In the last four-plus decades, what I have learned by daily study and from lived experience is this: work everyday towards easy sleep (ergo a good death) by not doing to anyone what you find harmful to yourself. All the rest follows.
Totally up to you. There are billions of reasons (you make your own meaning through your use of time, your job, interests, friends, family, nature, pets, causes, helping others, whatever) and many people, even those living with great suffering, privation and war are often optimistic and future focused. Nevertheless lots of people go though a 'what's the point of it all' phase early in life. Some people feel the onset of this in middle age, as priorities suddenly change. In my experience, many people find helping others the most effective pathway out of meaninglessness and depression. Sometimes too much ruminating over meaning leads to a state of analysis paralysis.
It would help if you would say where you are in the spectrum of ageing: twenties, thirties,...
When I was in my twenties, evading the Union Army as it burned Atlanta, I became an existentialist, realizing there is no divine purpose to life. One must create meaning. It then becomes a task to do just that and one begins the search having a purpose.
Antinatalism is a pseudo-solution to the problem of suffering which to explicate is how to live/exist without hurting? This is, as you already know, the perennial philosophical problem (eudaimonia/the good life). Obviously, recommending death/nonexistence is to completely miss the point, oui monsieur?
Thats a fantastic question, and a highly important one.
Its also, perhaps frustratingly, a deeply personal one. No general answer can be given from me or anyone else. It has to come from you, and one day it may.
Well Im in my early thirties, and im really looking for a compelling reason/argument to live (and how to live) that would at least work for me. Suicide has been on my mind for a quite some time, but I really dont want to cause suffering to people around me. Thats why the search for a reason to live or argument why not suicide.
Thats why the search for a reason to live or argument why not suicide.
There are not reasons to live at all. You only have to have to do it. I think you would make a big mistake if you put yourself in a search for a cause of living.
Instead of live, you need to "survive" this life. Don't commit suicide. As you expressed, the effects would be devastating to your love ones.
Suicide could be only acceptable if you are alone and such act would not affect anyone.
Keep in mind that if you kill yourself your family or friends will suffer with the remorse of thinking "what they did wrong with you to end up killing yourself"
Angelo CannataAugust 05, 2022 at 04:53#7257140 likes
Hello, rossii, a "compelling" reason/argument to live and how to live does not exist: every reason/argument is relative. This means that being pessimist/antinatalist is relative as well: there are not compelling reasons/arguments to be be pessimist. While being in this human situation, we can try to find what seems the best to every one of us. What works for me is spirituality, which does not mean automatically belief in anything: I don't believe in anything, I cultivate spirituality as inner life, that is, the best inner experiences that you are able to cultivate inside yourself. It is not a recipe, it is a work of research in life. It is not something that works; it is something that helps.
There are probably many reasons to live; happiness, sensu lato, being the most powerful justification for wanting to (continue to) exist.
That out of the way, if the question is aimed at antinatlists who recommend nonexistence then the answer is rather simple: death/dying is painful and given how hyperalgesic antinatalists are death i.e. suicide isn't really an option for them. Remember that nonexistence isn't the problem (re Epicurus) it's the transition from existence to nonexistence (dying) that is.
Thats why the search for a reason to live or argument why not suicide.
Think of all the cool stuff that might happen, that you will miss if your not around. Maybe we will be visited by aliens, maybe Donald Trump will convert to humanism, maybe science will find some new answers, maybe people's lives will get better, they have got very much better imo since we first came out of the wilds, maybe a good person will love you, maybe a new child in your family will give you renewed purpose and hope, maybe someone else will learn something from you that helps them, maybe you will make a difference somewhere, maybe your favourite food ever will be discovered by you soon, maybe you will watch a show that makes you laugh harder and longer than you have ever laughed before. Maybe you don't know just how important you are to the lives of others that have never told you so or maybe you will become so.
Your like may in fact be incredibly rare in the vast Universe.
Immerse yourself in the wonders of life.
The song below can sound pessimistic, yet the advice from Thom Yorke at the end is: Immerse yourself in love.
ChatteringMonkeyAugust 05, 2022 at 15:02#7258060 likes
Reply to rossii You ask for a reason to live, but at base this is not a question about 'reason', or abstract arguments that need to be given for life... but more a question of personal motivation, which is concerned with the affective and aesthetic. What really moves you, what do you find beautiful? What do you feel? If you can answer that, and organize your life around that, I'd think you'll find that the need for coming up with abstract reasons to live goes away.
Reply to Darkneos
I'm pretty happy these days, but the older I get the less attached to life I feel. Does the fruit ripen on the tree? Is there less to prove ? I wrote to a friend yesterday that it's like learning that a video game can't be beat...so that losing your last player is no longer so scary...
I consider that a dodge to my stance on this and a symptom of society's collective fear around death, I mean we can't even talk about it without people thinking there is something "Wrong" with you.
I think it's just an intimate topic. Folks aren't that afraid. What's 'wrong' with someone might just be their timing or expectation of intimacy. Suffering and gloom are not in short supply. They are maybe even the rule and not the exception, at least as people age. So there's not much use talking about it ... unless you can light up the shitshow with a joke we haven't heard yet.
ChatteringMonkeyAugust 06, 2022 at 05:29#7259030 likes
Reply to Darkneos My counter would be that as a living being it's weird to prefer death over life, as sustaining its lifeform over time, and propagating it, is essentially what life is. That is what defines living beings/sets life apart from non-living things.
So in other words, preferring life over death seems to me a default, almost axiomatic valuation of living beings, and doesn't need any further justification really.
Considering that, my question to you then would be, what prompted you to flip this basic instinctive valuation on its head?
What causes life to turn on life?
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 05:46#7259090 likes
Reply to Pie I often feel that the so-called small moments of fulfilment can also be of great value. Unfortunately, they aren't often appreciated and even acknowledged as much because we expect the positives to be greatly apparent (like laughing or the pleasure of eating). Personally, I have found an extremely bright silver lining in the darkest of clouds. I hope that this can be the reality for everyone (though it would obviously be better to reduce the size of the clouds!).
I often feel that the so-called small moments of fulfilment can also be of great value.
:up:
I love a good cup of coffee, a lonely bikeride on a cool night, snuggling my torty, laughing at a piece of a bit in an old book that only the aging cool kids remember...
Personally, I have found an extremely bright silver lining in the darkest of clouds.
I can relate. One can even start laughing in the swamp of misery, with the gods at the one's own folly and the folly of humans in general. Gallows humor. And then there is the true platitude that suffering sometimes burns off a mask or a delusion. I don't claim that all suffering can be partially forgiven this way. The world offers pure stupid hurt too.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 06:04#7259190 likes
Reply to Darkneos I think that people should have a liberal right to exit if they cannot find any alternative source of value.
I am truly saddened by the fact that you don't seem to find joy in life. Since I am not you and don't know your experiences, it would be presumptuous of me to suggest what and how you should think. From what I have observed and experienced, however, I think I can say that moulding our perspectives can play a big role in defining the good we see in our lives. Whenever I've met the financially less-fortunate people in my area, I've noticed that they are simply content with having a decent relationship and being able to sustain themselves. They learn whatever they can and say that they don't need to create some sort of ultimate purpose that transcends their "mundane" existence. Happiness is fundamentally subjective, so I believe that there is truth to the idea that we shouldn't have unrealistic expectations. And it's possible for us to have them subconsciously without even being aware of them. If someone had told me prior to my illnesses that reading my favourite novel would give me satisfaction that would outweigh the intense pain high fever brings, I would have likely dismissed them. However, lo and behold, this is precisely what happened. Sentient experience is quite diverse (and maybe that is what plays a major role in what makes life beautiful). I think that instead of absolute natalism or universal antinatalism, a nuanced approach is desirable.
You also raised a point that I see being mentioned frequently, viz., the fact that you wouldn't need happiness if you don't exist. Now, I actually believe this to be true (assuming physicalism is correct), but this is an incomplete conclusion. If we should not be afraid of/averse to non-existence because we cannot be deprived of something when we don't exist, we should also not chase/worship the void, since the absence of suffering has no value for an inexistent being. You're not going to be in some better/more satisfied state due to the lack of harms. In view of this, non-existence has no value/disvalue. What one does with their life, therefore, becomes a highly individualised affair that differs from person-to-person and what action/emotion brings them happiness when they exist. Lastly, I wouldn't say there's something "wrong" with you. I am not a fan of blind optimism. All I would say is that, considering that value only lies in existence, I think that it can be rational to try our best to discover a source of joy that can provide us happiness for as long as possible instead of seeking cessation which is necessarily limited in its capacity to provide fulfilment. Maybe some people are too uncomfortable thinking about non-existence so they quickly jump to therapy. After having discussed this issue with many individuals, I feel that I am not one of those aforementioned people. Nonetheless, I believe that therapy can definitely help. If there is an opportunity for gaining ineffable value that is more powerful than the temporary and slightly distorted satisfaction that the void might give, it may be the better option.
I was wondering if anyone else thinks similarly or if they have a counter to what I've mentioned. I realize I'm alone
I think it's pretty common to go through phases thinking/feeling like this, especially in the first third of life. Most people I know had periods of anhedonia, accompanied by periods of suicidal thoughts. But things did get better.
Reply to Darkneos
If I outlive every person / activity I love, only then will I long for death. Until then, sleeping well suffices. :death: :flower:
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 06:10#7259220 likes
Reply to Pie Precisely. I also feel that sometimes our mind starts telling us that there's something wrong/incorrect with finding happiness in these so-called small things. I generally respond to this internal pessimistic scepticism by asking why exactly should I not find beauty or meaning in that story or song? Is there an objective reason that compels me to not find it meaningful? More often than not, this makes my other side realise that, though optimism and pessimism can both be rationally chosen, only one has ultimate value that all sentient beings pursueand there is nothing wrong with that.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 06:25#7259250 likes
Reply to rossii The very fact that you posed this question makes me think that there is clearly a part of you that finds the worldview you are currently tilting towards to be problematic. I am so sorry that you feel the way you do. I know that platitudes about how it all eventually gets better would seem like empty words to you. But I can say from personal experience that things can definitely change dramatically. I've people who began to enjoy their lives when they reached their 40s. Obviously, their cases were all manifold and intricate. But one common thread was, perhaps surprisingly enough, a shift in what they expected from life. They began to see the things in life that they once found to be merely small things that one needed to "get through" as sources of genuine (albeit not total) fulfilment. There was gratitude whilst drinking a glass of water that sustains life, amazement when thinking about the enormity of the cosmos as they were driving, and happiness at being able to help someone. You're not going to be perpetually satisfied to the greatest degree possible. Yet, there could always be some happiness within you and it could come back again with a lot more force. There's nothing that is inherently wrong with having a pessimistic outlook. Nevertheless, I believe that it can only have instrumental value for sentient beings who are necessarily driven towards regaining satisfaction. Finally, and this is a point that concerns all individuals, I believe that there has to be a realisation that people's experiences are bound to vary, so absolutist views like universal pro-natalism or absolute antinatalism don't seem to be good ideas. They tend to ignore one side of the coin and have the potential to cause unimaginable loss. Even if I suffer, that does not efface all the happiness you might experience. I hope you find the good that you deserve! Have a nice day!
Edit: I have had many discussions regarding AN on this forum. You could check my comments history if you're interested in my reasons for rejecting the philosophy. Here's an example: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/657516
I should forewarn you that these discourses are a bit long and somewhat tedious.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 06:31#7259260 likes
Reply to 180 Proof :up: Same (unless there's potential for something new).
I think it's pretty common to go through phases thinking/feeling like this, especially in the first third of life.
Agreed. I also had periods on my life related to these feelings. So, I feel better with myself knowing that is pretty common among the people when they grow up
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 06:43#7259280 likes
Reply to DA671
I think fear and curiosity are the two main drivers.
Each has subcategories or synonyms, love being a subcategory of fear.
Its the desire for things to stay the same vs the desire for change. Love and fear are both about attachment: desire for stability, safety and comfort, all ways of coping with fear. Making friendships(love) helps protect us from dangers
Well, if you've ever watched youtube videos, you'll realize that you're not alone in this OP: some people, as one so eloquently put it, have what they call a death wish!
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 07:50#7259430 likes
Reply to Yohan Interesting. I think that fear is a subcategory of loving (being attached to) a positive state of affairs that we would not want to lose. Curiosity is certainly a powerful source of value.
Survival drive is too strong so the best is to live comfortably until death comes to claim me.
So after all, even for you life is preferable to death. Which is normal, after millions or billions of years of evolution have geared our motivations toward survival.
I think death becomes preferable to life when suffering exceeds happiness so much that it beats the survival drive. If the survival drive is strong as usual, this must be a singularly terrible situation but unfortunately it can happen too.
...in death I will have no desire or need to do any of that stuff so it's a moot point and not really a reason to stick around. I mean there would be no "me" right?
So, do you not care about anyone else other than 'you'?
That said suicide isn't an option, at least with the current stance on it. Survival drive is too strong so the best is to live comfortably until death comes to claim me.
Suicide is always an option if anyone really wants to end their life.
You can go slow, slow, or quick depending on tool of choice. Not that I'm recommending it.
What 'current stance' are you talking about?
I agree the survival drive is strong. Why is that?
The need to pass on DNA? Are we here only as animals?
The best way to live.
Is it, as you say, to live comfortably?
Unlikely, even if it were possible. What does it mean to you, to live in comfort?
To be certain, to feel in control?
If you have decided your only option is to stay, then why not view life as less of a chore, more of a challenge? Not merely existing...
'Until death comes to claim you'?
Zoom out for a different perspective. Death can happen at any moment.
It's not about being claimed as if you are a worthless piece of baggage!
I realize I'm alone, but also I have a hard time discussing this anywhere else because people immediately say you need therapy. I consider that a dodge to my stance on this and a symptom of society's collective fear around death, I mean we can't even talk about it without people thinking there is something "Wrong" with you.
You are not alone. Even if you are on your own or feel lonely and an outsider.
Some quality responses here, yes? No dodges.
Who are the people that say you need therapy? How much do their opinions matter?
Is there anything else going on - depression?
Is your stance on this fixed for all time?
Or are you willing to listen to others? Read their words carefully. They have taken the time.
It sounds to me like you do care. Enough to share something we can all relate to.
Stay safe :sparkle:
Forgive this addendum:
[ Sometimes I wonder if such OPs are worth responding to, or if it's all attention-seeking]
Love and fear are both about attachment: desire for stability, safety and comfort, all ways of coping with fear.
Can we not just as easily make love primary ? I fear that harm will come to what I love. No love, no fear.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 10:59#7259840 likes
Reply to Pie That is what I believe. People hate different communities because they love their own and fear that others could damage their values/customs. The preference for a good is what primarily seems to drive our aversion towards its absence.
universenessAugust 06, 2022 at 12:28#7260040 likes
I enjoyed reading the responses to the OP on this thread.
I don't feel the need to add anything to the general 'choose life!' message, firmly delivered.
I am sure I have an old faded 80's Wham 'CHOOSE LIFE' T-shirt somewhere in a drawer. Sadly, it won't fit me anymore but I might dig it out and stare at it for a while. Memories of past happy moments are also quite life-affirming. At least for me, anyway.
Can we not just as easily make love primary ? I fear that harm will come to what I love. No love, no fear.
Love is basically mutual assurance. People giving each other hope and consolation. Its not a thing in itself. Without fear and insecurity, how could we give each other hope and comfort?
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 12:46#7260080 likes
Reply to Yohan I think we can love someone without necessarily fearing that we would/could lose them. However, if we have lost something of value, then one can feel both hope and despair. I would say that the former is generally preferable. If you meant that to love someone else, one must be dissatisfied/averse to their current state of affairs, I would agree with that. But this state of deprivation/insecurity itself arises from the loss of a previous state of being satisfied/loving what one has.
Love is basically mutual assurance. People giving each other hope and consolation. Its not a thing in itself. Without fear and insecurity, how could we give each other hope and comfort?
I see us as tribal, social animals, evolved to work as a group. I view the relatively isolated self as a kind of invention or development in the story.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 12:46#7260100 likes
Then why are you still around? I dont mean this to be callous and Im not encouraging suicide but genuinely curious. If you long for nothingness, why keep going?
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 15:18#7260630 likes
Reply to Xtrix I am not OP, but I could try answering the question:
1. It's not easy to embrace nothingness (at least until there is a liberal right to a graceful exit that allows one to find a completely peaceful and risk-free way out).
2. Since one is already here, they could focus on alleviating the suffering of existing sentient beings.
I am thankful that the extreme step has not been taken. I hope that we can someday live in a world in which people never have to do so in a state of pure misery and despair.
I see us as tribal, social animals, evolved to work as a group. I view the relatively isolated self as a kind of invention, a byproduct of capitalism maybe.
I think man has been isolated from the beginning, and that groups are at least one factor in that.
When someone sees me as a stereotype or representative of a group, they ignore my unique individuality, so I become isolated.
Reply to Darkneos
Well, you won't ever experience death. Death is simply, "The end". You'll experience dying if you're conscious at the time. But that's it. There is no peace, no rest, no etc. You're just dead. You won't be able to tell people how different you are anymore. You won't be able to chat with friends or family about how much of a chore life is. You won't be able to post on the philosophy boards in the hope of conversing or thinking.
You'll be gone. There will be no you. It will simply end. You won't even get the satisfaction of enjoying it or "being right".
You do enjoy life. Now it may not be roses and "the best", but you do, because you live. You actually do enjoy to some extent talking to other people. Making your voice known. People who really don't enjoy life at all don't talk. They don't write. They hate and despise everything about their very existence. You would loath eating, breathing, and doing anything. You obviously do not.
So no, you don't prefer death to living. You still live. You still eat. You still interact. Perhaps you wish life were better than it is. Perhaps you want peace and a release from pain, and confuse that for a desire for death. Many people do. But if you're talking about death as it is, an unromantic end that you won't get any feelings about or be around to experience, no you don't.
If we should not be afraid of/averse to non-existence because we cannot be deprived of something when we don't exist, we should also not chase/worship the void, since the absence of suffering has no value for an inexistent being. You're not going to be in some better/more satisfied state due to the lack of harms. In view of this, non-existence has no value/disvalue. What one does with their life, therefore, becomes a highly individualised affair that differs from person-to-person and what action/emotion brings them happiness when they exist. Lastly, I wouldn't say there's something "wrong" with you. I am not a fan of blind optimism. All I would say is that, considering that value only lies in existence, I think that it can be rational to try our best to discover a source of joy that can provide us happiness for as long as possible instead of seeking cessation which is necessarily limited in its capacity to provide fulfilment.
Value may only lie in existence, yes, so that is why I can see value in not having to perform the song and dance anymore. The same goes for the absence of suffering, your logic doesn't really follow for not chasing the void as the entire point is the end, the cessation of it all. Non existence has greater value as people view the end goal of utter oblivion to be preferable to anything life can offer.
You do enjoy life. Now it may not be roses and "the best", but you do, because you live. You actually do enjoy to some extent talking to other people. Making your voice known. People who really don't enjoy life at all don't talk. They don't write. They hate and despise everything about their very existence. You would loath eating, breathing, and doing anything. You obviously do not.
So no, you don't prefer death to living. You still live. You still eat. You still interact. Perhaps you wish life were better than it is. Perhaps you want peace and a release from pain, and confuse that for a desire for death. Many people do. But if you're talking about death as it is, an unromantic end that you won't get any feelings about or be around to experience, no you don't.
That would be wrong to say. I talk to others because, well what else is there? I mentioned the goal was to make life tolerable until the end. Just because I talk to people doesn't mean I enjoy it, I don't hate it either.
I do prefer death to living, to not have to do any of this anymore, but I must live as I have no other option at the moment.
Reply to Xtrix Because getting there, as I already stated, is hard and unreliable as things stand and a failure will result in further attempts to prevent me from it (institutionalized, etc).
