. Your posts have very little merit to mine, and it's bizarre you cannot even tell. Clearly, others have more to squabble for days with you.
Quoting Cobra
It doesn't convince me because it doesn't make sense.
Quoting Cobra
Agreed. Certain things are objectively optimal and sub-optimal for our well being. And without certain things we will suffer. Let me shorten this quote to: "Life is full of strife".
There is no logical operation that then leads from this to "So you shouldn't have kids". That is my point. If there is a logical operation that leads from "Life is full of strife" to "You shouldn't have kids" what is it?
Quoting Cobra
It's not just some baseless belief. It is a fact that happiness surveys come back with most people being happy overall. I'm sure you can pull up a study on your own easily to affirm this. And not all happiness surveys are done in North Korea.
Quoting Cobra
The point of the example was to demonstrate the absurdity that, even if you knew your next child will have a perfect life free of suffering, it would still be wrong to have them. Because life is still full of strife, even for that child. And if the only requirement for "You shouldn't have kids" to be true is for "Life is full of strife" to be true, then having that kid is wrong. But this is absurd. Which maybe hints that "You shouldn't have kids" does not follow even if "Life is full of strife" is true.
Are you using your family member in this case? I'm not so sure. If that is the (weak) example you are going to give, then I would say that is indeed the price of the compromises in life that need to take place for anything to happen. As you say, MOST of what we do in harming someone out there for a goal outside of themselves. However, here is a chance to no cause any unnecessary harm to anyone. No one has to be used as there is no one in the first place to be used. That family member already exists.. the compromise is inevitable. If that is the case, then that in itself should give you pause to bring people into this situation.
A more clear cut case of using someone, is if you sold your family member's car in order to give the money to charity. That wouldn't be right, even if that charity was going to benefit more from the money than your family would from their car.
Also, regarding taxes, laws, jails.. These are political actions, not personal ethics. If you're trying to get at something like, is it okay to stop a killer from killing.. I would ask, is that killer causing unnecessary harm? Stopping the killer is necessary harm, because it was he who was causing unnecessary harm. I also never said that once born, punishment and self-defense for violations of the axiom were not something that is legitimate. But I did mention that in procreation, here is a case where it is absolutely unnecessary.. There are no relative scenarios where we must weigh things like self-defense and punishment which are necessary to live in the community when violations of the axiom does take place.
Quoting khaled
Agreed.
Quoting khaled
I still think this is actually inadvertently perpetuating the harm, if you are going to use the aggregate approach.. You are just kicking the can down the road for yet more generations. When does the calculation stop? Not only is it hard to quantify the amount of harm/good a person actually contributes to the world, it might be a case of projection of what one wants to see than what might actually be the case. You using X product might have inadvertently killed thousands of Y across the world. I do know something for sure though, that no person suffered if they were not born.
Your post is brain damaged. Reread what I said when you're not so focused on being obtuse.
False. There is no such chance. That is the point. There is a chance to not cause unnecessary suffering to the child. But in doing so you harm those he/she would have helped. Either choice causes harm.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The people that my child would help already exist. The compromise is inevitable. See?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I wouldn't be so sure. Depends on the charity. And how rich the family member is.
Let me modify the example: If you had a billionaire relative and you were driving around in one of his cars (with his permission) then a child runs from around the corner and you are about to run him over, so you swerve and crash the car (that is not yours) to save the child. Is that wrong? The only difference between this scenario and donating to charity scenario is that here the cause is immediate. If you do not swerve, you WILL kill someone. Which is why I say it depends on the charity. If you knew that you could save a life by selling that car, I wouldn't be so sure it's wrong to do so. Similar to how you wouldn't mind crashing the car to save a life, even though it isn't yours.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is precisely the premise that I am challenging. No, it is not absolutely unnecessary. Even framed in terms of harms done, both choices (have a child and don't have a child) will do harm. So one can say they are having a child to avoid an even worse harm on others. You would say that that is "harming the child for a higher purpose than them". Then I would say that NOT having a child is similarly "Harming the people the child would have helped for a higher purpose than them"
Quoting schopenhauer1
As I said, I don't see this as a problem. Similar to how you don't see extinction as a problem, if at every step of the way we are making a morally acceptable choice, I don't see continued life as a problem if at every step we are making a morally acceptable choice.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Hard to quantify =/= pointless to quantify. In the same way that it is hard to quantify the amount of suffering your child will experience.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And you not having a child might have killed thousands of people because the child was going to cure cancer. Same argument applies to both sides. It is difficult to calculate the consequences of both choices. And not having a child is NOT simply the harmless option. That is the point.
If the system in question is just the parent and the child, then yes having a child is definitely the more harmful option.
But when you consider wider consequences it is no longer that clear cut.
My post doesn't have a brain :wink:
Quoting Cobra
Done. Still doesn't make sense.
Good to know you're incapable of answering simple questions about your argument though:
Quoting khaled
It applies to all of them. Continue to strawman and contradict in your own posts about lack of sense-making.
And you not having a child might have killed thousands of people because the child was going to cure cancer.
Literally brain damaged. But loGiCk.