schopenhauer1

I see, but then I go back to my objection that you are weighting civilization greater than the individual's suffering. People should be born to keep c...

Yet that's not my goal at all- fighting for the forgotten, or self-righteous whatever. I'm frankly a bit offended you would try to characterize my arg...

See, above.

Being birth is "affecting" someone as there is now an existence of an identity where there was none before. So I still contest this objection. To me, ...

Remember, it's all part of the Grand Plan! That slow-moving sloth being eaten by the leopard by having its head pierced by sharp fangs is just part of...

Why does reconciliation need to be maintained though? So God wants humans to exist so that they make right decisions in order to reconcile back to God...

Well, these questions seem to lead to a certain conclusion- that of the concept of instrumentality and unnecessary struggle. The absurd repetitious na...

But I do not see the contradiction.. Just because that person was not around before his own birth does not mean that the impossibility of causing his ...

Parents cause their children to exist. Since it is an impossibility to ask something-that-does-not-exist to participate in its own birth, by being cau...

Okay, this is essentially the mainline Theory of Evolution put forth by Darwin and perhaps earlier. Although, you should not insert a teleology here a...

Just because there was no "pre-born souls" which you very-well know I don't believe in, does it then mean that people are not "thrown into existence"....

What is wrong with that though? You are assuming that is necessarily bad. It is simply non-being. Yes I acknowledged this in my first post. You'd have...

I don't think you did. Your little formula (Burkean influenced you say?) does not solve the problem of instrumentality, and in fact perpetuates it as ...

There's a few things here. First, why assume that mothers are the only ones who nurture? I use nurture here, because I know Levinas specifically menti...

So someone else's whole existence, whereby instrumentality (doing just to do), forced goal-seeking, and contingent harm is not justified? That seems a...

You are just restating the argument you had originally. As I said earlier: "No one signed a contract that says "I want to be born to keep civilization...

I agree. Some people do not see the vanity in it. The ironic thing is that the more reflection we have on it, the more it becomes in vain, the more re...

There are a couple problems I see here. First, the contract has to be agreed upon. No one signed a contract that says "I want to be born to keep civil...

Good point. Life is something to "deal" with. We are thrown into the world, and must deal with the given by creating a linguistic-based strategy of "b...

Now, tlo elucidate more, I should make a distinction between the primary "dealing with life" (the goal-seeking default of humans, whether they reflect...

The struggle is part and parcel with the idea. There is the struggle in achieving goals, and the relentless nature of the need for need, and the strug...

Well, the problem with instrumentality is not necessarily about not having an ultimate purpose. By this I mean, not having some gestalt "Eureka!" expl...

This makes sense for why Nietzsche is so popular and often preferred over Schopenhauer or other pessimists.

The better question is why we continue to procreate. Fear of death, the "unknown", pain, and the unsettling idea that there will be no future "self" t...

What happens if we discover that there is nothing to discover except mechanisms and technological change?

Good points..I thought of these objections but gave him the benefit of the doubt that the clarity of language was secondary to what he was trying to g...

Bingo, you hit on Schopenhauer's point. You do to do to do to do.. instrumentality.. to do just to do because survival and boredom mediated through go...

I was waiting for that movie to be referenced.

You hold so many assumptions of what useful is though. Of course, if you grow up with the "stuff" of the modern economy you are not going back. The Bu...

I think the point of the article was not really to go back to the Bushmen's hunting-gathering life but how to overcome workaholism- the pervasive habi...

I answered you before I even read the article. Ironically, what I was talking about was not that far off from the distinction made in the book you lin...

Yes, I agree but, that wasn't the distinction I was making. My distinction was suffering caused by his core-framework of ceaseless desire which manife...

Oh I see. I thought you meant that Aristotle was making a naturalistic fallacy by saying that the goal of virtue is our telos because everything that ...

I agree that Aristotle seems to fall into a kind of category error in regards to human virtue. We were "meant" to live virtually as this is our telos....

I'll try to read some of this. Yes, this is what I might have been getting at with Wayfarer. Goal-oriented is not linguistic-based. Or perhaps when an...

You have some interesting thoughts here and a nice history of biological thinking. Do you think that the "goals" you are talking about like reproducti...

I guess this is my goal.

But that's the naturalistic fallacy. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Potentially all future suffering can be prevented if no one procreated. The "sup...

What if all the sapient beings chose not to procreate? No, there very well might be more sapient beings. I don't think Earth or anywhere is that impor...

What if no one ever had kids again.. would that mean the souls are finished wanting to be embodied in the physical world? Did they put up a mass strik...

Oh men of straw.. behold. It means nothing whether someone else causes the suffering because life has suffering. If you believe the Schopenhauerean ap...

The great thing is that if no one was born, no one feels the deprivation of whatever goods they may have had, since they never existed to care. No har...

Oh please, this is rubbish. When a child is conceived and then gestates, and then is birthed into the world, that is "creating a new life". By creatin...

Indeed, why cause the burden of life to exist in the first place for a new person when there did not have to be a burden in the first place? To see it...

What's your views on things like personality disorders and how they might affect social interactions in particular? Personality disorders, more so tha...

I don't agree with the premise that one has to lead a "morally fulfilling life". One can be moral, but "leading a morally fulfilling life" has a diffe...

Well, the point of the quote you were responding to was that there a lot of post-hoc reasons we provide for why people need to be born, but none of th...

I actually do focus on that. I bring in some utilitarian ideas like harm to bring some variety to the discussion, but technically, negative utilitaria...

So the slim margin that someone might be rich enough to be above the fray of economic obligations means the whole principle is wrong? I don't think so...

Good observation. (Y)