People underestimate just how strong the survival drive is and that it's not easy to overcome.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 17:51#7261000 likes
Reply to Darkneos Some people might indeed prefer the void (especially when they cannot find any other source of value). However, this doesn't apply to all individuals. I wouldn't say that you are somehow inherently wrong to prefer the void (if that was the case, I would not have been in favour of a right to a dignified exit). But this doesn't affect my logic that choosing nothingness is just as meaningful/pointless as seeking happiness and valuing life is. Many people believe that the precious joys of life (that come from things such as worthwhile bonds with loved ones and gaining knowledge) are worth cherishing instead of focusing on a valueless void. However, if one tragically fails to find any great fountain of fulfilment, then forcing them to live by calling them irrational is wrong, I believe. Uncritically worshipping life can cause more harm than good. The survival instinct is still a part of us and can even help save us in times of need. If there is a will to live that prevents one from ending everything no matter how much they want to, there might also be a will to not exist that would obstruct people's ability to find happiness and a reason to keep living even if they do everything in their power to find it. I don't think that either of these biological processes are intrinsically irrational. At the same time, it's also true that our strong aversion to non-existence coupled with the fear of extreme suffering can force us to keep living a life we really don't want to. In such cases, provided nothing else can be done, I think that a peaceful way to choose the exit door should be available.
So after all, even for you life is preferable to death. Which is normal, after millions or billions of years of evolution have geared our motivations toward survival.
I think death becomes preferable to life when suffering exceeds happiness so much that it beats the survival drive. If the survival drive is strong as usual, this must be a singularly terrible situation but unfortunately it can happen too.
Well no it's not. I wouldn't call the survival drive "me" it's just an obstacle that I can't surmount. Life is not preferable to me, however that doesn't mean my continued existence is a testament to preferring life.
But this doesn't affect my logic that choosing nothingness is just as meaningful/pointless as seeking happiness and valuing life is. Many people believe that the precious joys of life are worth cherishing instead of focusing on a valueless void.
It does though. My main point about the good things in life is that you don't need any of that in death so they aren't reasons to really stick around. In short if you don't HAVE to live then there is no reason to do so. Such good things make life tolerable and seeking them out only makes sense if one HAS to live, which seems to be my case since seeking the end is inordinately difficult. Not only because society pretty much forbids it but apparently a lot of suicide attempts end in failure and leave you in a worse off state, not really how I prefer to spend my remaining days...locked in a hospital with people trying to "fix" me.
I guess people only rationalize living by stating "precious joys are worth cherishing" is due to death anxiety, as Ernest Becker put it. We tend to fear death and much of our lives are ruled by this fact, at least according to him.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 18:00#7261040 likes
Reply to Darkneos I know that nobody loses something when they don't exist. However, by the same token, nobody feels satisfied/fulfiled when they don't exist either. This is why I think that there is no absolute reason for everyone to either keep living or to try to end everything. If life has nothing worthwhile left, then the only source of comfort becomes cessationand I am not going to call you irrational for thinking that. But for a lot of people, the positives of life, such as love and beauty, are of greater value, which is why they don't have a reason to simply stop everything. The negatives may degrade the value of the positives, but they don't nullify them entirely for all individuals. In short, it does because we have a reason to gain the goods when we exist (which is the only place where value can exist). Of course, there is no objective reason for us to either continue on or to annihilate everything. But, from the point of view of sentient beings who necessarily seek positives and avoid negatives, the availability of a higher good can give one a reason to not give up.
It's not always about rationalisation; it's about the variegated nature of preferences and perspectives. I am aware of Becker's ideas. Part of the reason why people fear death is because they appreciate the goods of life. These goods could be complex, such as the relationships one has and could lose, to more basic ones, such as death resulting in some sort of horrible black void that takes away the positive state of we were in. I do think that there is a sort of paternalism when it comes to giving people the right to a graceful exit. Personally, I don't think that one's love for life should justify making someone else endure a valueless existence. Toxic positivity is a significant problem.
That would be wrong to say. I talk to others because, well what else is there? I mentioned the goal was to make life tolerable until the end. Just because I talk to people doesn't mean I enjoy it, I don't hate it either.
I do prefer death to living, to not have to do any of this anymore, but I must live as I have no other option at the moment.
It's like you read nothing I said.
Ridiculous. This is a philosophy forum. Logically, you live because you choose to live. If you truly preferred death more, you would die. If you're interested in a "woe is me" or "life is pain" conversation, this isn't the place.
Further, I've had times in my life where pain and emotional despair was unbearable. I've felt the urge to suicide before. But I made the choice to continue to live. That logically means I preferred life to death, despite all the nearly unbearable misery. What a pathetic human being I would have been to whine to others that I preferred death as I continually chose to live again and again.
You don't get to choose life, then say you prefer death. That's illogical. That's just whining about life. When this clear logical discrepancy is pointed out you whine some more. No wonder people tell you to go to therapy. You should listen to them. Your life sucks, so do something about it and improve it.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 18:37#7261140 likes
Reply to Philosophim I think that their point is that they do prefer non-existence but they are not a huge fan of the road that leads there. In other words, they find life to be better than an overwhelmingly negative end, but not necessarily more desirable than one that would most probably be peaceful. And then one also has to think about societal expectations. I am not saying that annihilation is always better. I sincerely hope that they can find the comfort they seek.
Existential HopeAugust 06, 2022 at 18:39#7261150 likes
Reply to Philosophim Also, I am glad that you were able to hold on despite going through terrible harms. May you have a wonderful day/night ahead!
unenlightenedAugust 06, 2022 at 18:59#7261260 likes
So much for the views of the living. But now listen to the dead.
is usually a flowering of..well.. a view. Indicating some sort of understanding of the entire picture. Taking into account all sides of the story. Usually such a view isn't a reaction or a grasping of any one side.
One may start by inquiring what is this thing we call living. As if you have choice, HA. Freakin' mechanical robots. In any case, it seems that's where the inquiry begins.
I think that their point is that they do prefer non-existence but they are not a huge fan of the road that leads there. In other words, the find life to be better than an overwhelmingly negative end, but not necessarily more desirable than one that would most probably be peaceful.
The OP is confused. There is no peace in death. There is nothing. What the OP wants is peace in life. To get to a moment where they feel peace. You have to live to feel peace. They would prefer a life where they feel peace then a life where they feel pain. Death does not give peace. It gives nothing. There is no chance to find peace. There is no beating the pain. If you die in pain, its the last thing you will ever feel.
To believe that absence of your existence can be preferable to pain is true in some circumstances. Have all of your limbs cut off, your eyes blown out, your brain half blown to bits and you're surviving purely by modern science? Yeah, pull that plug. It does not sound like those are the circumstances of the OP. It sounds like someone who is in pain, and instead of dealing with that pain, looks to invent some fantasy to avoid the work needed to make the pain go away. The OP needs to deal with their pain. They can one day find peace if they work for it. They will not if they keep sticking to this romantic fantasy of death.
"Death" is the most peaceful experience one can experience while "living". Had it not been so, the body won't be programmed to slip into it every night. Surely more or less we understand biological death. But have we understood...for convenience, let's call it psychological death. Have we even asked such a question. Have we questioned if death and life are co-existent. Maybe two sides of the same coin.
But how can you question, if you lack the backbone needed to question your bias towards this thing you call living. Wherein, like some form of the Stockholm syndrome, you have fallen in love with your limitations, begging, beseeching life, to give you one more ounce of what you call "fun"/pleasure. Therefore to you, death is a terrible thing. A thing of fear and oblivion. So, you aren't really living life....but rather your fear. You are corrupted.
The OP is confused. There is no peace in death. There is nothing. What the OP wants is peace in life.
What you say has merit, but consider this edge case :
A man will be tortured for hours for information he does not have. He will then be killed. Is it reasonable for him to grab at a means to end his consciousness, if he knows all this with certainty ?
Or consider, more typically, a person aware that they are sinking into dementia...Are there states worse than death ? So that death is to be sought ? My position is yes.
The OP is confused. There is no peace in death. There is nothing. What the OP wants is peace in life. To get to a moment where they feel peace. You have to live to feel peace. They would prefer a life where they feel peace then a life where they feel pain. Death does not give peace. It gives nothing. There is no chance to find peace.
I agree with this , and would add that the fantasy of peace in life that is the OPs longing for death is , like all experiences of peace or relief, a contrast or transition from a prior state. No state of mind or mood sustains itself in perpetuity because experiences are relational and contingent. An experience of peace will inevitably be followed by a new experience that addresses and transforms it. Peace can become trepidation, struggle, mourning , elation. More importantly, these transitions in attitude and mood change US. In a sense , with every shift in mood and outlook , the particular self that we are are at any given time is born of a previous self and dies as it is replaced by a new self. Even in just longing for and fantasizing about the peace of death , we are briefly achieving this feeling of peace. The old we who was struggling has died and briefly become the new we who is at peace. Soon this new we will pass over into yet another we who is beset with a fresh situation and attitude. This is all that death will ever give you. It is not death that is eternal but the contingency of desire.
What you say has merit, but consider this edge case :
A man will be tortured for hours for information he does not have. He will then be killed. Is it reasonable for him to grab at a means to end his consciousness, if he knows all this with certainty ?
Or consider, more typically, a person aware that they are sinking into dementia...Are there states worse than death ? So that death is to be sought ? My position is yes.
That's not to say it's not worthwhile discussing again. I did that!
Different time, different posters; pretty much same arguments, assumptions and responses.
However, it makes me question the intention of the OP, rightly or wrongly.
I was wondering if anyone else thinks similarly or if they have a counter to what I've mentioned. I realize I'm alone, but also I have a hard time discussing this anywhere else because people immediately say you need therapy. I consider that a dodge to my stance on this and a symptom of society's collective fear around death, I mean we can't even talk about it without people thinking there is something "Wrong" with you.
[ emphasis added]
Worth considering?
There seems to be an appeal to fellow would-be suicides...
Join the club. Us against the rest of the world.
Darkneos seems to have been doing this for years. Going from forum to forum.
Fishing.
How many pages will this run to...?
We love to hear ourselves talk, don't we?
So, death, it seems, in its correct context, is an ending. An ending to your fears, your pettiness, your jealousies, your beseeching, your pretenses your games, your neuroticism....ya know , don't you? After all these, and more, is what you call living. This "ending" has nothing to do with your biological continuity or dis-continuity. Clearly.
Reply to DarkneosHeroin ... because the grass on the other side of the abyss always seems greener ...
[quote=Renton, Trainspotting]Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose a washing machine, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing gameshows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?[/quote]
:yawn:
OR
One can choose (e.g.) Epicurus & Lucretius, Montaigne & Spinoza, Zapffe & Camus, Buber & Beckett, Clément Rosset & James Baldwin, Philippa Foot & Martha Nussbaum, Albert Murray & George Steiner ... :fire:
Because getting there, as I already stated, is hard and unreliable as things stand
Its hard and unreliable to kill yourself? I really cant see how thats true, but OK.
As for the survival instinct yes, true. But supposedly you long for death. If the drive to continue living is greater then you really dont want it. If you did youd be dead already provided that there are means to do so and, as I already mentioned, there are plenty of ways to do so.
People who consider suicide very often dont truly want to die theyre either without meaning and joy or are clinically depressed.
Do you consider yourself depressed? It sounds that way to me. In which case: there are ways out.
The OP is confused. There is no peace in death. There is nothing. What the OP wants is peace in life. To get to a moment where they feel peace. You have to live to feel peace. They would prefer a life where they feel peace then a life where they feel pain. Death does not give peace.
I hear you, but for me this is being a bit too concrete or literal. Death is often described as the end of suffering - which technically it is likely to be (unless you think there is a judgement coming after). Therefore death brings 'peace' in as much is it brings non suffering or 'nothingness'. From the perspective of a suffering life, death holds the appeal of relief or a metaphorically peaceful alternative - you may not be there to experience it, but you won't be there to experience ongoing suffering either.
If one has followed the inquiry thus far and is seeing the true context of death as simplyan ending, which it is, which you wish to postpone for as long as you can since you lack a backbone,
then one puts a reasonable question, if i know there is biological death always lurking around the corner and all your BS is gonna leave you with nothing but sh## in your hands, then why doesn't the human end (psychological death) its weasel-ly-ness. Right.
To end it now! Because that's what biological death will do/does. You won't have a chance to negotiate/weasel out of, as much as want to. So the question then becomes, what is it to die. For example, to all your fears, to your prejudices, to your nonsense.
TiredThinkerAugust 06, 2022 at 23:31#7261960 likes
Life isn't so bad without knowledge of anything afterwards. Find simple passions. Dopamine is harder to feel with age, but I am hopeful age research will someday help us feel like our best selves again before sleep and back issues were a thing.
It's not always about rationalisation; it's about the variegated nature of preferences and perspectives. I am aware of Becker's ideas. Part of the reason why people fear death is because they appreciate the goods of life. These goods could be complex, such as the relationships one has and could lose, to more basic ones, such as death resulting in some sort of horrible black void that takes away the positive state of we were in. I do think that there is a sort of paternalism when it comes to giving people the right to a graceful exit. Personally, I don't think that one's love for life should justify making someone else endure a valueless existence. Toxic positivity is a significant problem.
I think you're missing the point. In death there is no need for such things, it all ends. So there's no need to seek the good stuff. They don't fear death because of the goods of life, they fear the end when really they should not for it can be pretty great.
The OP is confused. There is no peace in death. There is nothing. What the OP wants is peace in life. To get to a moment where they feel peace. You have to live to feel peace. They would prefer a life where they feel peace then a life where they feel pain. Death does not give peace. It gives nothing. There is no chance to find peace. There is no beating the pain. If you die in pain, its the last thing you will ever feel.
To believe that absence of your existence can be preferable to pain is true in some circumstances. Have all of your limbs cut off, your eyes blown out, your brain half blown to bits and you're surviving purely by modern science? Yeah, pull that plug. It does not sound like those are the circumstances of the OP. It sounds like someone who is in pain, and instead of dealing with that pain, looks to invent some fantasy to avoid the work needed to make the pain go away. The OP needs to deal with their pain. They can one day find peace if they work for it. They will not if they keep sticking to this romantic fantasy of death.
Ahh, again you misunderstand. This has nothing to do with peace in life, it's about the cessation of all things. Death does afford a peace, in a sense, even if you can't feel it. You can rest knowing the pain will pass and you won't have to do anything anymore. I think you are giving death less than it is.
Why deal with one's pain when they can just quit? You're still missing the point here trying to find something "Wrong" and that's the mistake you make as much as anyone else does. Nothing in life IMO is worth working for when one doesn't have to live. If society had a different mind they'd see that and allow people to exit if they choose.
Its hard and unreliable to kill yourself? I really cant see how thats true, but OK.
As for the survival instinct yes, true. But supposedly you long for death. If the drive to continue living is greater then you really dont want it. If you did youd be dead already provided that there are means to do so and, as I already mentioned, there are plenty of ways to do so.
People who consider suicide very often dont truly want to die theyre either without meaning and joy or are clinically depressed.
Do you consider yourself depressed? It sounds that way to me. In which case: there are ways out.
Again making the mistake in thinking there is something wrong.
I've done the research and found out most suicide attempts end in failure, that there really isn't a "surefire way" to do it and those who survive end up in worse shape than before. You'd think it'd be easy and I do too. Trust me when I say I've googled painless ways to die, but you have to wade through a lot of the "therapy" nonsense.
Jack CumminsAugust 06, 2022 at 23:40#7262000 likes
Reply to Darkneos
I am glad to see you back on site because I after reading your posts about death and you not being on the site for a long time I had worried that you had killed yourself. The reason why I say I was worried is because I do see suicide as being about the worst way to die. I do have thoughts of it at times, mainly when I feel that I have more stress than I can cope with, but I am glad that I have never given into such thoughts. I have known people who have killed themselves, often in extreme situations of panic and despair.
Death is probably the end, and I say that because I used to believe in life after death but, now, see it as unlikely. Life does seem harsh at times and it seems that some people have harder lives than others. The things which I think would just be unbearable are having to sleep rough on the streets or becoming blind. I don't know what your own reason for wishing to die is but everyone will die at some point.
Generally, I wish to make the best of what happens and cope with whatever happens to the best of my abilities. I think that I would be too afraid to kill myself whatever situation I was in. Even though I don't fear hell like when I was a teenager I know of people who have tried to kill themselves and ended up with all sorts of injuries, including not being able to walk.
Reply to Jack Cummins I think you are making the same incorrect assumptions about me that everyone else is, not to mention showing me that you haven't read my posts.
If one has followed the inquiry thus far and is seeing the true context of death as simplyan ending, which it is, which you wish to postpone for as long as you can since you lack a backbone,
then one puts a reasonable question, if i know there is biological death always lurking around the corner and all your BS is gonna leave you with nothing but sh## in your hands, then why doesn't the human end (psychological death) its weasel-ly-ness. Right.
To end it now! Because that's what biological death will do/does. You won't have a chance to negotiate/weasel out of, as much as want to. So the question then becomes, what is it to die. For example, to all your fears, to your prejudices, to your nonsense.
That's what I'm saying. The only reason people IMO live is survival instinct because to me death just makes more logical sense. Never having to do good things, or worry about bad things, it all ends. So why put it off?
I feel like everything used to justify the will to keep going is more just our survival instinct trying to rationalize things.
That's what I'm saying. The only reason people IMO live is survival instinct because to me death just makes more logical sense. Never having to do good things, or worry about bad things, it all ends. So why put it off?
I feel like everything used to justify the will to keep going is more just our survival instinct trying to rationalize things.
No. That's not what you were/are saying.
You seem to be concerned about "checking out", which is about biological death.
That's not what i have been looking into.
Jack CumminsAugust 06, 2022 at 23:50#7262050 likes
Reply to Darkneos
I have read your posts. As far as I can see death is a form of peace, a bit like sleep. It may be that each of us comes from a different, unique angle, making it difficult. I guess that it is that I do enjoy life providing it is not too painful constantly, with constant knockdowns. However, it doesn't seem that you come from that point of view and it your own position may be more along the lines of Camus's one, but I am not entirely sure of this. How do you find the thinking of the existentialist writers? Do you feel an affinity with them?
You can rest knowing the pain will pass and you won't have to do anything anymore.
No. You don't know anything. You don't get to rest. You don't get ANYTHING. Your last memory will be pain, and that will be the last thing you know. There will be no sigh, no relief, no calmness, no anything. Whatever you have in your last moments will be the last thing you experience.
No, you are giving death MORE than it is. You think there is something. Some feeling, some assurence etc. There. Is. Nothing. There is not even the realization that there is nothing. There's no you staring into a black void. There's no, "Finally, I'm at rest." You're gone, period.
Why deal with one's pain when they can just quit? You're still missing the point here trying to find something "Wrong" and that's the mistake you make as much as anyone else does.
Because I'm not a coward. Lots of things in life will try to tear you down and end you. All the cells inside of you fight every day to keep viruses and bacteria at bay. They fight to do their jobs, and live. You spit on that. All the people who spent time and effort raising you to continue life. You spit on that. The fact that you have the gift of sentience when so much matter in the universe will never have it. Its absolutely a waste to throw that away when you should fight for it.
Nothing in life IMO is worth working for when one doesn't have to live.
Well no duh. When you're dead, you don't have to do anything. Because you don't exist anymore. You can't even laugh at society. You're just a corpse to be eaten by worms.
No, I get it FAR better than you. My sister collects and cuts up bodies for a living btw. She's done organ donations, autopsies, etc. I'm very keen to know what death is. She's seen plenty of suicides. They aren't special. She's described decomposition in detail. How your last meal sometimes rots inside, swells your stomache, and has to be purged before cutting into the rotting flesh.
Death is not beautiful, peaceful, or relief. If you want real beauty, peace, and relief, you only find that in life. You will never find that in death. So get out of your morose state, stop feeling sorry about yourself and the world, and start working to actually get beauty, peace, and relief in your life. Looking at death for your such things is cowardly, lazy, and incredibly ignorant.
Besides, why rush the inevitable? Nothing lasts (i.e. entropy, anicca). The "chore" of respirating & metabolizing will end soon. Death is the only god that ever comes whether or not you cry out for her. Until then, savor sleep's daily respite; if, however, you're an insomniac, well Darkneos, you have my sympathies ... :sad:
if one dies while still living, maybe they will finally know what it is to be Alive. Perhaps they will be in a better position of having a "view" on the age old question, "if there is such a thing as immortality?".
Course you can't weasel your way to it. Therefore weasels usually give up.
Existential HopeAugust 07, 2022 at 02:25#7262160 likes
Reply to Darkneos I don't think I am. The good is a source of pleasant experiences that don't exist when one doesn't exist. If one cares about having those goods, then they would choose them over a valueless state of affairs. Nothingness is not bad but it isn't good either. If the end can be preferred even though non-existent beings don't gain anything when they don't exist, then it can also be rational to avoid it even if there is no need after cessation. It could be great, but it can also be terrible. I suppose the perspective will vary from person-to-person. It comes down to what possesses more value for someone when they exist. As I have said before, I believe that it isn't inherently irrational for an individual to choose the exit door. I would merely add that if certain elements of being have greater value for someone than a state of affairs that is neither bad (because you don't have any needs) nor good (because there is no fulfilment), then it can be rational for them to try to retain/conserve them. May you find the happiness (in whatever form) that you deserve!
Existential HopeAugust 07, 2022 at 02:35#7262180 likes
Reply to Philosophim I agree that value and disvalue both reside only in existence. Some people seem afraid of the void as if it would bring about some terrible void, whereas others appear to seek it as if it would be peaceful. But I think that it can make sense to say that one wants peaceful cessation but, since it isn't possible, they have to choose the "lesser harm" of continuing a mostly bad existence rather than try to find a way out that could potentially be quite harmful.
Whats so awful about pain? Why is some pain worse than death?
The questions make no sense. Death is the ending of life, not a state. If life is filled with pain one wants pain to end. If the discussion is depressing one wants to end the discussion. The OP wants to escape from this - the present, not to achieve the goal of death. This happens when the mind is filled with the past, and projecting the past into the future as the continuation of the self. This projection of self into the future of years of mediocrity and meaningless routine and general discomfort, followed by the death one fears, is what fills and poisons the present, and thus himself is the prison in which he is confined. The desire to escape creates the very thing one seeks to escape from.
The solution is to face the fear, which is to face the present self which is nothing but this circle of thought going nowhere but round in a miserable circle, and in seeing that whole, there is a new thought and so a new life. That dies, and there is this. If one is every day new, then the thought of death will have no meaning to be either feared or desired. One has to escape the prison of thought to find the terrible beauty of life , that life and death are not separate.
If one lives as though it is good to inhale, but bad to exhale, one will not be happy for long.
I wouldn't call the survival drive "me" it's just an obstacle that I can't surmount.
The survival drive is part of your motivational makeup. You have motives to live and you have motives to die, and it seems that at the moment the motives to live prevail :)
I don't think it's such a bad metaphor. It's like the difference between a surgery without or without general anesthesia. Is it absurd to prefer the anesthesia ?
Existential HopeAugust 07, 2022 at 09:42#7263420 likes
Reply to Pie Anaesthesia can still feel somewhat pleasant. However, death is neither good nor bad for someone who doesn't exist. However, the process of cessation can be preferred/avoided depending upon an existing person's desires and what makes them happy. Ideally, it would be better, I think, for there to be a free and fair RTD that would help people not go through a life pervaded with negatives.
universenessAugust 07, 2022 at 10:15#7263470 likes
Because I'm not a coward. Lots of things in life will try to tear you down and end you. All the cells inside of you fight every day to keep viruses and bacteria at bay. They fight to do their jobs, and live. You spit on that. All the people who spent time and effort raising you to continue life. You spit on that. The fact that you have the gift of sentience when so much matter in the universe will never have it. Its absolutely a waste to throw that away when you should fight for it.
Reply to DA671
I think we basically agree. My point was just that we can consciously choose unconsciousness. A person can risk death to protect their child. A person can stand up against a tyrant, make a grand speech, knowing it'll lead to the guillotine. Duels were common once. In short, it's part of our calculations, and I suspect that death is often thought of as a deep sleep, as a sort of zero state, neither good nor bad.
unenlightenedAugust 07, 2022 at 10:27#7263520 likes
Of course not. It is not absurd to kill yourself either; I simply point out that in choosing oblivion over pain, one is trying to escape something, not achieve or gain something. That is where the notion of 'preferring' is misleadingly positive. Desire and fear are both projections to the future, but with opposite signs. They both equally take one away from one's real (present) life and create the prison of self from which one is seeking to escape.
Existential HopeAugust 07, 2022 at 10:47#7263610 likes
This projection of self into the future of years of mediocrity and meaningless routine and general discomfort, followed by the death one fears, is what fills and poisons the present,
E.m Cioran- The a Trouble with Being Born:To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.
My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding. It is what lets me comprehend Buddha, but also what keeps me from following him.
I am enraptured by Hindu philosophy, whose essential endeavor is to surmount the self; and everything I do, everything I think is only myself and the selfs humiliations.
In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are leftignorant how to reactwith a foolish grin
The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.
Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.
Existential HopeAugust 07, 2022 at 13:56#7264000 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 The Hindus seek to elevate the self (which is said to be one instead of being partitioned, which is just maya) towards the ultimate reality. It's not about utter negation.
There's a sort of comfort in the routine. I like waking up, brushing my teeth (not that they are in a great condition!), listening to the birds, and thinking about my work for the day.
Ataraxia can be quite subjective (in terms of its origin). Wealth definitely helps and so does having genuine relationships instead of the numerous transactional ones we see these days.
The absence of necessity can be a source of rapturous gratitude for the precious reality.
Some things are interesting and some aren't. I think that the more one can limit unnecessary desires and see contentment as a worthwhile goal, the better things could be. Plenty of aspects of existence, such as aesthetic value and love, don't seem futile to many people.
When there is an indescribable serenity on the face that went through seemingly insurmountable odds when spending time with someone they care about, it serves to awaken one's will towards affirming the good.
None of this detracts from the necessity of reducing gratuitous harms, however. I hope that my fellow optimists can have a nuanced perspective and be more open-minded when it comes to ideas such as a liberal right to a dignified exit and transhumanism.
"In a life or death crisis, simply settle it by choosing immediate death. There is nothing complicated about it. Just brace yourself and proceed. . . . One who chooses to go on living having railed in one's mission will be despised as a coward and a bungler. ... In order to be a perfect samurai, it is necessary to prepare oneself for death morning and evening, day in and day out."
:flower:
- Yukio Mishima on "The way of Samurai"
universenessAugust 07, 2022 at 17:37#7264370 likes
Anti-life is completely futile as the universe has clearly demonstrated that if life can happen, it will happen, somewhere at some point, again and again and again. Death just means you disassemble back into the spare subatomic parts you were made from. You dissipate back into the universal mix, all of what you were will be used again in new variations and new combinations. Nothing to be afraid of. The little life variation you were is gone forever but you will not be forgotten if you leave a respectable legacy and future transhumanism may offer many more options.
Looking at the examples available from natural selection and the evolutionary process, I think anyone anti-life should beware. The Darwinian rules don't seem to have many moral imperatives that humans would consider 'fair' or 'just.' If you invoke the Darwinian rules then that is what you personally might get.
The best hope for anyone antilife is the fact that those who love life care enough to try to convince them to think differently. We are their only hope against becoming spare parts for new life forms or any new animate or inanimate combination/structure way before they needed to due to their own confused choices.
The only value I see in them is they offer me a level of personal reflection and confirm for me how bad things can get on a personal level. I can say to myself 'well, at least you are not choosing to live life as some kind of daily, hour-to-hour curse.'
I assume anti-lifers struggle when nice things happen to them and to others around them as feeling good must be painful for them.
Anti-life is completely futile as the universe has clearly demonstrated that if life can happen, it will happen, somewhere at some point, again and again and again. Death just means you disassemble back into the spare subatomic parts you were made from. You dissipate back into the universal mix, all of what you were will be used again in new variations and new combinations. Nothing to be afraid of. The little life variation you were is gone forever but you will not be forgotten if you leave a respectable legacy and future transhumanism may offer many more options.
Yeah, but when it really comes to our own lives, we are all such egoist whimps. :sad:
If I die tomorrow, at least I'll be happy that my children are now so old that they will remember me. It would really suck to die when your children are so young that they won't remember anything. But at least I had them and a loving wife, so one notch to the "successful human/animal life"-table.
I have no suggestions if one finds life undesirable. Imagination is good, but living at the moment requires courage. That's it. Courage to face the mundane and the ordinary. Escapism has flourished over the last last decade or so. You've seen a lot of them in vlogs. Cottage fairies is one example. Another, is living a life in the 18th century, complete with costume and oil lamps and lack of modern technology. There's also the shopping addiction. Acquiring things to fill a void. Or just simply using drugs and alcohol to enter the state of stupor and mindlessness.
I don't know what to think of those people. I try to avoid them.
But I know that looking at the determination of animals in the wilderness, that's what I call living. They have enough energy pent up inside them that when they spring into action, all those energy is released like superpowers. Relatively, they live a short life -- when you always give your all and use all your energy to bag a prey, you're bound to have a shorter life. The wear and tear you sustain makes you powerful, but also short-lived.
What am I saying?
There's enough chemicals and enzymes in our body potent enough to fight hopelessness and boredom. We just need to know how to use them. When you use them, your mind is focused and even minutes of your life count. Of course, moments like that don't last 24 hours, 7 days a week. Eventually, the highs subside. That's when you sleep, or just do some physical activities. Or eat.
schopenhauer1August 07, 2022 at 21:02#7264750 likes
Youve already defeated your own argument that we are at home like other animals and extolled the existential /absurdist dilemma (of the specifically human condition) in one sentence.
Reply to litewave Motive implies I choose it and it is part of me, but it isn't. It's just a force more or less that prevents me from doing stuff. I don't really want to live but I sort of have to.
Death just means you disassemble back into the spare subatomic parts you were made from. You dissipate back into the universal mix, all of what you were will be used again in new variations and new combinations. Nothing to be afraid of. The little life variation you were is gone forever but you will not be forgotten if you leave a respectable legacy and future transhumanism may offer many more options.
Well you can't really be sure about that. Once I die it is blackness, I cannot verify past that. Also your point about disassembling is what Ernest Becker would call inventing stories to assuage death anxiety, in your case becoming part of something greater and eternal.
Also you will be forgotten, transhumanism ain't gonna fix that. I mean granted it's not gonna fix anything IMO. Quoting universeness
I assume anti-lifers struggle when nice things happen to them and to others around them as feeling good must be painful for them.
I have no suggestions if one finds life undesirable. Imagination is good, but living at the moment requires courage. That's it. Courage to face the mundane and the ordinary. Escapism has flourished over the last last decade or so. You've seen a lot of them in vlogs. Cottage fairies is one example. Another, is living a life in the 18th century, complete with costume and oil lamps and lack of modern technology. There's also the shopping addiction. Acquiring things to fill a void. Or just simply using drugs and alcohol to enter the state of stupor and mindlessness.
Living does not require courage, that's just rationalization to avoid having to reckon with death, same with calling death boring.
But I know that looking at the determination of animals in the wilderness, that's what I call living. They have enough energy pent up inside them that when they spring into action, all those energy is released like superpowers. Relatively, they live a short life -- when you always give your all and use all your energy to bag a prey, you're bound to have a shorter life. The wear and tear you sustain makes you powerful, but also short-lived.
That's sort of ignorance about what nature is like. Animals survive because they know nothing else. They aren't brave and I wouldn't call that living.
If I die tomorrow, at least I'll be happy that my children are now so old that they will remember me. It would really suck to die when your children are so young that they won't remember anything. But at least I had them and a loving wife, so one notch to the "successful human/animal life"-table.
I think it would be better to die when they don't remember anything, it's less painful. Your reply sounds pretty self centered.
Reply to schopenhauer1 Few things encourage me to, as Beckett says, "I'll go on" like reading the blackest passages of Cioran :cool:
E.m Cioran- The a Trouble with Being Born:[i]To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.
My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding. It is what lets me comprehend Buddha, but also what keeps me from following him.
I am enraptured by Hindu philosophy, whose essential endeavor is to surmount the self; and everything I do, everything I think is only myself and the self's humiliations.
In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left ... with a foolish grin.[/i]
Youve already defeated your own argument that we are at home like other animals and extolled the existential /absurdist dilemma (of the specifically human condition) in one sentence.
I don't see how what you just said rejects what I said. Care to explain?
Living does not require courage, that's just rationalization to avoid having to reckon with death, same with calling death boring.
Well, you're helping my argument, not hurting it. We are humans after all. So, yes, we use rationalization like animals use instinct. Courage consists of going against our tendency towards hopelessness. We use rationalization, of course. But there are enzymes and chemicals in our body at our disposal.
That's sort of ignorance about what nature is like. Animals survive because they know nothing else. They aren't brave and I wouldn't call that living.
Pardon me. I went back to my post and see if I called the wild animals brave. I said, humans need that. The animals live the way they are designed to live. Because they know nothing else, they use their energy to fuel life.
I shall name this village Melancholia, which sits in a flood prone depression next to the River Angst. The dark clouds are confined in the valley by the heights of Mount Despair and Mount Regret, where a true rain never falls, just an eternal cold drizzle.
Only one small path leads out, but its trailhead can only be seen by casting one's gaze above shoulder height, and none have yet looked that high up. They've heard of this Path of Hope, but never having seen it, they scoff and shrug, looking at the ground, firmly denying it.
I think it would be better to die when they don't remember anything, it's less painful. Your reply sounds pretty self centered.
I have many good memories of people that have died. They are not painful at all. Why would it be painful to have good (or even not so good) memories of people that have loved and cared about you?
If you think it's great to be an orphan who has no memory about his or her biological parents, I have to disagree. Do you really think that is better?
People die and if you remember the generation of your grandparents, the older people of you childhood, later you will notice that you have become part of that "old generation" to younger people.
schopenhauer1August 07, 2022 at 21:31#7264850 likes
Reply to 180 Proof
Cioran is highly edifying in his inertia. Even suicide is caring too much.
I don't really want to live but I sort of have to.
No you dont, you can check out any time youd like. I think if you wanted to be dead you would be. You dont really want to check out though do you? What you actually want here is attention, to validate your feelings about how unimpressed you are with life as an option.
Im not one thats going to tell you life is precious or that you have a gift or you have good in your life if you'd just embrace it. I accept you get nothing out of life, that you see nothing special about living and that death/oblivion seems like a better option than living Ill concede all that to you right now.
What your wrong about is that any of those feelings have anything to do with how much life sucks or how much better an option death is. Life isnt the problem, you are.
Your thoughts are those of a depressed mind. Just because its a common response you get ( get therapy) doesn't mean its wrong. You might need meds or something else that you are unqualified to dismiss as a cure for your little dilemma.
If youre adamant about depression or other mental illness not being the source of your view here then youve already gotten the best advice in the form of a question:
Are you sure youre doing life right?
If you truly have nothing worthwhile to live for, then you are actually more free than most other people. With such little attachment to life you have a freedom, a liberation of action, that means you can fill your life with whatever you want. If you cant exercise that freedom, then thats on you, not life.
universenessAugust 07, 2022 at 21:51#7264910 likes
Yeah, but when it really comes to our own lives, we are all such egoist whimps.
This is true for some but we have many people amongst us who are very humble and genuinely humanist. They just get on with helping people every day and hardly mention their own suffering. When you compliment them or show them admiration they tend to shrink away, truly embarrassed.
They are imo much more numerous, among the poor and weak than among the famous/rich and strong.
Incredible unsung hero like everyday people exist in all our communities. I am not suggesting such people are perfect but they certainly easily compensate for those I would label misanthropic.
Yes I can. Science has very strong empirical evidence for The law of Conservation of Energy, which states that Energy cannot be created or destroyed. In other words, the total amount of energy in the universe never changes, it can only change from one form to another. It is actually quite unlikely that after you die, some of your disassembled subatomic particles will never be involved in any new combination events until the end of the universe. YOU will be recycled.
your point about disassembling is what Ernest Becker would call inventing stories to assuage death anxiety,
I can only assure you and Mr Becker(in memorium) that I have no such death anxiety and I would suggest that you are simply trying to project your own anxiety onto me. I love life and will welcome death as a harbinger of change. I fear and I am anxious about the way I will die but I have no fear of oblivion for the obvious reason that there is no awareness.
Also you will be forgotten, transhumanism ain't gonna fix that.
You have no information regarding the legacy I will leave so you have no idea as to how long I will be remembered. Modern techniques store more and more information about our individual lives so future people will get to know a lot more about the lives of past people if they wish to. Future transhumanism has the potential to offer humans vastly improved robustness, ability and longevity. This will offer many new options. If you stick around you may witness its infancy. If you don't then there are many newborns to replace you. The global population has been increasing since we came out of the wilds.
Only one small path leads out, but its trailhead can only be seen by casting one's gaze above shoulder height, and none have yet looked that high up. They've heard of this Path of Hope, but never having seen it, they scoff and shrug, looking at the ground, firmly denying it.
There's always a way out. And I'm sure we don't mean death, which defeats the point.
Reply to Darkneos
Some motives you can't choose. Like, do you like certain types of food? Do you like orgasm? Do you dislike being hungry? Do you dislike being cold? All of these are ordinary motives that drive our lives and they are wired in our bodies or minds and thus are part of us. And they drive us toward pleasant feelings that make life worthwhile and away from unpleasant feelings that make life miserable. Getting killed is unpleasant and the survival drive drives you away from that.
But I know that looking at the determination of animals in the wilderness, that's what I call living. They have enough energy pent up inside them that when they spring into action, all those energy is released like superpowers. Relatively, they live a short life -- when you always give your all and use all your energy to bag a prey, you're bound to have a shorter life. The wear and tear you sustain makes you powerful, but also short-lived.
:clap: In general and in history, I think non-humans have suffered more than humans. I wonder how many lions or lambs decide that life and living is just a bad idea and they should covet death instead? Why does the prey run from the predator when they offer the placid oblivion of death and I don't think that they would have the same concerns as @Darkneos that they might survive the attempt to cause their own termination. Surely that strong survival instinct that has already been mentioned many times and that all species seem to have must have important purpose behind it.
This is true for some but we have many people amongst us who are very humble and genuinely humanist. They just get on with helping people every day and hardly mention their own suffering. When you compliment them or show them admiration they tend to shrink away, truly embarrassed.
Yet helping others, bringing them happiness, make us feel good (at least me). And yes, people usually don't whine about their problems. Yet I don't think that humble and genuinely humanist people are totally indifferent about their own life. They don't want their lives to end.
Ok, I have to admit that there was a bit of sarcasm with myself too in talking about a notch to the "successful human/animal life"-table.
The vast majority of people that have died before us are unknown and haven't left such an individual mark that we would remember them as historical figures. Yet very many of them are someones ancestors. Especially on a philosophy site the notion of continuation of life as a meaning for life might be boring and doesn't answer much, but it's something one cannot disregard.
universenessAugust 08, 2022 at 07:52#7265660 likes
Yet helping others, bringing them happiness, make us feel good (at least me). And yes, people usually don't whine about their problems. Yet I don't think that humble and genuinely humanist people are totally indifferent about their own life. They don't want their lives to end.
WELL DONE SIR!! A great legacy!
universeness
Is that sarcasm, universeness? If so, why?
No! I think anyone who has a successful marriage and has produced children and has managed to bring them up in a loving environment and they have all reached old age and continue to thrive is a very good (or great) legacy. Perhaps my use of capitals made you suspicious that I was being sarcastic, maybe its normal in today's society where most people are still a little shell shocked from Trumpism, Bo Jo etc that all comments/compliments made by people you don't know are treated with suspicion.
I am sure there is a lot more significance to the legacy your life will leave than a loving marriage and reproduction but such achievements ARE in themselves very good components of your legacy.
The vast majority of people that have died before us are unknown and haven't left such an individual mark that we would remember them as historical figures.
This imo, is more true the further you go back in time than it is now. I already stated my general opinion in my response to darkneous above:
Modern techniques store more and more information about our individual lives so future people will get to know a lot more about the lives of past people if they wish to. Future transhumanism has the potential to offer humans vastly improved robustness, ability and longevity. This will offer many new options
I think we have been, in the main, on the same page in our viewpoints on this topic.
universenessAugust 08, 2022 at 08:03#7265710 likes
The vast majority of people that have died before us are unknown and haven't left such an individual mark that we would remember them as historical figures.
Just a little bit more on this. I know some people who have traced the ancestry of their family and can describe a good deal of detail about many members of their family that go back centuries.
Historical figures that are known globally is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the information that does actually exist about the lives of non-famous people who lived. I find this quite wonderful.
I still remember a little about an everyday Roman soldier called Petronious Artibus because of some graffiti that was left about him. One stated 'Petronious Artibus got me pregnant!'
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 08:55#7265890 likes
Reply to universeness If value dies with existence, then it lies in existence (obvious but still worth mentioning). The good that matters for us (which transhumanism can also help provide) whilst we exist is not diminished/improved by the opinions of the posterity. Of course, we would definitely want to do the right thing.
Just a little bit more on this. I know some people who have traced the ancestry of their family and can describe a good deal of detail about many members of their family that go back centuries.
The basic problem is that only few of us have had great grandparents around to tell about their life. Hence it's usually this third generation where the personal link to history is lost. The thinking goes likes this: you surely remember what has happened in your lifetime. Everyone of us will remember for example the Covid-pandemic, which is likely a historical event (especially if the next pandemic won't hit us in the next 50 years). To events that have happened to your parents and grandparents one feels a link, especially if they have told themselves about it. But earlier generations, you don't usually know much if anything about their lives. Then it's hard to relate to them.
Usually people get interested about their family and roots only at older age. It should be something that children should interested in when there older generations still around. And as you said, some families have done this and have stories about people that have lived far earlier. I think it's valuable to keep these stories. And in my country it's quite interesting as the people have lived in the same places, not much immigration here before, and the Church books usually go to the Middle Ages.
universenessAugust 08, 2022 at 09:47#7266050 likes
I don't think this has ever been true as most parents attempt to nurture and teach their offspring how to survive and even how best to thrive in the world they live in. The level of legacy and influence that humans achieve is what makes the difference. From word of mouth traditions to the invention of methods to record (hieroglyphics, books etc) experiences and happenings, outside of the body, so that they last much longer than a human lifespan is the main reason why we gained dominion against all other species.
The good that matters for us (which transhumanism can also help provide) whilst we exist is not diminished/improved by the opinions of the posterity.
I am not sure what you mean here. The most unfortunate aspect of history is the distortion of truth and the manipulation of 'what really happened,' so I think the 'opinions of the posterity,' is crucial, especially, if those opinions are based on seriously dubious historical reportage such as those offered by theistic texts or historical events which were exclusively reported on by those in power at the time or those who conquered. History is rarely written by the vanquished.
universenessAugust 08, 2022 at 10:02#7266120 likes
Reply to ssu
All the points you make are valid, but as I said, this situation is changing. Think of how much information will be available to future generations about the lives of their ancestors. Current technology can hold every photograph, every textual or audio word you ever recorded, every piece of footage you ever recorded. You can gather it and back it up to a single SSD and to 'cloud storage' and pass the whole lot to your offspring as legacy files. This will now be available for the rest of time! To all future generations.
In what ways will such information be employed a million years from now? We will be the 'ancients' at that point. I wonder how they will judge the anti-life people alive today? I predict they will be unfavourable towards them based on the fact that sentient life will still be thriving a million years from now. If no such sentient life exists a million years from now then it won't matter anyway. If antilife wins then there will be nothing around to declare their victory. Perhaps anti-life is inevitable in the same way as anti-protons or antimatter or antichrist. Universal balance seems to be the norm. The good thing about the anti story is that matter won the battle of annihilation! Life defeated antilife long ago. That battle has already been decided. Time to get on with life!
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 10:56#7266450 likes
Reply to universeness I agree! By value, I was referring to positive and negative experiences. Assuming that non-existence is neither good nor bad, it doesn't make sense to always prefer the void when existence can have pleasant experience that non-existent does not. It's about the good too, not about just avoiding the harms.
It's true that the opinions of the posterity do matter for them. And because we as rational and empathetic beings care about what they think and how their lives would be, it's vital that we do everything we can to create a better tomorrow. I was only responding within the context of the value framework that some pessimists have wherein the absence of life's goods isn't bad because you wouldn't have any needs. Well, if that is true, then the fact that we wouldn't be remembered by everyone long after we are gone should not be a problem (or a blessing), considering that we wouldn't exist to lose or gain from that. To summarise, one should not be inconsistent.
universenessAugust 08, 2022 at 12:49#7267040 likes
I was only responding within the context of the value framework that some pessimists have wherein the absence of life's goods isn't bad because you wouldn't have any needs. Well, if that is true, then the fact that we wouldn't be remembered by everyone long after we are gone should not be a problem (or a blessing), considering that we wouldn't exist to lose or gain from that. To summarise, one should not be inconsistent
As I have said many times, to me, the fundamental is a question of purpose. A universe devoid of life has no purpose that I can conceive of. Such pointlessness is far worse than any concept of undeserved harms human morality or human moralists can come up with. I vote for many more years of harms and suffering for humans, including those who some choose to label 'newborn innocents,' alongside the many many joys and wonders of life which also occur very regularly. I very much prefer this state, compared to the alternative of a lifeless, pointless universe. All good people will also, of course, continue to do exactly what you have suggested many times. We will continue to help alleviate and remove all forms of unjust and unnecessary suffering and even obtain far more control over the inevitability of death.
I would also ask this. Why is the survival instinct so strong in all species if purposeless nonexistence is the superior natural state? Something seems to me to be much better than nothing!
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 12:53#7267060 likes
Reply to universeness Amen, sir. And as long as concerted efforts and an indomitable spirit remains, perhaps there would not be a need to vote for the former aspect for much longer. At the very least, the number of those particular candidates can be reduced drastically.
universenessAugust 08, 2022 at 13:05#7267110 likes
Reply to DA671
Agreed and life affirmation is already based on sound science imo.
Matter survived and continues to do so against antimatter annihilation and imo, it follows that life will continue to survive against antilife! The Universe will produce life because that is what it did and that is what it does!
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 13:07#7267130 likes
schopenhauer1August 08, 2022 at 13:28#7267270 likes
I would never presume to speak for the universe :roll:. We went for presuming for other humans to presuming for all of space/time/matter and everything.
One can't take the mechanisms of evolution (survival fit/reproduction) as the universe "saying" anything. It is a contingent form of how matter formed and a mechanism whereby some of that matter (biological matter), has developed. It isn't a moral statement from the universe. Category errors and misguided understanding of sentience, contingency, and implication thereof.
universenessAugust 08, 2022 at 13:54#7267360 likes
As a representative of the Universe, I have a voice within it. I choose to speak in support of the Universes demonstrated preference to create life. I am even content with referring to such as pure happenstance but the survival instinct being so strong in all species is further evidence towards a universe of purpose than one without purpose. Philosophical wordplay is no substitute for what actually happened and continues to happen. The existence of life happened and its human manifestations are compelled to ask questions, therefore its purpose is established, despite any attempts at sophistic wordplay.
The moderators of this site insist that I be nicer to antinatalists. I don't want to be nicer to them but I am threatened with getting banned if I don't and I have already had what I considered to be a very reasonable thread removed regarding the issue of falling foul of discussion site guidelines or the ruminations of individual moderators/administrators so, as I don't wish to be accused of throwing my own toys out of my pram. I will try to comply with their request, but it's not easy.
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 14:59#7267530 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 I would not comment on the purpose of the cosmos, but I am glad that we don't have to presume what it should not have despite it deserving and benefitting from it.
schopenhauer1August 08, 2022 at 15:40#7267610 likes
Reply to DA671
The universe doesnt benefit or not benefit anything. Lucky for you the dicey ethical practice for assuming for others doesnt apply to that category of thing.
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 15:42#7267620 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Of course it does not. That's quite lucky because we don't have to worry about the ethical deficiencies that following a non-beneficent framework creates. I am glad others could assume (or presume) the right things for me when I wasn't in a position to take them myself. Have a nice day!
schopenhauer1August 08, 2022 at 15:44#7267630 likes
Reply to DA671
Yep no one would have to worry about that.
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 15:47#7267650 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Except for existing beings who wish to be consistent and who would understand the value of a benefit. Life is also about celebration, not just worry. Alternatively, they could always understand that if preventing potential harms is good even though it helps nobody, it is also better to create positives.
schopenhauer1August 08, 2022 at 15:52#7267660 likes
Except for existing beings who wish to be consistent and who would understand the value of a benefit.
Benefit with non-benefit (negative) on someone elses behalf..you know the position.
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 15:54#7267670 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 The existence of which is not a sufficient justification for preventing all good that could be bestowed on behalf of innumerable innocent sentient beings. I know the position indeedincluding why it isn't right.
schopenhauer1August 08, 2022 at 15:56#7267680 likes
Reply to DA671
Its never just or right to presume such significant conditions and harms for another. Only when ameliorating greater with lesser harms and you cant get consent which this is not a case of.
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 15:58#7267700 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 It's never acceptable to presume that not providing unfathomably valuable experiences and a lifetime's worth of positively meaningful conditions is right just because there is a risk. You deserve to be happy even if I am sad. Of course, genuine happiness often comes from cooperation.
Unless your prevention is not causing a greater good to not exist and the individual has willingly chosen to be in a particular state of affairs (which procreation is not a case of), it is not ethical to cease the provision of all happiness. Also, non-existent beings cannot ask to exist. If creation can be an imposition, it can also be seen as a gift.
schopenhauer1August 08, 2022 at 16:52#7267760 likes
Of course, genuine happiness often comes from [s]cooperation[/s]
(a lot of negatives placed upon someone else). Quoting DA671
it is not ethical to cease the provision of all happiness.
Why is that a moral obligation to start if nothing was there who needed it in the first place and there are many negative collaterals attached to this decision? You would be maybe more accurate if you were only giving a pure good with no contingencies.
If creation can be an imposition, it can also be seen as a gift.
Gifts dont entail such significant harms and conditions usually. One can call anything a gift and that would be gaslighting to some extent.
Existential HopeAugust 08, 2022 at 16:55#7267790 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Projections and deliberate Ignorance don't negate the reality of the good and the joy of meaningful bonds (that cannot exist without cooperation). But it's true that there is a lot of greed. However, such people don't realise the impact of their actions and the sort of world they are creating (and could instead have helped form).
If there is no moral obligation to create benefits unless there is a need, then there is also no requirement to never create someone unless doing so causes an actual being to be satisfied and there are no additional positives. Your view might have been more tenable if the negatives were all that existed. Fortunately, this is not the case.
Impositions don't entail indescribable value. But one could call anything an imposition if they are primarily concerned with their own negative perspective, which would be a sort of gaslighting as well. For what it's worth, I don't think that life is always a gift. Suffering should be taken extremely seriously and there should be a peaceful way out.
Well, you're helping my argument, not hurting it. We are humans after all. So, yes, we use rationalization like animals use instinct. Courage consists of going against our tendency towards hopelessness. We use rationalization, of course. But there are enzymes and chemicals in our body at our disposal.
Not really no, there is not courage to living when its the default. If anything courage is killing yourself when evolution and society say to keep going.
As I have said many times, to me, the fundamental is a question of purpose. A universe devoid of life has no purpose that I can conceive of. Such pointlessness is far worse than any concept of undeserved harms human morality or human moralists can come up with. I vote for many more years of harms and suffering for humans, including those who some choose to label 'newborn innocents,' alongside the many many joys and wonders of life which also occur very regularly. I very much prefer this state, compared to the alternative of a lifeless, pointless universe. All good people will also, of course, continue to do exactly what you have suggested many times. We will continue to help alleviate and remove all forms of unjust and unnecessary suffering and even obtain far more control over the inevitability of death.
I would also ask this. Why is the survival instinct so strong in all species if purposeless nonexistence is the superior natural state? Something seems to me to be much better than nothing!
Why indeed but that's not really an argument to continue living.
Also "unjust", "unnecessary"? That's casting an awful lot of assumptions onto existence.
Then when get to the flaw of purpose, since a universe with life is just as purposeless as one without it. There is no ultimately point to existence, it simply persists.
But you're in the wrong here. I universe without life sounds amazing. I would like to "live" in it, ironic I know, to bask in the absolute silence of it all. For however long I last, and then know with my death extinction of all life would at last occur.
Yes I can. Science has very strong empirical evidence for The law of Conservation of Energy, which states that Energy cannot be created or destroyed. In other words, the total amount of energy in the universe never changes, it can only change from one form to another. It is actually quite unlikely that after you die, some of your disassembled subatomic particles will never be involved in any new combination events until the end of the universe. YOU will be recycled.
No, that's just a claim. There is nothing to say the world wouldn't end if I died. You make too many assumptions.
Some motives you can't choose. Like, do you like certain types of food? Do you like orgasm? Do you dislike being hungry? Do you dislike being cold? All of these are ordinary motives that drive our lives and they are wired in our bodies or minds and thus are part of us. And they drive us toward pleasant feelings that make life worthwhile and away from unpleasant feelings that make life miserable. Getting killed is unpleasant and the survival drive drives you away from that.
Yes, no, no, no. Getting killed being unpleasant is debatable and pleasant feelings don't make life worthwhile just tolerable. NEXT. Also it sounds horrifying to think that all these drives out of your control keep you here when you don't want to be.
You have no information regarding the legacy I will leave so you have no idea as to how long I will be remembered. Modern techniques store more and more information about our individual lives so future people will get to know a lot more about the lives of past people if they wish to. Future transhumanism has the potential to offer humans vastly improved robustness, ability and longevity. This will offer many new options. If you stick around you may witness its infancy. If you don't then there are many newborns to replace you. The global population has been increasing since we came out of the wilds.
This is, quite frankly, a delusion way of thinking to put it bluntly. If you think transhumanism is gonna do any of that you're quite wrong. Transhumanism is nothing but a pipe dream. Not to mention you're proving Ernest Becker's point about having death anxiety and being motivated by it. Transhumanism is literally death anxiety.
Only one small path leads out, but its trailhead can only be seen by casting one's gaze above shoulder height, and none have yet looked that high up. They've heard of this Path of Hope, but never having seen it, they scoff and shrug, looking at the ground, firmly denying it.
Hope is little more than delusion that promises what it can't deliver.
Pain, as of the moment, taking into account our biology, is absolutely critical for survival - consider it a necessary evil if you will. Our nociceptive systems have evolved to be hypersensitive - pain is many times more intense than is warranted for the severity of the injury i.e. it breaks the cardinal rule of proportio divina and is disproportionate, ugly, hideous, grotesque. Pain makes complete sense to me!
Reply to Noble Dust Yes, but it exists to gather all the anti-life stuff in one place, so that it can be easily ignored. Until Baden merged them all into this thread, there were at least two or three such active discussions. We've had enough. Containment seems like the best option.
Reply to Agent Smith That's not food for thought, that is a regression to Aristotlean teleology instead of taking into account what we know now about evolution.
That's not food for thought, that is a regression to Aristotlean teleology instead of taking into account what we know now about evolution.
Fallacy of composition?
It is an interesting line of inquiry though, oui? Bios may have a shelf-life i.e. it has an expiry date but we're not talking of mere kiloyears here; think geological timescales. Most ELEs (extinction level events) have been external ones but it's possible that there could be internal gene-based extinction codes that could be turned on after some millions/billions of years. Random thought.
Existential HopeAugust 09, 2022 at 05:53#7269020 likes
Reply to Agent Smith From what I know, we are programmed to reproduce. However, as rational sentient beings, people can find satisfaction in something apart from that. It might be inherent in the nature of limited beings to eventually stop existing. But that also means that such beings can exist, live for a while, and also have unspeakably positive experiences that would be good as long as one is around (which, if physicalism is true, might be the only situation in which value can be there).
No it isn't. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works to suggest we're programmed for a purpose
The purpose is inferred from facts as they stand/appear to us. Objection sustained!
Reply to DA671 My life ain't something to brag about but here I am, (seemingly) content, happy enough to want to keep breathing.
Existential HopeAugust 09, 2022 at 07:17#7269380 likes
Reply to Agent Smith That's wonderful, Mr Smith! As long as good people like you keep breathing, hope for a new dawn will persist. (Also, considering that nice comments are sometimes considered to be sarcastic these days, I want to make it explicitly clear that I am not trying to be sarcastic/snarky).
Getting killed being unpleasant is debatable and pleasant feelings don't make life worthwhile just tolerable.
Getting killed means overcoming the survival drive, which makes it unpleasant. Maybe you don't have enough pleasant feelings, because pleasant feelings are what makes one enjoy life - by definition. Aren't you diagnosed with anhedonia?
Also it sounds horrifying to think that all these drives out of your control keep you here when you don't want to be.
But they also drive you to improve your life, so they can be your friends. You are what you are, so it seems best to accept it and make the best of it.
universenessAugust 09, 2022 at 08:29#7269930 likes
Why indeed but that's not really an argument to continue living.
Perhaps not for you.
You are 'overruling' natural instinct. I am glad that humans can do that or else we could not overrule a Darwinian law of the jungle approach to life but as I said before, I am glad I don't carry your self-imposed cage in which you experience your life as a moment to moment curse.
since a universe with life is just as purposeless as one without it. There is no ultimately point to existence, it simply persists.
So I suppose you see terms like 'human progress' or 'legacy' or 'lives building on lives' or 'compulsion to find the answers to the big questions,' or 'I feel its my purpose in life to.....,' etc to be purposeless. You employ a very strange and unconvincing form of logic. Quite irrational actually.
But you're in the wrong here. I universe without life sounds amazing. I would like to "live" in it, ironic I know, to bask in the absolute silence of it all. For however long I last, and then know with my death extinction of all life would at last occur
Perhaps we could scientifically test how much you would enjoy this by placing you in a simulation of complete sensory deprivation. We could remove 'ironic' and allow you to actually "live" it.
We can use chemicals to temporarily paralyse you and completely remove your sense of touch. Temporarily remove your sight, hearing and sense of smell and taste. No sensory input whatsoever. We could leave you like that whilst still maintaining your bodily functions for 10 years. We can then reinstate your senses and you can describe your bliss to the human race. There are many 'locked in' medical conditions which are not so far from this state such as Encephalitis lethargica as depicted in the film awakenings. We would of course leave your brain working in the same way it does now so that your experience would be 'live' as you wanted instead of the 'no awareness' offered by death. We can induce 8 hours of sleep for you in each 24h period. Would you volunteer for this 'living death' experiment?
The purpose is inferred from facts as they stand/appear to us. Objection sustained!
Having a lively imagination is no excuse to misunderstand what possible interpretations exist. Biological facts do not support a teleological interpretation. Period.
Having a lively imagination is no excuse to misunderstand what possible interpretations exist. Biological facts do not support a teleological interpretation. Period.
Mea culpa. Philosophy ain't no picnic. Sometimes, I feel like I came to the wrong place!
universenessAugust 09, 2022 at 08:38#7269970 likes
No, that's just a claim. There is nothing to say the world wouldn't end if I died.
The law of the conservation of energy is not a claim, the clue is in the title. There is indeed a frame of reference that suggests that from your point of view, the Universe ends when you die. In reality, it might take many trillions of years for all life to truly end in the universe but as you will not experience time passing after you are dead, trillions of years and an instant will be all the same to you. This was also the case before you were born. Just as well you were formed and became alive or else you and all other antilifers would not have ever been able to complain about your existence.
Just a little more on this. Transhumanism seeks more control over the inevitability of death and there may be an aspect of death anxiety as one of the drivers but you ignore the absolute practicality of improving human choices, robustness, ability and longevity. Space is not life-friendly in the main at the moment and it is very advisable that humans become an interplanetary or even interstellar species asap.
It is a pragmatic survival imperative. We must leave the nest as we are too vulnerable if we stay confined to one planet. Feel free to label this concern 'extinction anxiety.' Having improved robustness, ability and longevity will help us survive in the vastness of space. All power to transhumanism! as long any enhancements will maintain at least the majority of what is considered human identity or me, myself and I ....... and of course you.
Death is a natural thing. It happens. When you have had a nice relationship with someone, when the person dies you will have fond memories about him or her. It's just part of life.
Yet not having parents is usually far more traumatic and a rare unfortunate thing.
Well, you won't ever experience death. Death is simply, "The end". You'll experience dying if you're conscious at the time. But that's it. There is no peace, no rest, no etc.
This has nothing to do with peace in life, it's about the cessation of all things.
No, it has to do with the belief that you are your body; and it has to do with the belief that when the body dies, "it's all over".
Note: These beliefs are dogmatic, axiomatic. We're not supposed to question them.
Yet every day, we also act in ways that show that we don't hold those beliefs consistently.
If society had a different mind they'd see that and allow people to exit if they choose.
And they do, the list is growing:
Physician-assisted suicide is legal in some countries, under certain circumstances, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, parts of the United States and parts of Australia.
I guess people only rationalize living by stating "precious joys are worth cherishing" is due to death anxiety, as Ernest Becker put it.
It's more the case that we're craving sensual pleasures. We don't fear death per se; we fear that we won't be supplied with sensual pleasures or that we'll run out of them.
The philosopher replied, "Since there's no difference between being alive and being dead, why should I go to the trouble?"
E.M Cioran said it better:
The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.
When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, "What's your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act." And they do calm down.
Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists who can no longer be . . . optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why should they have any to die?
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
"I'll go on" like reading the blackest passages of Cioran
The irony of living to be 84 years old and die of Alzheimer's!
I'd love to discuss Buddhism with him.
schopenhauer1August 09, 2022 at 19:29#7272250 likes
Reply to baker
He truly understood melancholy from the inside. That is to say.. He knew that suicide was only ever something as an idea and was never a proper response because the damage is never undone. Basically, there is no relief, only moments of calmness within life itself. Though rare.
I shall name this village Melancholia, which sits in a flood prone depression next to the River Angst. The dark clouds are confined in the valley by the heights of Mount Despair and Mount Regret, where a true rain never falls, just an eternal cold drizzle.
Only one small path leads out, but its trailhead can only be seen by casting one's gaze above shoulder height, and none have yet looked that high up. They've heard of this Path of Hope, but never having seen it, they scoff and shrug, looking at the ground, firmly denying it.
[i]The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.[/i]
Reply to schopenhauer1 Like I said, I'd love to discuss Buddhism with him. He said he understood the Buddha. To begin with, back in his day, there weren't many translations of the Pali Canon available. I wonder what his source for Buddhism was.
Yes, but it exists to gather all the anti-life stuff in one place, so that it can be easily ignored. Until Baden merged them all into this thread, there were at least two or three such active discussions. We've had enough. Containment seems like the best option.
Given the global trend toward legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, will you rethink your negative take on the "anti-life stuff"?
Contrary to the belief of capitalists and assorted others, people do not have an infinite willingness to invest any amount of effort, however great, into obtaining any amount of sensual pleasure, however small. You will not work the entire day just for a morsel of food.
It doesn't have to be interpreted as a negative take or mod judgement on the subject. E.g. We could say it's more convenient and efficient to have everything in one discussion. Anyhow, it took me years of careful consideration and preparation to come up with this cunning plan, so I'm not for backing down now.
Life is somewhat of an ouroboros (prey-predator, food web). Death (destruction/0) works against with Birth (creation/1)!
The market place is like Schopenhauer's Will playing out in an endless cycle of "supply" and "demand" eating each other, as you say- like the ouroboros (prey-predator). Your constant demands and his supply means suffering will continue.. NOW GET BACK TO WORK! People need work to provide "meaning". It's part of a "system" (free, socialist, or otherwise) that needs feeding with more people and more people's attention. Nothing gets done on its own.. but everyone must contribute or perish. How can birth not be a political question? Obviously people want the system to keep going.. More reinforcing of the supply and demand.. Double down. Meanwhile the ouroboros' squeeze gets tighter and tighter.
The beginning of man. The self-destruct was there from the start. When man first demanded something and needed a supply of it. When someone supplied the demand and demanded other people's labor which could be sold to the supplier so that their own demands can be satisfied. Again, it's Will playing out, embodied in the real world transactions of the labor force and the marketplace.
Sounds like a fair deal. What exactly are you complaining about?
Either you don't know Schopenhauer, or you don't know how I am applying it thusly to the economic sphere. Which is it?
Will in Schop is an insatiable craving at the heart of existence. It strives-but-for-naught, causing its phenomenological manifestations bear the brunt of the thing-in-itself. Humans suffer the most because of our self-awareness of this suffering.
The economic system is a system of striving-after.. In the Schopenhauerian sense, it is striving for survival and entertainment.. A physical representation of our inability to "just be". Our demands and supplies are physico-social manifestations of this endless cycle of willing whereby we cannot just exist, in calmness, non-desireless states, but must work at one end and distract in another. It self-reinforces itself with each demand and supply offered...It tightens the ouroboros.
schopenhauer1August 10, 2022 at 04:33#7273580 likes
And we all monger the minutia.. pay the price.. put our attention on the details. Laud the details. Laud the minutia-mongers.. Counting the beans, creating the electrical signal pulses, measuring this, solving that... Romanticize it (scientism), revile it (ludism), enjoy it (the average consumer), produce it (the average technology/science worker), maintain it (all the supporting jobs).. The capital investors/governments smile as they deign to think they provide "meaning" to the laborers in their fiefdoms.. The laborers buy into the conceit as what else do they do for their adult lives? Production becomes paramount. Work becomes identity. Laboring becomes ritual and sacrament and sacred meaning-maker.
Reply to schopenhauer1 You have a point but work has, in a sense, been decoupled, much to my satisfaction I might add, from food (a need). Gone are the days when work meant walking/running/leaping/hurling spears/weaving nets/setting traps which I consider activites directly related to nutrition. In the modern world, of course this going back at least 5-6 kiloyears ago, we can now earn our bread by doing things like writing/painting/solving problems/even plain thinking/etc., these kinda professions being only indirectly related to feeding. I consider this a significant improvement and we should be thankful for it.
The nightmare scenario that you're claiming life is is I think a severe case of cherry picking aka confirmation bias.
Anyway, true it is that the system we currently operate under leaves much to be desired - it be cold-hearted, it fails to address our emotional needs of which there are many. However, as I see it, this ain't a done deal with zero options for improvement. Conditions could be bettered and we may begin to, at some point, appreciate life as gift, worth it, enjoyable, and so on.
schopenhauer1August 10, 2022 at 04:57#7273600 likes
You cannot decouple the two. You can do things because you absolutely want to or because it brings the medium for your survival (in this case money- which buys goods and services, you see). So no, this is ANOTHER conceit of the kind/benevolent dictators who provide you these "meaningful" jobs for X hours. Keep 'em coming Agent Smith..
However, as I see it, this ain't a done deal with zero options for improvement. Conditions could be bettered and we may begin to, at some point, appreciate life as gift, worth it, enjoyable, and so on.
Get back to work. That minutia isn't going to monger itself! I just don't find anything much in this statement of consolation, or refutation really. More cold-hearted "This is how it is.. stop saying stuff.. the system is good, the system works, the system is all we have". Yadayadayada
Indeed, decoupling is the wrong concept to use here; what I actually meant was how work transformed into something more than, not just, gathering/hunting/farming; there was a time when work meant just that - sensu amplo, foraging.
Post-agricultural revolution, things changed, in my humble opinion for the better, and we could engage in activities that had no direct nutritional payoffs, things like painting/music/philosophy/etc.
In a sense food lost its numero uno position in re labor to second place, below other more, let's just say, sublime aforementioned activities. To me this is a significant upgrade to the status of work which should matter, oui? Especially if the downsides of having to look for/hold a job is a key premise in an/any argument. :smile:
universenessAugust 10, 2022 at 07:37#7273870 likes
Capitalism, the money trick, the manipulation of supply and demand are all methods used by the nefarious to make themselves rich and powerful and create a low status / powerless majority poor. The cycle then continues from generation to generation by capitalism so that the few can leech from the poor to maintain their power and status. Socialists/humanists etc have been fighting against all doctrines which help to maintain this imbalance since we came out of the wilds. The answer to this imbalance is to work towards balance and dismantle and prevent systems which produce rich and poor people and powerful and powerless people. The answer to such human problems is not and never has been to support notions of anti-life as that means you have become part of the problem and have become every bit as imbalanced, destructive and as much a part of the problem as a capitalist/autocrat/plutocrat/aristocrat/monarchist/totalitarian/evanhellical etc etc. We need to alleviate and eventually cure/prevent the suffering not vote for making all patients extinct.
schopenhauer1August 10, 2022 at 12:49#7274990 likes
In a sense food lost its numero uno position in re labor to second place, below other more, let's just say, sublime aforementioned activities. To me this is a significant upgrade to the status of work which should matter, oui? Especially if the downsides of having to look for/hold a job is a key premise in an/any argument. :smile:
Youre overlooking what Im saying for a straw man that you want me to say. Im not taking about reverting to a hunting gathering society simply by criticizing what is going on now. Any economic model whereby we de facto are forced into a situation of work to survive would be thus the target. You are looking at the accidentals when Im talking of the essentials. And its all relative as the next level of his work manifests is the new norm.
Read what Im actually saying if you want to move this forward.
Reply to schopenhauer1 In my humble opinoion, I addressed your concern to the degree required. Work is, let's just say, mutating - what it's now is orders of magnitude better than it was 30kya, and what it'll become, if all goes well, may have people falling over each other to be given the opportunity to, well, work.
I believe I've mentioned this before - some ideas tend to be photographs, others videos!
schopenhauer1August 10, 2022 at 13:25#7275140 likes
I believe I've mentioned this before - some ideas tend to be photographs, others videos!
What is your modus operendi? Why would people ever give up their time for something they have to do? Falling over each other to "work" is simply called doing what you want when you want it because you want to do it, with no contingencies for needing to do it (like for survival). Jobs don't work like that. Jobs are not there for your edification. They are there to produce wealth to buy (as Homer said) goods and services. Or,, for the very rich, to grow their wealth continually and intergenerationally without buying any goods and services beyond more investments to reinvest in.
universenessAugust 10, 2022 at 14:37#7275350 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
I worked in education for 30+ years. I also served a 4 year apprenticeship as a painter and decorator.
Teaching was as much of a vocation as it was a job. Painting and decorating was more of a job but I got a lot of personal satisfaction/joy out of converting old dirty, decaying rooms into fresh, maintained, preserved, sanitised, pretty rooms. I cannot begin to express to you the incredible moments I had in my teaching career when I managed to inspire kids and enhanced their interest in and enjoyment of learning.
what it'll become, if all goes well, may have people falling over each other to be given the opportunity to, well, work.
I think you are absolutely correct. Hopefully, in the future, most of the mundane repetitive jobs will be automated. I also think that personal maintenance may take less and less time in the future as well.
We used to have to wash clothes in the river so washing machines definitely do help.
If more people can access more meaningful, purposeful activities that are based on what people are actually interested in then I think you are correct, people will want to work.
A Universal basic income for all, would make this more feasible.
If we can automate agriculture, manufacturing, recycling etc etc then 'your daily job' can become less about earning money to sustain your existence and more about living a fulfilling life and leaving a legacy which adds to human progress. Such a society can be achieved and its creation would be helped if the anti-life people would help to make it happen and stop being the misanthropes they are.
Maybe a future job title will be 'discussion site contributor,' sounds valid to me!
Well Im in my early thirties, and im really looking for a compelling reason/argument to live (and how to live) that would at least work for me. Suicide has been on my mind for a quite some time, but I really dont want to cause suffering to people around me. Thats why the search for a reason to live or argument why not suicide.
I feel like everything used to justify the will to keep going is more just our survival instinct trying to rationalize things.
I'd question this desire for something more than survival instincts. Our attachment to life isn't "just" survival instinct, it's a complex of attachments and emotions and history and future and present and...
A complex, I think, is a good description -- leaving open what precisely makes us tick, while noting that it's not simple.
So coming to understand how or why we might come to desire death -- while still being alive! -- will also be complicated.
To the refrain "but this is not enough to justify going on":
Whether it is or isn't enough really is up to you. It's your relationship to the world, to yourself, to your emotions and needs and people. There is no "reason" someone can give you to make you feel any differently about those. The unjust thing about this world is that it's probably not even your fault you feel this way -- but because it's your life, your emotions, your desire, well... it still falls to you to learn how to live with it.
schopenhauer1August 10, 2022 at 23:45#7277080 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
Indeed, I wonder if it is a post-facto excuse for justifying the fact that life entails work, and thus if work isn't meaningful then much of what sustains life isn't meaningful, and thus procreation is putting upon people not a benefit but a burden simply to "deal with". In other words, people MUST find meaning in work, otherwise implications are not good.
I'd question this desire for something more than survival instincts. Our attachment to life isn't "just" survival instinct, it's a complex of attachments and emotions and history and future and present and...
A complex, I think, is a good description -- leaving open what precisely makes us tick, while noting that it's not simple.
So coming to understand how or why we might come to desire death -- while still being alive! -- will also be complicated.
It is some variation of survival instinct or another. Meaning is just another invention we make to trick ourselves into believing life is worthwhile.
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.". --Camus
Just a random related question: approximately what percent of people in this forum are onboard with antinatalism or related sentiments? It seems like most are against it, although Reply to schopenhauer1 kind of convinced me long ago that it makes perfect sense, even though it's not something I'd actually practice, which must mean I'm a monster. I guess I'm just surprised not as many others were convinced as well.
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 01:47#7277290 likes
Reply to Jerry
Thanks for the shoutout, Jerry! I'm glad you saw some value there.
As Schopenhauer once said:
Arthur Schopenhauer:All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.
The reason it isnt convincing is because the argument is stupid. Its fundamentally anti-life. Thats more a matter of mood and temperament than sound reasoning. Nietzsche has plenty to say on this far more articulate than me.
Im the opposite of you: I dont have kids, and Im not convinced in the slightest.
Indeed, I wonder if it is a post-facto excuse for justifying the fact that life entails work, and thus if work isn't meaningful then much of what sustains life isn't meaningful, and thus procreation is putting upon people not a benefit but a burden simply to "deal with". In other words, people MUST find meaning in work, otherwise implications are not good.
Well, frankly, it would be amazing if we didn't have to work at all and still have our needs & wants met to our satisfaction. This sentiment (something for nothing) has been associated with "kids these days!", as if to say the notion is puerile, a cardinal sign of an immature mind. However, what about the adult obsession with efficiency, making things easier, etc.? Such concepts, taken to their natural endpoint, imply that even adults want something for nothing. We wanna do magic! I suppose I would advocate for natalism of some kind, a toned-down version of it, just to see what happens...in the end? Do we succeed/fail? Mind you I'm working outside the domain of ethics here! Mighty interesting, oui?
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 02:35#7277430 likes
The reason it isnt convincing is because the argument is stupid. Its fundamentally anti-life. Thats more a matter of mood and temperament than sound reasoning. Nietzsche has plenty to say on this far more articulate than me.
Im the opposite of you: I dont have kids, and Im not convinced in the slightest.
It's anti-suffering. Saving a life in your care, and starting a life are two different things. You are equivocating to make a point.. But it's out-of-hand condemnation without consideration. Efficient, but not fully thought out.
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 02:41#7277440 likes
his sentiment (something for nothing) has been associated with "kids these days!", as if to say the notion is puerile, a cardinal sign of an immature mind. However, what about the adult obsession with efficiency, making things easier, etc.? Such concepts, taken to their natural endpoint, imply that even adults want something for nothing.
You may have something there...
However, I don't think natalism should THUS be considered as somehow at a future point, these things will be figured out. You don't cause negatives for other in the hopes that at some undefined point, they get something from it. That is done maybe when ameliorating greater with lesser harms (forced schooling for children, etc.) but not an excuse in general to just "do" to people. You don't create immense suffering for generations for some undefined future goal of "humanity".. What else can we "do" to people for a cause? The slippery slope is precipitous with this kind of philosophy.
But sure, if work was abolished, that would be a benefit.. I am not against it. I just wouldn't put people in harms way or to impose my will on them, or create impositions for them to see this happen in some undefined future state. You are creating people who must experience work for generations before (or even if) any of this would take place (if at all).
If youre in favor of not having kids, dont have any. If youre arguing that human beings shouldnt have kids, then youre anti-life. The result is the end of the species. That essentially says: life is evil. Evil because suffering exists.
Just dressed up nihilism.
Why anyone chooses to go on and on about this to fight THIS battle is an interesting psychological fact about them. But nothing more.
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 02:55#7277470 likes
If youre in favor of not having kids, dont have any. If youre making arguing that human beings shouldnt have kids, then youre anti-life. The result is the end of the species. That essentially says: life is evil. Evil because suffering exists.
If you believe something is not ethical because of X, Y, and Z, why would that not be something one should have a philosophical position on? Because you disagree with it? Some people think abortion is right or wrong. Some people think eating highly-sentient animals is right or wrong. Some people think that you are obligated to give as much as you can. Some people think you are not obligated to do X, or you are obligated to do Y. Some people think you can never lie. Some people think it is okay to cheat on your wife, steal from a mega-corporation, take something if no one knows, etc. etc. etc. It's all positions people can have and debate. Unfairly targeting a position on the ethics of procreating, is more an anti-anatinatalist problem. I have no problem with good faith debate. I have a problem with people who condemn it out of hand due to their own defenses or whatnot. I rather, them ignore if they aren't going to consider the views and want to twist it as somehow "illogical".. It's logical, just not the logic you want to hear.
As for the end of the species.. You already have the presumption that ethics entails the continuance of the species over creating actual individuals who will be imposed upon. You are jumping to the conclusion without engaging any of the evidence against such a notion. A real creation of someone else's suffering is pitted against someone's sadness from an abstraction.. Yet, the emotional appeal of the abstraction clouds the reasoning of the ethics... so the ethics is violently opposed, as Schopenhauer observed.
Wrong again.. At least get your terms correct. Nihilism in ethics, it he belief in no values. A nihilist wouldn't give a fuck if you procreated or not. They generally don't take positions that put values on things. Rather, it is philosophical pessimism, and it's not dressed up.
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 02:59#7277490 likes
Reply to Xtrix
Oh and it's not anti-joy. A life full of joy is better than a life bereft of joy. Creating a life, that will definitely impose on someone and create impositions for them, negates the fact that there is joy. Creating joy is not an obligation. Not creating harms where it didn't have to take place is. My wanting to cause joy, does not mean I get to create more harms too for them.
There is an odd religious mania in the pro-procreation view.. One is "spreading joy" (without any thought to the other consequences one is spreading). And somehow THIS is an obligation unto itself.. The Universe needs its experiencers of it?? More like projection of ones own sadness onto the universe.. You are not the universe.. The universe isn't even a proper place for this kind of placement of evaluation.. If not the universe, it's just you being sad about something not happening. An abstraction of future events that will not take place. And thus somehow a justification for more harm to others because people shouldn't feel sad about abstractions somehow, as an absolute fact of ethics.. Odd.
Ok, the point is there seem to be unethical nonethical reasons to advocate for natalism and one appears in my previous post.
There are reasons people want to procreate.. whether or not they are ethical.. Understood and can agree if stated in those terms. But once you say, THEREFORE people should procreate, that becomes an ethical statement, or at the least, axiological.
Creating joy is not an obligation. Not creating harms where it didn't have to take place is.
Neither are obligations. There's either the desire to give life or not. Those who don't want to are welcome. But not everyone views suffering and exclaims "life is refuted," which is what antienatalism rests on. If you don't share that attitude, then the rest is just nonsense. I don't share that attitude.
Again, for those who do -- fine. Then kill yourself, don't have kids, etc. That's your right. But why one wants to go around infecting others with this morbid, anti-life view is beyond me. I guess that's your right too, in the end. What can you do. Carry on!
So if you knew that that life would suffer in X amount (for you unreasonably).. Should that not be considered? You would normally say yes (but maybe not cause you want to make a point debating me perhaps)..
ntly creating negatives (impositions, harms) for others that can't be escaped.. That in itself is enough not to do unto another person.
But not everyone views suffering and exclaims "life is refuted," which is what antienatalism rests on. If you don't share that attitude, then the rest is just nonsense. I don't share that attitude.
You can say that about any position though. What makes any other ethical position immune from someone disagreeing with it? That's like saying.. I don't believe in X ethical position, so the rest is nonsense.. So if you don't believe in Kant's ideas, should it be banished from philosophical debate? Seems ridiculous to me.. You are making unreasonable hoops for antinatalism to jump through as if it is not like any other ethical system one can believe or not believe. I never said you are FORCED to believe it. Now that truly would be hypocritical to impose the view after saying that impositions themselves should be avoided unto others!
Again, for those who do -- fine. Then kill yourself, don't have kids, etc. That's your right. But why one wants to go around infecting others with this morbid view, anti-life view is beyond me. I guess that's your right too, in the end. What can you do.
Oh dear, a philosophical position has a position that is counter to your current belief-system.. Thus it should be violently opposed. Great job advocating for free speech in the confines of a respectable forum. Rather, any position you don't hold should also be banished right? Or no, just this because YOU have opinions on it.
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 03:17#7277550 likes
There are reasons people want to procreate.. whether or not they are ethical.. Understood and can agree if stated in those terms. But once you say, THEREFORE people should procreate, that becomes an ethical statement, or at the least, axiological.
Work with me here; for the moment ignore ethics, Momma Nature has been doing that all this while, oui? Maybe that's not entirely accurate but methinks there's a grain or two of truth in my statement. Now, sir/madam, as the case maybe, can you think of one/two good reasons why we should have children?
Too, it just dawned on me, ethics revolves around two essential doodads:
1. Life/Phanes/Existence
2. Suffering/Algos
Antinatalism is unethical for the simple reason that nonexistence (death, killing) is. You can't claim to be moral in any sense of the word if as a solution to a problem you recommend nonexistence. Ethics is all about creating/preserving life while attempting to make the experience a memorable (read happy) one.
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 03:27#7277580 likes
Reply to Xtrix
I'll ease off here because at the end you did say:
I guess that's your right too, in the end. What can you do. Carry on!
So, in recognition of this, I'll respect that you agree to disagree. I have no problem with that. I only have a problem when people want to banish it from any public forum. Just discounting out of hand and banishing because you think it is distasteful to your mores, doesn't say anything against it. Socrates, Galileo, Bruno, Inquisitions, that's what you get with that kind of thinking.
Ethics is all about creating/preserving life while attempting to make the experience a memorable (read happy) one.
Really? I thought it was about right action? You are putting a spin on it such that of course, antinatalism would thus never be "ethical".. If ethics entails procreation, thus antinatalism is not ethical. But of course, the antinatalist would never define ethics so. They would define ethics as principles of right and wrong behavior.
Really? I thought it was about right action? You are putting a spin on it such that of course, antinatalism would thus never be "ethical".. If ethics entails procreation, thus antinatalism is not ethical. But of course, the antinatalist would never define ethics so. They would define ethics as principles of right and wrong behavior.
I said what I hadta say!
If you're interested, you might wanna read up on the taijitu (yin-yang). When someone cares (too much) about life, he becomes a mass-murderer! :chin:
Thanos cared too much. I'm ignoring the "too much" part!
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 03:52#7277660 likes
Thanos cared too much. I'm ignoring the "too much" part!
Look, I'll give you a secret about my antinatalism, that isn't really a secret if you pay attention to my whole corpus (which I don't expect you to :)). Antinatalism isn't just about the principle itself, though it can be debated on its own without any connection to a broader principle... But I do think it is also its implications on the broader life we live.
What are these impositions of life?
Why should they be endured?
How should we treat each other if we must endure them?
What are we perpetuating when we create more people?
So I discuss things like the burdens of survival and striving-after of the human condition.
I discuss what it means to not make others unduly suffer even more than they should.
I discuss the political choice one is making for another by procreating them. There is a system in place, and one wants to keep this system going, and more people to endure it.
What are these impositions of life?
Why should they be endured?
How should we treat each other if we must endure them?
What are we perpetuating when we create more people?
Vitals!
My own take is that the problem of suffering at the heart of natalism-antinatalism is this:
1. (How to) Live happily (?).
Note livehappily.
You can't, as is obvious to you, recommend nonexistence as a solution then, oui?
Well, you won't ever experience death. Death is simply, "The end". You'll experience dying if you're conscious at the time. But that's it. There is no peace, no rest, no etc.
Philosophim
How do you know????
You are your brain Baker. We've known that for decades in science now. Its not a debate. Scoop the brain out of someone and that aspect of the brain that was them is gone. It is only your imagination and hope that somehow you will continue on after death. You will not. That is fact.
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 04:03#7277700 likes
You can't, as is obvious to you, recommend nonexistence as a solution then, oui?
Your implication is we need to create people so that they can be happy. If every life was an individualized utopia, you would have solid ground. It obviously isn't. So, yes, you can try to find happiness in life once born, but it doesn't negate that life entails a lot of other stuff as well, to be endured. And this isn't to be ignored.
The natural response is to reify suffering as a necessity for a complete experience. I just don't think it is our job to bring people into the world to suffer and then learn from their suffering. Who are we? How is this NOT a political position for someone else? And of course, besides that this is wrong to want people to suffer because YOU think it is worthwhile for them (making that decision for them), suffering many times goes off the rails.. more than you predicted or expected.
I sympathize with the antinatalist crowd. Suffering tops the list of humanity's and also all life's problems - people seem too distracted to notice their own dukkha, especially in the modern world with cyberspace providing intermittent relief (for folks like myself). Billions are, to use a Matrix analogy, plugged in/jacked into virtual communities; I consider this a symptom of our dissatisfaction with the real world (dukkha manifests in interesting ways). In short antinatalism has a point.
However, this also means that if people are happy, they'll choose life.
Do you detect any problems with the following list which has been ranked in termsa preference?
1. Life + Happiness
2. Nonexistence
My gut instincts tell me that antinatalists should give their nod of approval for the order, it makes sense to them. Therein lies the rub, oui mes amies?
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 04:23#7277760 likes
I sympathize with the antinatalist crowd. Suffering tops the list of humanity's and also all life's problems - people seem too distracted to notice their own dukkha, especially in the modern world with cyberspace providing intermittent relief (for folks like myself). Billions are, to use a Matrix analogy, plugged in/jacked into virtual communities; I consider this a symptom of our dissatisfaction with the real world (dukkha manifests in interesting ways). In short antinatalism has a point.
However, this also means that if people are happy, they'll choose life.
If you like the flow states and the pleasures that come from the obstacle course, that's great.
1) Does it actually last for a lifetime, or is intermittent?
2) Does the fact that there is an obstacle course presented to you (foisted if you will) not give you pause?
3) Whilst the need for happiness? Isn't there a state of lack implied here that we are trying to constantly fulfill?
You had it right with the dukkha.. keep going with that theme.
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 04:24#7277770 likes
My gut instincts tell me that antinatalists should give their nod of approval for the order, it makes sense to them. Therein lies the rub, oui mes amies?
If every life was an individualized utopia, you would have solid ground. It obviously isn't. So, yes, you can try to find happiness in life once born, but it doesn't negate that life entails a lot of other stuff as well, to be endured. And this isn't to be ignored.
I don't think it's a good idea but I trust mother nature or, more accurately, evolution. Suicides happen for a reason I suppose - those who can't take it are being culled automatically i.e. only those who don't mind suffering will be able to pass down their apathetic genes. In the long run what'll happen is our pleasure-pain sensing apparatus will be recalibrated to a new, higher pain threshold and all will be well. :snicker:
schopenhauer1August 11, 2022 at 04:34#7277800 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
I notice you don't answer my questions. Not a great way to dialogue.. and sort of unfair to me who is trying to do one.
Meaning is just another invention we make to trick ourselves into believing life is worthwhile.
There's that word "just" again --
any one name is easy to put aside, when you have another set of names and operators.
{J}(NAME) -> "just an invention/trick/illusion"
So there's what's apparent, and then there's what is real. For any named reason one will reduce said reason with the above "just" operator, categorizing the reasons people give as apparent.
The real, here, is . . . well, what, precisely?
Let's just say whatever it is, it certainly isn't any possible reason someone might give that they feel life is worthwhile. You see the real, and these all fall to the above described operator.
But unlike Plato, who talks of a light -- a knowledge of the good, the beautiful and the true -- you just say "I want you all to feel life is not worthwhile!" -- why would we do that?
I only have a problem when people want to banish it from any public forum.
I have no desire to do so. And I dont consider it illogical. I just think its silly and those who pick this hill to die on are silly. But like I said, thats their prerogative!
However, this also means that if people are happy, they'll choose life.
Conclusion: :chin:
I would suggest that your conclusion should be simply 'make your choice!'
I cite again (as an atheist) a variant based on what's in Deuteronomy 30:15-20
This from the first episode of Carl Sagan's series Cosmos.
'I lay before thee life and the curse, therefore choose life so that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.'
You can live life as an hour-to-hour daily chore if you choose and covet death and you will have earned my personal pity. That's all a person can do who loves life. Pity those who are anti-life and just make sure those who live are as protected as they can be from any extreme maniacs who project anti-life into an attraction to commit an atrocity against life.
Reply to universeness I can't afford pity, mon ami! Didn't you know?, it's a luxury item! :sad:
universenessAugust 11, 2022 at 15:05#7279340 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
I would suggest that genuine empathy is emotionally challenging for many people, especially if deeply felt but pity is a different harsher offering that entails only a very minor burden on my emotions.
I would suggest that genuine empathy is emotionally challenging for many people, especially if deeply felt but pity is a different harsher offering that entails only a very minor burden on my emotions.
Agent Smith makes a mental note of that! Feels important!
universenessAugust 11, 2022 at 15:55#7279590 likes
You are your brain Baker. We've known that for decades in science now. Its not a debate. Scoop the brain out of someone and that aspect of the brain that was them is gone. It is only your imagination and hope that somehow you will continue on after death. You will not. That is fact.
This is a philosophy forum. This includes philosophy of science.
The OP's problem comes precisely from a lack of appreciation for the philosophy of science, and an uncritical internalization of particular scientific and popularly held claims.
It doesn't have to be interpreted as a negative take or mod judgement on the subject. E.g. We could say it's more convenient and efficient to have everything in one discussion. Anyhow, it took me years of careful consideration and preparation to come up with this cunning plan, so I'm not for backing down now.
Your point, while perhaps a fair one, seems not to have affected my position.
Unfortunately, forums like this are the only place where this topic can be discussed in an at least half-way meaningful manner for ordinary people. Meawhile, the trend toward a favorable attitude toward assisted suicide and euthanasia continues. And with that, a favoring of a superficial take on the topic of "meaning of life". What is more, people who are supposedly happy with life nonchalantly advise others to kill themselves if they're not too keen on living. One would hope moderators would neither give such advice, nor passively approve of it.
Reply to Hanover Your little eeyore video simply implicitly extolls common decency, while your religion/spirituality promotes the pursuit of sensual pleasures. (The pursuit of sensual pleasures which is inevitably linked to the destruction of other living beings: animals, plants, other people.)
You yet have to show that you're not another one of Sisyphus' waterboys.
In a sense food lost its numero uno position in re labor to second place, below other more, let's just say, sublime aforementioned activities. To me this is a significant upgrade to the status of work which should matter
On the contrary. People generally don't value food production enough, hence the abuse of the planet.
Whether it is or isn't enough really is up to you. It's your relationship to the world, to yourself, to your emotions and needs and people. There is no "reason" someone can give you to make you feel any differently about those. The unjust thing about this world is that it's probably not even your fault you feel this way -- but because it's your life, your emotions, your desire, well... it still falls to you to learn how to live with it.
A person doesn't live in a socio-psychological vaccum. Thus neither the existential problem nor the solution to it are within the person's power.
Wrong again.. At least get your terms correct. Nihilism in ethics, it he belief in no values. A nihilist wouldn't give a fuck if you procreated or not. They generally don't take positions that put values on things. Rather, it is philosophical pessimism, and it's not dressed up.
Ironically, both the antinatalists as well as the natalists are still firmly immersed in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, they differ only in which types of sensual pleasures they pursue.
The pursuit of sensual pleasures necessarily entails suffering.
Deleted UserAugust 12, 2022 at 17:21#7284560 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
Well, I would say that I have quite a lot of things I enjoy, but at the end of the day I still question myself whether it´s all worth it. I love my family, friends, have an interesting job, enough money, love long walks, driving, cooking, coffee .but still theres something at the back of my head saying - is it enough?
Also I do think that preferring nothingness is a stupid concept, because for me theres nothing after death, no you to enjoy the preferred nothingness :roll: . For now suicide seems irrational.
So therefore the question why go on or better yet how to go on, what to strive for? (I mean it still could be just symptoms of depression, but who knows :confused: )
universenessAugust 12, 2022 at 21:39#7285260 likes
Also I do think that preferring nothingness is a stupid concept, because for me theres nothing after death, no you to enjoy the preferred nothingness :roll: . For now suicide seems irrational.
That's a lot of E.M. Cioran.. Ever read him?
schopenhauer1August 13, 2022 at 00:48#7285910 likes
Ironically, both the antinatalists as well as the natalists are still firmly immersed in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, they differ only in which types of sensual pleasures they pursue.
The pursuit of sensual pleasures necessarily entails suffering.
I think fear and curiosity are the two main drivers.
Each has subcategories or synonyms, love being a subcategory of fear.
Its the desire for things to stay the same vs the desire for change. Love and fear are both about attachment: desire for stability, safety and comfort, all ways of coping with fear. Making friendships(love) helps protect us from dangers
Hum, I thought getting married and having children was how to actualize myself as a woman. I used to feel very sorry for single people because they did not enjoy the benefits of love and marriage. I have noticed in my later years, that many older people chose to live near a son or daughter and grandchildren. I loved being a grandmother and great-grandmother. Saying that is about fear seems like an odd way of understanding the joys of family.
universenessAugust 15, 2022 at 12:53#7295300 likes
. I used to feel very sorry for single people because they did not enjoy the benefits of love and marriage.
There are not benefits. Marriage is a community of sacrifices. Raising and maintaining a child is complex as hell and you do not how the tables would turn out in the future. Probably I can end up being cheated by my wife or mistreated by my own kid. So no... I prefer live in loneliness rather than being married.
Reply to javi2541997 Everything has it good sides and it's downsides. Marriage, which ends in a nasty divorce/breakup, can be traumatic and make you extremely unhappy and bitter. But so can be loneliness.
One has to appreciate the positive sides what your life has.
I should appreciate the positive sides of my life, indeed. But I think those positive feelings depend on my own. I never understood why there are some people who share half of their lives with another person. I respect it but I just don't get it.
Loneliness doesn't necessarily lead us to sadness. It depends on each context. If you appreciate being alone maybe this is the kind of life you should choose for.
Furthermore, marriage is not connected to affection. For example, I don't have a girlfriend, and neither Kids and friends. But I feel respected and esteemed inside this forum. To be honest with you, ssu, I guess I never be able to find such respect in real life
universenessAugust 15, 2022 at 15:31#7295480 likes
I guess I never be able to find such respect in real life
The members of this forum are part of real life. You type many interesting things and take nice photo's, why would that change if I met you in person?
I have never married and have no kids. I have been engaged twice' lived with women, had many short relationships but my long-term ones just never worked out. I, like you now, prefer my personal freedom compared to what is offered in a relationship but I am 58 now. Nature has turned its attention towards younger prospects for reproduction. I am now relatively irrelevant in the continuation of the species imperative but under the rules, I am still allowed to have lots of fun!
I would not change in person because the way I interact in this forum is how I really am in real life. If you ever met me in person you would see I am the same Javi in The Philosophy Forum and in physical world. I am not using masks here and I am happy the way I act inside this group.
But in physical world is different, or at least due to the type of persons surrounded with me. I always doubt if it is worthy to open my mind and hearts to them. I feel I would be disappointed...
universenessAugust 15, 2022 at 16:14#7295550 likes
Reply to javi2541997
I appreciated and understand your caution with those you don't know yet.
To me, it's a bit like the pioneer spirit. Social interaction has risk but can also have great rewards.
Sounds like you can have as many friends and relationships as you want Javi. You just have your own preferred approach and having the choice to get involved or not is yours. That's the kind of freedoms we all insist on, yes?
There are not benefits. Marriage is a community of sacrifices. Raising and maintaining a child is complex as hell and you do not how the tables would turn out in the future. Probably I can end up being cheated by my wife or mistreated by my own kid. So no... I prefer live in loneliness rather than being married.
I am sorry. Everything in life has some risk. You could have the best job in the world and a lovely house, great car, and loose it all. Then who will you be without everything that once defined you?
For sure marriage and family involve risk. It surely is not something anyone should do without a lot of talking! That piece of knowledge comes from hindsight. I took so much for granted and that was a mistake. So if you ever change your mind about marriage and family please remember to talk about everything that is important to you. There is really good information in books and on the internet and the more we know the better are our chances of doing well. This video is really good and perfect for you. It is about why we marry the wrong person. Please give it a try and tell me what think.
That's the kind of freedoms we all insist on, yes?
Well, yes you are right somehow right. I am only 25 years old. So, I do not know what the future really holds and probably I make some friends the next year
Athena, I am so much appreciated of all information you have provided to me. But, trust me please. I do not see myself in a marriage because I already lived the experience of being heartbroken and I don't want to go through the same painful process.
universenessAugust 15, 2022 at 16:42#7295610 likes
Reply to javi2541997
:clap: Yeah, at 25, leave an inside light on and a wee door ajar, so that people can notice you and say hello!
universenessAugust 15, 2022 at 16:49#7295620 likes
I already lived the experience of being heartbroken and I don't want to go through the same painful process.
Happened to me three times so far. Dark, nasty and very very painful. It's Humpty Dumpty time, you almost have to put yourself together again from scratch but I really did come back again, each time, stronger but different. You lose the innocent you but my first was far worse than my second which was much worse than my third. I think I am almost immune now. I can still give as much as ever but I have much stronger armour against the 'unexpected.'
Hum, I thought getting married and having children was how to actualize myself as a woman. I used to feel very sorry for single people because they did not enjoy the benefits of love and marriage. I have noticed in my later years, that many older people chose to live near a son or daughter and grandchildren. I loved being a grandmother and great-grandmother. Saying that is about fear seems like an odd way of understanding the joys of family.
Curiosity can be part of the motive to be with others. But a desire to be soothed and affirmed by others, or needed and valued, I see it as relating to lack of self esteem.
Not that I deny such things. If I can't affirm myself I am not against being affirmed, and appreciate it. But I want to eventually be able to affirm myself.
Can grow from relationships as relationships bring up insecurities so they can be faced and overcome, learning how to be vulnerable but also how to have healthy boundaries.
universenessAugust 15, 2022 at 17:03#7295660 likes
Well, I would say that I have quite a lot of things I enjoy, but at the end of the day I still question myself whether it´s all worth it. I love my family, friends, have an interesting job, enough money, love long walks, driving, cooking, coffee .but still theres something at the back of my head saying - is it enough?
Also I do think that preferring nothingness is a stupid concept, because for me theres nothing after death, no you to enjoy the preferred nothingness :roll: . For now suicide seems irrational.
So therefore the question why go on or better yet how to go on, what to strive for?
You mentioned depression, so I'm responding with that frame in mind - I'm speaking from the perspective of one who manages his own depression.
I know what I'd say to myself if I couldn't come up with something more but just felt a kind of malingering malaise that asks if I need or want more -- but I couldn't answer that question for you. And if your question is as general as, what should I strive for? Then even more so, no one could answer that question for you. If anything, I'd say I'm done with striving -- I'm sick and tired of trying. I like not-trying. I like not-doing. It's the best place to be. Striving is hard. not-doing is relaxing. But I don't recommend that as a universal tonic. It's just what I want now.
I'm trying to be careful to be sure I'm only speaking for myself; to not give advice, because *if* your feeling is more than a philosophical wondering about "the point of it all", then none of us are in a good position to offer anything that might really help. All I can do is say I know what causes that feeling in me, and note that you're not alone in feeling it. But the actual resolution of or living with these feelings isn't a well known or even presently knowable process, at least in a general way. We understand diabetes better than we do depression, because at least we know how to manage diabetes if the person is able to habituate themselves to it.
(I mean it still could be just symptoms of depression, but who knows :confused: )
I feel like noting: there's the word "Just" again -- as if to say these feelings are only something. I don't think that's the case at all. After all, here you are talking about it. If they were only something, then you could shrug it off, right? Even if depression is the underlying causal explanation, it's not necessarily satisfying to have a causal explanation for the way we feel. Sometimes we're looking for something a little more meaningful than "the atoms move around and stuff happens, whadya want?" or "you experienced trauma and learned bad habits, so unlearn those and you'll be cured" -- sometimes there isn't a cure. Sometimes it's just nice to talk about what you feel, even if it seems a bit crazy.
But these feelings are never "just" something else. Our feelings are important, good, bad, and ugly.
To be honest with you, ssu, I guess I never be able to find such respect in real life
Your life is the real life, respect it.
And if you are 25, don't think you've seen it all. I had fears about my life when I was your age: I didn't have a girlfriend, I wasn't in the in-crowd, I was shy, I feared I would be all alone without having anything meaningful in my life later when I would be 30, 40 or 50. I couldn't image to be a father or having a family. I thought it was not for me. It was the life for other people.
Remember that sadness is part of life. If you wouldn't feel sadness and heartache, you wouldn't appreciate the good things in life. You have emotions, which is good in life. If something makes you happy that you laugh, even if rarely, that makes life worth wile. At that moment you cannot be sad, hence not all life is pain.
schopenhauer1August 16, 2022 at 00:09#7297030 likes
If something makes you happy that you laugh, even if rarely, that makes life worth wile. At that moment you cannot be sad, hence not all life is pain.
That's a pretty low threshold. As Simon and Garfunkle explain.. Rocks feel no pain.
If I was to cause someone else to exist because I felt joy in my most joyous occasion and was deluded into thinking another being would live life in this brief moment of joy.. That would be a huge conceit that I would be enacting (and on behalf of another nonetheless).. Just give it a few moments and that moment will be but a faded memory and the lackluster of what surrounds it comes into view more clearly.. In other words, never make significant decisions on behalf of others in your most joyous moment. That would be foolhardy.
Athena, I am so much appreciated of all information you have provided to me. But, trust me please. I do not see myself in a marriage because I already lived the experience of being heartbroken and I don't want to go through the same painful process.
I am now relatively irrelevant in the continuation of the species imperative but under the rules, I am still allowed to have lots of fun!
I have mixed feelings about relationships and having children. Today, I don't think I would want to bring a child into this world. Our present technological society is very different from the society and culture we had when I came of age. Back in the day we wanted to grow up and prove we were capable adults and that meant getting married and having children. It was especially important for a woman to be married and have children because there were not a lot of good options for women when our society was strongly based on the Bible and the ancient Greeks. Pythagoras and Plato were in favor of women having equality but allowing women equality was a radical idea that so broke tradition it could be met with some hostility.
Aristotle thought a man should have a slave, an ox, and a wife. I am not so sure he saw having a wife as different from having an ox and a slave. Our culture didn't seem to think having a wife was different from having an ox and a slave. Economically, women were held dependent on the man.
There was a time when having a family would improve a man's chances of getting a job and getting advancements. A married man was thought to be a responsible and more stable person. In some cases, his wife could advance his career by having the boss over for dinner and making social connections with the right people. She was not "just a housewife" but a very valuable part of the social and economic order we had.
I am not saying there were no problems. I am saying things were different back then and being married and a parent was part of our identification and social status. We also saw the world getting better and better. We believed we could make the world a better place and that was a much happier situation for having children. Today we no longer see the world as getting better and global warming means in a generation of two the world we took for granted may be irrevocably destroyed. I do not see this as a good time to have children.
Today we no longer see the world as getting better and global warming means in a generation of two the world we took for granted may be irrevocably destroyed. I do not see this as a good time to have children.
I agree, we have reached a phase of a great deal of social, political, economic and ecological upheaval.
Responsible human stewardship of the planet is failing badly and our current sociopolitical systems cannot cope with the current global population so it's not a good time to have children, especially if you are poor, downtrodden and deliberately disadvantaged which at the moment, is the position of the majority of humans alive.
If we had better global politics and the collection and distribution of resources was organised for the size of population we have and not exclusively for the benefit of the few then we probably could cope with the current population. So, at least the problems are crystal clear. If we can 'sort it out,' then perhaps we can start to expand off planet. If we don't then we will continue to give oxygen to the anti-life people until we do.
If the human population reduces over time due to individual human choice not to have kids and we end up with a more manageable population and we then 'sort things out,' then hopefully we all have the choice back, to freely and positively procreate again, in line with the natural imperative.
One has to notice that the simple things in life are what actually life so wonderful. Especially if your other option is not to live, to be dead.
Rocks dont feel pain and dont need joy. It is us who lost the existential race with our consciousness..feeling things. Yet in our ignorance we perpetuate it more. And to prevent such an ignorant move, do not make the move to perpetuate another whist in the joyous moment. Look at the most mundane, lackluster part of life. THAT is what should be the baseline of decision.
You can put up defense mechanisms and scorn the pessimist..but you miss the message. All we have is our own restless wills coupled with fighting entropic decay.
Its not that theres beauty, its that we need beauty. Its not that theres joy, its that we need joy. Its not that theres X, its that we need X. And yet your political position on how great it is to need X becomes someone elses problem.
Its not that theres beauty, its that we need beauty. Its not that theres joy, its that we need joy. Its not that theres X, its that we need X.
How much is enough depends on us ourselves. Some can be bitter if they feel they haven't gotten something, where others would be totally content what they have gotten.
Someone had the best day ever.. they have a partner to procreate with.. they decide to have a baby...So that one day of joy has an optimism bias that lasts a lifetime consequence for someone else.
They have decided THEIR joy = other people must do X. That is a political position (on what others should be doing based on one's own attitudes) in my book.
Maybe this is too deep, but when I think why there is something rather than nothing, I can't help but think its because not existing is a vacuum that existing fills. In other words, the state of non-existence must have some element of lack to it in order to initiate existence. This may be related to what some traditions have called the demiurge.
schopenhauer1August 16, 2022 at 17:13#7298970 likes
In other words, the state of non-existence must have some element of lack to it in order to initiate existence. This may be related to what some traditions have called the demiurge.
Does the i universe need sentient existence? What is a non sentential existence?
universenessAugust 16, 2022 at 17:33#7299000 likes
Based on the evidence that we have not found any life beyond earth, it can be stated that during the time it took for our star(the sun) to form and then our solar system (including Earth) to the moment that 'life' in its microbial infancy formed two main groups, bacteria and archaea. There was no sentient life.
We have no means to ask bacteria or archaea or even rock formations or the Earth itself how they felt about their existence at that time. So we had an absence of life and then we had life.
Biological entities advance in structure and complexity through combination and mutation.
the state of non-existence must have some element of lack to it in order to initiate existence
I agree but I would replace 'non-existence,' and 'existence' with non-life and life as without this you would have to assign some purpose and significance to the existence of something which is lifeless like a rock when no lifeform exists to label it a rock or (in the case of a microbe) at least live on it.
Does the i universe need sentient existence? What is a non sentential existence?
My understanding is that the purpose of existence is to relieve boredom. Non-existence I take as a state of absolute boredom.
I don't have any scientific answers, obviously. But I dont think they are necessary.
I agree but I would replace 'non-existence,' and 'existence' with non-life and life as without this you would have to assign some purpose and significance to the existence of something which is lifeless like a rock when no lifeform exists to label it a rock or (in the case of a microbe) at least live on it.
Far as I'm concerned a rock is a bored proto-life-form.
Well, I would say that I have quite a lot of things I enjoy, but at the end of the day I still question myself whether it´s all worth it. I love my family, friends, have an interesting job, enough money, love long walks, driving, cooking, coffee .but still theres something at the back of my head saying - is it enough?
Also I do think that preferring nothingness is a stupid concept, because for me theres nothing after death, no you to enjoy the preferred nothingness :roll: . For now suicide seems irrational.
So therefore the question why go on or better yet how to go on, what to strive for? (I mean it still could be just symptoms of depression, but who knows :confused: )
It's how the recognition feels that depending on impermanent things for one's happiness is precarious.
That is, you recognize that depending on impermanent things for you happiness is a recognition that feels uneasy; for most people, it's depressing.
A secular psyhotherapist will approach this recognition as a pathological symptom, something to be done away with.
Some spiritual/religious people believe it's the beginning of the spiritual path (using here "spiritual" for the lack of a better word). Not a sign of depression, but a mark of seeing worldly things for how they really are: impermanent and ultimately unsatisfactory, and thus not worth striving for.
Ironically, both the antinatalists as well as the natalists are still firmly immersed in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, they differ only in which types of sensual pleasures they pursue.
The pursuit of sensual pleasures necessarily entails suffering.
baker
Not sure why you think that, but ok.
Why I think what? To which sentence are you refering?
If you wouldn't feel sadness and heartache, you wouldn't appreciate the good things in life.
Hence the recipe for a good marriage is 1 kiss + 1 slap in the face. That really makes one appreciate the kisses!!!!
The idea that it is hardships that make us appreciate the good things is patently absurd, however popular it may be. It's sado-masochistic. It's depressing. The bad stuff doesn't make us appreciate the good stuff, but it can lead us to question whether the good stuff is all that it's popularily made out to be.
But the actual resolution of or living with these feelings isn't a well known or even presently knowable process, at least in a general way.
It's not such a secret.
Samvega was what the young Prince Siddhartha felt on his first exposure to aging, illness, and death. It's a hard word to translate because it covers such a complex range at least three clusters of feelings at once: the oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it's normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complacency and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle. This is a cluster of feelings we've all experienced at one time or another in the process of growing up, but I don't know of a single English term that adequately covers all three. It would be useful to have such a term, and maybe that's reason enough for simply adopting the word samvega into our language.
But more than providing a useful term, Buddhism also offers an effective strategy for dealing with the feelings behind it feelings that our own culture finds threatening and handles very poorly. Ours, of course, is not the only culture threatened by feelings of samvega. In the Siddhartha story, the father's reaction to the young prince's discovery stands for the way most cultures try to deal with these feelings: He tried to convince the prince that his standards for happiness were impossibly high, at the same time trying to distract him with relationships and every sensual pleasure imaginable. To put it simply, the strategy was to get the prince to lower his aims and to find satisfaction in a happiness that was less than absolute and not especially pure.
If the young prince were living in America today, the father would have other tools for dealing with the prince's dissatisfaction, but the basic strategy would be essentially the same. We can easily imagine him taking the prince to a religious counselor who would teach him to believe that God's creation is basically good and not to focus on any aspects of life that would cast doubt on that belief. Or he might take him to a psychotherapist who would treat feelings of samvega as an inability to accept reality. If talking therapies didn't get results, the therapist would probably prescribe mood-altering drugs to dull the feeling out of the young man's system so that he could become a productive, well-adjusted member of society.
They have decided THEIR joy = other people must do X. That is a political position (on what others should be doing based on one's own attitudes) in my book.
Is this the antinatalism thread again? Or going there?
Besides, as humans live in a society, so I guess there's a lot of people deciding what others (or we) have to do.
Hence the recipe for a good marriage is 1 kiss + 1 slap in the face. That really makes one appreciate the kisses!!!!
The idea that it is hardships that make us appreciate the good things is patently absurd, however popular it may be.
My point is that you cannot have just positive feelings (love, joy, happiness etc.) You will sure feel sadness and anger too. That simply is part of life, which you cannot disregard or hide away. Empathy is also very important.
But yes, if you haven't ever felt hunger, how can you value a good meal? Sometimes something lousy can make you appreciate good.
schopenhauer1August 16, 2022 at 20:17#7299640 likes
Is this the antinatalism thread again? Or going there?
Goes hand in hand with life sucks. But the broader point is you were speaking of joy and happy moments and I was giving you the danger of OVERemphasizung this. The optimism bias in humans is strong to cherry pick joyous moments and make important decisions from them that can actually negatively affect the course of things, including a whole other humans life because you had a moment of unthinking joy.
Its best to recount the lackluster, and negative states as a balance.
But the broader point is you were speaking of joy and happy moments and I was giving you the danger of OVERemphasizung this. The optimism bias in humans is strong to cherry pick joyous moments and make important decisions from them that can actually negatively affect the course of things, including a whole other humans life because you had a moment of unthinking joy.
Its best to recount the lackluster, and negative states as a balance.
OK, now I understand better your point.
On the other hand, optimism, remembering those joy and happy moments might be good in countering OVERemphasizing pain and hardships of life. Which we can often do when we are unhappy about something.
Optimism is seen as naive and stupid while pessimism as realistic and intelligent. So perhaps we should rip our clothes and put ash on our head. Sackcloth and ashes.
Optimism is seen as naive and stupid while pessimism as realistic and intelligent. So perhaps we should rip our clothes and put ash on our head. Sackcloth and ashes.
Yep, the cool kids never like optimism or happiness - such responses are viewed as gauche, and don't you know life is grave and dreadful?
schopenhauer1August 17, 2022 at 00:10#7300150 likes
Optimism is seen as naive and stupid while pessimism as realistic and intelligent. So perhaps we should rip our clothes and put ash on our head. Sackcloth and ashes.
They have decided THEIR joy = other people must do X. That is a political position (on what others should be doing based on one's own attitudes) in my book.
Besides, as humans live in a society, so I guess there's a lot of people deciding what others (or we) have to do.
The Greeks had a concept of what is public and what is private. Liberty depends on respecting what is an individual, private decision, and unfortunately, Evangelicals are determined to impose their notions of how things should be on everyone, just as much as some Muslims believe it is God's will to make everyone live as they believe their holy book defines how people should live.
We question if animals have self-awareness. For sure rocks do not, any more than the tires on my car want different things. But perhaps a God decides what is best for all things and everyone and we should use our intelligence to understand what God wants and then impose that on everyone. The state is God and it must use any means necessary to make everyone comply with the will of God. Or taking God out of our politics how do we determine democratically what should be?
What if industry used the democratic model instead of the autocratic model? How might that change our reality? How many industries would move to China if the employees were making the decision? Who should have the power to decide our joy? What industry would pollute the environment causing their own families disease?
Optimism is seen as naive and stupid while pessimism as realistic and intelligent. So perhaps we should rip our clothes and put ash on our head. Sackcloth and ashes.
You mean join a nudist colony? That would give some people joy. :grin:
If we had better global politics and the collection and distribution of resources was organised for the size of population we have and not exclusively for the benefit of the few then we probably could cope with the current population. So, at least the problems are crystal clear. If we can 'sort it out,' then perhaps we can start to expand off planet. If we don't then we will continue to give oxygen to the anti-life people until we do.
If the human population reduces over time due to individual human choice not to have kids and we end up with a more manageable population and we then 'sort things out,' then hopefully we all have the choice back, to freely and positively procreate again, in line with the natural imperative.
Might that be what democracy is about? It is empowering everyone who is affected by a decision to come to the table and explain what is and what should be. Then arguing until there is a consensus on the best reasoning. You know, like the Greek gods.
A geologist showed me a cartoon explaining exponential growth. You begin with a couple of frogs in a pond and then increase the number of frogs exponentially. Everything appears fine until the last day when the pond goes from half full to completely full. That is what happened to us. When I was born we still had a sense that there was plenty of everything. In my lifetime we have gone from plenty of everything to crisis. We have a housing shortage where land used to be dirt cheap and there was far more available land than people to fill it. Plenty of water to water wars. We are having a very hard time dealing with reality. I do not think we have a good grasp of it and we are not organized to deal with the facts we need to know.
:rofl: In general everyone is behaving like the kids fighting in the back seat of the car. They are yelling at each other and no one is working with the facts.
universenessAugust 17, 2022 at 15:25#7301320 likes
It is empowering everyone who is affected by a decision to come to the table and explain what is and what should be. Then arguing until there is a consensus on the best reasoning
Sounds better than some dictatorship of a privileged few.
When I was born we still had a sense that there was plenty of everything. In my lifetime we have gone from plenty of everything to crisis. We have a housing shortage where land used to be dirt cheap and there was far more available land than people to fill it. Plenty of water to water wars. We are having a very hard time dealing with reality. I do not think we have a good grasp of it and we are not organized to deal with the facts we need
There is also a great deal of bad organisation. I live in Scotland, our population is quite small (Around 5 million). We could build a few more major cities in Scotland, we also have hundreds of uninhabited islands that could be developed but 'there's not enough profit in it.' Hah! total BS, we need to nurture people not profit.
In general everyone is behaving like the kids fighting in the back seat of the car. They are yelling at each other and no one is working with the facts.
A fair analysis but don't forget that we have been trying to deal with a very powerful, clever, very well established, global hierarchy of elites, since the free market economy and the money trick became established. Rich, global family dynasties formed out of the dying national aristocracies and monarchies.
These became the basis for establishing global banking systems and global conglomerates.
It's just evolving global dynasties similar in structure, style, and behaviour to global gangsterism. I see little difference between the mafia Don's and Don Elon Musk or Don Donald Trump.
They will fight the masses tooth and nail and they have the established power to do it. They will divide you, terrorise and murder those who raise their heads in protest, especially those who are getting through to the masses and are trying to organise them. They will pay your own kind to betray you and turn against you. They will also convince your own kind in the form of police and soldiers that their loyalty must lie with the established rich and powerful and not the people.
Millions of socialists/humanists have been slaughtered for 10,000 years of tears to fight against the nefarious and they have defeated monarchies and aristocracies and they have created systems all over the world which are far better and fairer for more people compared to any system or civilisation from antiquity. The fight continues. The socialists/humanist are still here and we still number in the many many millions globally. We will defeat the nefarious completely one day and become an interplanetary/interstellar species.
schopenhauer1August 17, 2022 at 16:20#7301440 likes
But perhaps a God decides what is best for all things and everyone and we should use our intelligence to understand what God wants and then impose that on everyone. The state is God and it must use any means necessary to make everyone comply with the will of God. Or taking God out of our politics how do we determine democratically what should be?
The problem is existing at all. Why do we bring people into existence? Any way you answer that is a political answer. Apparently YOU know why existence just NEEDS to be experienced and so you procreate more people into the world. So why do people need to be here? Your answer will be revealing. To work? Why? To take your time in various survival and maintenance activities? If you say to discover, learn, and make relationships, Ill just ask why people need to do this on the first place. Rocks dont need anything. No existence hurts no one. Why do more individuals need to be created? Again a political question, as your answer means other people must follow (pay) the consequence of being born and go through the gauntlet of living..all because you have a notion of things and whats best for others. Rather, theres a nothingness, a lack at the heart of things. Just creating more people to overcome constant lack. Schopenhauers Will manifested over and over in yet more beings procreated into the world. Existence is ti be endured and you are creating more victims because you think they need to live out some lifestyle that YOU think is good for them. But if they didnt exist, they didnt need anything to be lived out in the first place.
The Greek gods never existed, the atheists, christians and muslims all agree on that one.
May I argue they did exist and were just as real as the God of Abraham? Each one is a concept and concepts are powerful. Every Evangelical experiences the power of God exactly like the Greeks experienced the power of their gods.
The Greeks slowly began slipping out of this superstition with questions like "Is something bad because the gods say it is bad, or do they say it is bad because it is bad?" If it is the latter, something exists besides the gods. Now we are creeping into universals and the laws of nature. And we have Hippocrates who says the conditions of the body are not caused by the gods. But before those who love knowledge replaced superstition with universals, people experienced their gods as very real. If you believe Demeter will make you a better mother, sure enough, she will, and if you believe in the power of the God of Abraham, you will see it everywhere. Your belief will explain everything to you validating your truth. :grin:
There is also a great deal of bad organisation. I live in Scotland, our population is quite small (Around 5 million). We could build a few more major cities in Scotland, we also have hundreds of uninhabited islands that could be developed but 'there's not enough profit in it.' Hah! total BS, we need to nurture people not profit.
And there we become the gods. It is as we create it. :grin: It is as Zeus feared. With the knowledge of the technology of fire, we have discovered all other technologies and now rival the gods. However, as you hint, with concepts such as socialism and humanism we can create a reality that encourages happy families, or we can feed the beast and make the beast strong.
I see little difference between the mafia Don's and Don Elon Musk or Don Donald Trump.
Oh burn, ssssss- :fire: That was nicely said. I could totally off topic with you what you said, but maybe if we focus on your lead in statement we can have a very meaningful discussion!
Rich, global family dynasties formed out of the dying national aristocracies and monarchies. These became the basis for establishing global banking systems and global conglomerates.
Yes, and what does the Bible have to say about that? :naughty: The Bible is a very complex book with something for everyone in it, but we might want to focus on what Rome did to Christianity. The Council of Nicaea was all about power. The Bible is about kings and slaves, not democracy. The God of Abraham gave man kings, not democracy, and one's life's work was defined by inheritance, not the merit system of the Greeks that enable any qualified person to have a government position.
Some conversations can not happen until someone opens the door so we can see what there is to talk about. Your statement about we are organized as we are organized opens a door. Conservatives want to cling to tradition but democracy is not a Christian tradition.
The socialists/humanist are still here and we still number in the many many millions globally. We will defeat the nefarious completely one day and become an interplanetary/interstellar species.
Jefferson and the Scottish Enlightenment - Independent Institutehttps://www.independent.org publications article
Wills observes that the study of Scottish Enlightenment thought played a prominent role in American education in the second half of the eighteenth century. https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=2790
We could start a new thread about the Scottish Enlightenment and what it has to do with the US democracy.
Because "God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man." Chardin.
I am less familiar with the Mayan Factor explanation of our light bodies and the universal entrance.
Your attacks on me make me want to avoid what you are saying. You might drop assuming what I think, know, and do, and focus on the concepts you want to discuss.
universenessAugust 19, 2022 at 23:18#7308820 likes
In reading your post overall, it seems to me you are trying to explain/analyse/appreciate why early humans were so attracted to theism. I understand, but I prefer to summarise all of those reasons into the one main driver. Jungle law manipulation of human primal fears.
May I argue they did exist and were just as real as the God of Abraham?
Of course you may but a concept is an abstract idea. Humans can turn some concept into a reality but they can't create gods, they can only and have only ever been able to insist you accept them on threat of punishment, damnation and/or death.
If you believe Demeter will make you a better mother, sure enough, she will, and if you believe in the power of the God of Abraham, you will see it everywhere. Your belief will explain everything to you validating your truth.
I don't advocate for self-delusion as a way to validate truth and I don't think you do either. I understand your observation that many people gain strength and focus by using deities as scapegoats and so they do not have to take responsibility/ownership of their own existence and what we decide to do or what actions we decide to take.
I was watching a program about the days of the partition of India. A Hindu woman had returned to where thousands of Hindus and Sikhs were slaughtered, including some of her own family. She was talking to a Muslim that had witnessed the 'battle' as a child. At one point she asked him why they slaughtered each other as they did. They were both in tears when the old Muslim man said 'don't cry my daughter, this was gods will.' A pathetic excuse imo. Gods as convenient scapegoats.
but we might want to focus on what Rome did to Christianity.
Well, I am with those who posit that it is likely that Rome created Christianity and people like the treacherous Josephus helped write the gospels and the popes are the direct inheritors of the embers of the roman empire etc etc. I support the positions held by folks like Joseph Atwill, James Vallient, Professor Robert Price, Dr Robert Eisenman, the folks on Mythvision et al.
We could start a new thread about the Scottish Enlightenment and what it has to do with the US democracy.
I would enjoy that Athena, we could go back even further to the 'Declaration of Arbroath,' and 'The Magna Carta.' and how those documents influenced the American constitution etc. You are correct that all the winding historical threads do weave us all the way to where we are now and why we live like we do now and the purist philosophers can suggest a myriad of 'thinking processes' and epistemologies that governed/directed/conducted our pathway to 'now.'
I always enjoy such discussions but we are just going over the same old ground again and again and again. There must be quicker ways to drive human global unison forwards, than constantly going back over antiquity. We should not even have to go back as far as the enlightenment to make progress.
EDIT: I suppose the path was more the American Declaration of Independence to The American Constitution.
Optimism is seen as naive and stupid while pessimism as realistic and intelligent. So perhaps we should rip our clothes and put ash on our head. Sackcloth and ashes.
That's appreciation for people who have no value system.
Well, sort of. Assume if you had eaten for your entire life exceptionally great meals, basically always something of the level that one gets in Michelin star restaurants, with added detail to the healthiness of your diet. You wouldn't know how bad food actually people e
For an anecdote, I remember once on a Finnish Navy island garrison the commanding officer decided to remember the Winter War by having the conscripts exactly the same kind of food with the historical amount during winter that soldiers were given during WW2...at the same naval fortress. The records were they, so the kitchen had no trouble in recreating the WW2-era cuisine. Hence they got a small portion of porridge (without honey or sugar) and that's it. As the garrison was on a fortress island, the conscript didn't have the chance to order pizza or anything in the evening. The conscripts (who had been born in the 1980's) hadn't experienced cold and hunger. Many said that they respected differently the war veterans after that experience.
It's telling that actually now days being overweight is many times a sign of poverty.
I'm absolutely sure that we wouldn't image just what people ate thousands of years ago.
Your attacks on me make me want to avoid what you are saying. You might drop assuming what I think, know, and do, and focus on the concepts you want to discuss.
The "you" in the last post is the universal "you", not you specifically. It's a hypothetical "you".
Of course you may but a concept is an abstract idea. Humans can turn some concept into a reality but they can't create gods, they can only and have only ever been able to insist you accept them on threat of punishment, damnation and/or death.
Whoo. wait a minute. Do you have any stories of people who believe in many gods behaving like those who think there is only one god who has favorite people and one god's truth? When people believed there are many gods they thought the people who won wars had the strongest god and that was one of the factors that converted people to Christianity. The Romans with their superior military force were winning wars so obviously they have the strongest god, right? Except the Germans in their forest. Whoo, those guys were badasses and you didn't want to get too close to them. People from the south feared the forest and the way the Germans defended their territory was terrorizing. Eventually, they accept the God of Abraham but then they claimed the Holy Roman Emperor as their own, and when the Church in Rome did not give them the power of authority they protested and started their own religion built on the God of Abraham stories. This is really important, many gods means learning far more than can be learned with one jealous, revengeful, and fearsome god. That is a war god, not the path to equality and peace.
I experience natural high's every bit as powerful as any evanhellical or ancient Greek was ever able to.
Yes, that is exactly the point. Too bad at the time of the enlightenment and the beginning of democracy people did not push against Christianity in favor of science and the power of our minds with more determination. What we have to do now is advance the explanations of how thoughts shape our lives and then increase awareness of the positive choices we can make, including education for good moral judgment and that democracy relies on science, not a jealous, revengeful and fearsome god.
I don't advocate for self-delusion as a way to validate truth and I don't think you do either. I understand your observation that many people gain strength and focus by using deities as scapegoats and so they do not have to take responsibility/ownership of their own existence and what we decide to do or what actions we decide to take.
I was watching a program about the days of the partition of India. A Hindu woman had returned to where thousands of Hindus and Sikhs were slaughtered, including some of her own family. She was talking to a Muslim that had witnessed the 'battle' as a child. At one point she asked him why they slaughtered each other as they did. They were both in tears when the old Muslim man said 'don't cry my daughter, this was gods will.' A pathetic excuse imo. Gods as convenient scapegoats.
Wait a minute, what is the truth of Demeter making a woman a better mother? She and all the gods and goddesses are archetypes. You might like reading Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.'s book Gods in Everyman" or "Goddesses in Everywoman". The God of Abraham religions have given the gods a bad reputation. I can see I need to work on this explanation. A blog might be the best way to handle what the gods have to do with democracy and why they are in a painting at the US Capitol Building and science instead of superstition. The God of Abraham mythologies are perhaps the worst thing that could have happened to humanity.
Thoughts control our behavior and even our physical condition. It is not necessary to attach superstition to the stories. We keep the stories and repeat them because they resonate with something inside of us. All groups of people have their stories that they passed on from generation to generation and these stories are important, just as important as the mythologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. If we are not superstitious we can appreciate all the others. My point is these stories hold truths and good moral lessons. They all work the same, even if the story is folklore or a native American explanation of life. Being open to the stories of others is also a path to knowing truth and learning science. The question can be more important than the answer. Greeks and Romans didn't believe they had a revealed god's truth. They learned of the gods of others and created their own in their image.
Well, I am with those who posit that it is likely that Rome created Christianity
They stole the religion from others. 5 of the Biblical stories are from Sumer, so the mythology begins in Ur a Sumerian city and it was plagiarized by Abraham and his people who he lead from Ur to Egypt. In the beginning, everyone had many gods and it is curious how the idea of one jealous, revengeful, and fearsome god caught on spread. A nation at war might desire such a war god. Constantine meant well but making Rome and Christianity the same thing, created a monster. Important is the idea that a god chooses the king and gives the king power, and everything relies on inheritance. That is Judaism not a family of gods. There is no one to correct that god as Greek gods could argue their case.
Which one of us will start the new thread? I need to know more of Scottish thinking and really wish you would start the thread. Is Scottish thinking connected with the Celts? What is the geography of Scotland and how would it shape the people?
If one thinks life is wonderful or that it sucks may depend on psychological matters. I want to quote from the book Gods in Everyman by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D..
"To feel authentic means to be free to develop traits and potentials that are innate predispositions. When we are accepted and allowed to be genuine. it's possible to have self-esteem and authenticity together. This develops only if we are encouraged rather than disheartened by the reactions of significant others to us, when we are spontaneous and truthful, or when we are absorbed in whatever gives us joy. From childhood on, first our family and then our culture are the mirrors in which we see ourselves as acceptable or not. When we need to conform in order to be acceptable, we may end up wearing a false face and playing an empty role if who we are inside and what is expected of us are far apart....
When life feels meaningless and stale, or when something feels fundamentally wrong about how you are living and what you are doing, you can help yourself by becoming aware of discrepancies between the archetypes within you and your visible roles. Men are often caught between the inner world of archetypes and the outer world of sterotypes. Archetypes are powerful predispositions; garbed in the image and mythology of Greek gods, as I have described them in this book, each has characteristics drives, emotions, and needs that shape personality. When you enact a role that is connected to an active archetype within you, energy is generated through the depth and meaning that the role has for you. "
I want to quote from the book Gods in Everyman by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D..
Interesting and good quote indeed. But I disagree with Jean Shinoda Bolen in the following fact:
The text says: When we are accepted and allowed to be genuine. it's possible to have self-esteem and authenticity together. This develops only if we are encouraged rather than disheartened by the reactions of significant others to us, when we are spontaneous and truthful, or when we are absorbed in whatever gives us joy.
I think having self-esteem is not connected to be accepted by others. A good example of this could be the Japnase writer Yukio Mishima. He had a lot of self-esteem... but trust he was so far of being accepted by the Japanese society.
This is why I like him a lot. He represents the art of writing and thinking not matter if the "mass" would accept you or not.
The important achievement here is gaining self-esteem with your own self. Not caring if we do not fit in the society or we are not accepted by them
Whoo. wait a minute. Do you have any stories of people who believe in many gods behaving like those who think there is only one god who has favorite people and one god's truth? When people believed there are many gods they thought the people who won wars had the strongest god and that was one of the factors that converted people to Christianity.
Yes, Hindus are the third largest religion in the world (estimated at 1.2 billion). I assume the Hindu gods favour Hindus. Hindus have killed muslims and sikhs and probably people from all other relgions, in the name of hinduism. I am sure hindus have been on the losing side in many wars, but hinduism still has a massive global following and a global diaspora. I already agreed that many people got infected by or converted to (to use a less disrespectful term) christianity, through fear.
This is really important, many gods means learning far more than can be learned with one jealous, revengeful, and fearsome god. That is a war god, not the path to equality and peace.
So how come a 'power in the hands of the few,' caste system and the horror of untouchability came out of hinduism?
Too bad at the time of the enlightenment and the beginning of democracy people did not push against Christianity in favor of science and the power of our minds with more determination.
I generally agree but there was not a lot of education about for the masses at the time and I think many people tried and died trying but, you are correct, they were unable to stop the nefarious few that held most of the power and influence. The fight goes on today.
What we have to do now is advance the explanations of how thoughts shape our lives and then increase awareness of the positive choices we can make, including education for good moral judgment and that democracy relies on science, not a jealous, revengeful and fearsome god.
Wait a minute, what is the truth of Demeter making a woman a better mother? She and all the gods and goddesses are archetypes.
I reject the term archetype based on its etymology: The word archetype, "original pattern from which copies are made," first entered into English usage in the 1540s. It derives from the Latin noun archetypum, latinisation of the Greek noun ????????? (archétypon), whose adjective form is ????????? (archétypos), which means "first-molded", which is a compound of ???? arch?, "beginning, origin", and ????? týpos, which can mean, amongst other things, "pattern", "model", or "type". It, thus, referred to the beginning or origin of the pattern, model or type.
Humans evolved, they were not 'first moulded' or are copies from a pattern. I hate the idea of an archetypal human. Demeter never made a woman a better mother as no such fabled Greek god creature ever existed. A good mother can of course teach a poor mother how to be a better mother.
We keep the stories and repeat them because they resonate with something inside of us. All groups of people have their stories that they passed on from generation to generation and these stories are important, just as important as the mythologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Yeah, I understand what you mean but imo, we need to 'grow away from' such stories. 'When we are children we can act and speak like children when we grow up, we should put childish things away,' including god stories. I prefer the true stories of what humans did or are doing (when I can find reliable examples of such). I think we need to focus on finding the TRUTH and take all 'stories,' as suspect unless they can be confirmed as accurate! Fake news is a real killer and always has been. If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. Joseph Goebbels.
Which one of us will start the new thread? I need to know more of Scottish thinking and really wish you would start the thread. Is Scottish thinking connected with the Celts? What is the geography of Scotland and how would it shape the people?
Might be better if we just had a PM exchange Athena, if you think that could establish some foundational common ground between us. Perhaps a useful 'philosophical' thread could come from that.
Scots history certainly suggests we have celtic aspects to our national origin but exactly who and what was 'celtic,' extracts from a very foggy past indeed. Little is known about the inhabitants of scotland before the Romans arrived in Britain. All the early tribes have italian/roman names. The umbrella name is Pictii (or picts, picture/painted people). Individual tribes named as the votadini, novantae, caledonii etc. These are all latin based names. These names probably were not used by the actual groups they refer to, who I am sure had their own chosen names but we don't know what these were.
I think all humans gained a very mixed heritage quite early in the last 10,000 years.
Since you closed out "Why should life/existence by valued if i can choose to not want to value it?" and added it to this thread, it would make sense if you moved @obscurelaunting's OP over here.
[quote=Obscurelaunting]It's very possible for me to see all there is to life, the good and the bad and yet still not think this is enough for me to stay. Life is nothing but a slip of consciousness and just like that you could say it is amazing but I will say this is to be destroyed. Why? Because it can. Do not tell me it's a matter of what feels good and what doesn't, because then choosing to feel bad by choosing to die becomes something that feels good; so feeling good isn't the pinpoint at hand here.
So since I CAN think like this, how can I not think like this? Do not tell me to just be one with life in experience because this is futile and never has been fulfilling. Do not tell me that if I can choose either I should choose life, because I'm saying to you my choice IS non-existence, this is the dilemma: the choice and the confusion of life.
I am looking for the answer that breaks down this thinking and builds myself a new thought basis.[/quote]
schopenhauer1August 21, 2022 at 16:16#7315290 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
So youre talking of Will.
Even if it isn't a true metaphysics, the idea of desiring/craving that is never satisfied, remains true. For all intents and purposes, life works on this principle. From a scientistic/mechanistic point of view, you can point to evolutionary variation/mutation/population statistics, but it just informs more about this principle. It doesn't replace this viewpoint. Entropy/enthalpy, the organism's metabolic needs and environmental fit.. The organism being is the organism dissatisfied.
I am not anti-life but personally I also wouldnt mind if everything stops once I die, as I wouldnt notice anything (peace/joy/taste/hurt/love etc.) anymore and as a result wouldnt have to experience any discomfort about it neither. But since I cant know what is beyond my current state of being I'm equally wellcoming nothingness as I am any ongoing experience(s).
By comparing it to a bad meal, not to no meal.
baker
We've been created to go well without food for one day, actually. It's water that we need basically daily.
You're forgetting you're talking to a woman. I've been hungry almost as much as the average hungry African.
Well, sort of. Assume if you had eaten for your entire life exceptionally great meals, basically always something of the level that one gets in Michelin star restaurants, with added detail to the healthiness of your diet.
And for a good part of my life, I have eaten exceptionally good food, and I've grown proper organic food until recently.
You wouldn't know how bad food actually people e
I do know. It makes me want to puke.
For an anecdote, I remember once on a Finnish Navy island garrison the commanding officer decided to remember the Winter War by having the conscripts exactly the same kind of food with the historical amount during winter that soldiers were given during WW2...at the same naval fortress. The records were they, so the kitchen had no trouble in recreating the WW2-era cuisine. Hence they got a small portion of porridge (without honey or sugar) and that's it. As the garrison was on a fortress island, the conscript didn't have the chance to order pizza or anything in the evening. The conscripts (who had been born in the 1980's) hadn't experienced cold and hunger. Many said that they respected differently the war veterans after that experience.
The average peasant in the Dark Ages ate healthier food than most people do today.
I'm absolutely sure that we wouldn't image just what people ate thousands of years ago.
Certainly no pesticides and no GMOs. In the old times, food was much healthier, much more satiating because it had real taste.
It's very possible for me to see all there is to life, the good and the bad and yet still not think this is enough for me to stay. Life is nothing but a slip of consciousness and just like that you could say it is amazing but I will say this is to be destroyed. Why? Because it can. Do not tell me it's a matter of what feels good and what doesn't, because then choosing to feel bad by choosing to die becomes something that feels good; so feeling good isn't the pinpoint at hand here.
So since I CAN think like this, how can I not think like this? Do not tell me to just be one with life in experience because this is futile and never has been fulfilling. Do not tell me that if I can choose either I should choose life, because I'm saying to you my choice IS non-existence, this is the dilemma: the choice and the confusion of life.
I am looking for the answer that breaks down this thinking and builds myself a new thought basis.
What you're asking for cannot be done in the framework of secular culture and science. They'll just write you off as mentally ill, as an aberration. They certainly don't think you have some insight into the futility of life as it is usually lived.
I dont think I ever considered myself anti-life, but lately I dont know How do I find meaning in meaningless universe?
How to answer question to be or not to be? Problem with suicide for me is that you cant change your mind after but now Im overwhelmed with feelings and thoughts that there is no reason to go on (although Im no entirely convinced by one option or another )
but now Im overwhelmed with feelings and thoughts that there is no reason to go on
One reason to go on: your family, friends or relatives. I understand what you are feeling because I walked through the same process. If suicide would sink your beloved ones in devastation and misery, please do not do it. That would be disrespectful and dishonorable.
If you feel that you don't find a meaning in life you would end up in an infinite loop because the nature of life is meaningless
I dont think I ever considered myself anti-life, but lately I dont know How do I find meaning in meaningless universe?
How to answer question to be or not to be? Problem with suicide for me is that you cant change your mind after but now Im overwhelmed with feelings and thoughts that there is no reason to go on (although Im no entirely convinced by one option or another )
I guess there are a lot a people experiencing the same dilemma, I know quite a few and I also cant find any meaning actually but there are a few considerations here. The first is about loved ones, this has been mentioned before throughout this thread, and their pain and grief should one take his own life. The second is about the unknown, which leaves lots of room for any plausible theories. Some claim for there to be nothing, not even a void (in death) while others claim utopia awaits us while others think we will get reborn and so on. Yet the truth of it all is that nobody knows and anything is possible. Which means we also have to take into account that the possibility exists that we get punished (or 'disciplined') if we would take shortcuts.
I think having self-esteem is not connected to be accepted by others. A good example of this could be the Japnase writer Yukio Mishima. He had a lot of self-esteem... but trust he was so far of being accepted by the Japanese society.
This is why I like him a lot. He represents the art of writing and thinking not matter if the "mass" would accept you or not.
The important achievement here is gaining self-esteem with your own self. Not caring if we do not fit in the society or we are not accepted by them
Wow, I have to agree with that. When I get in the creative space of writing it is the only thing that matters. It is not that I am totally confident in myself but that the creative experience or that moment of enlightenment when we see the bigger picture is better than good sex. I want to explain the hormonal experience so I don't sound like an egomaniac.
Ashley Margeson:For a quick recap; estrogen rises in your midluteal phase (the first half of your cycle) and a few days after ovulation. As estrogen increases in these areas of your cycle, your brain is better able to wire itself off dopamine which means that your creativity skyrockets.Dec 10, 2019
shleymargeson.com/estrogen-creative-superpower/#:~:text=For%20a%20quick%20recap%3B%20estrogen,means%20that%20your%20creativity%20skyrockets. Why Estrogen Is Your Creative Superpower - Ashley Margeson
How Being More Creative Improves Your Mental and Physical ...https://www.lifehack.org articles lifestyle how-bei...
Studies show how creative pursuits alter our brain chemistry, help improve attention, decrease stress, and can boost our physical and mental health.
There is a lot to say about creativity and our physical being and I have heard that some people who have been depressed for years have broken free of that when they start doing something creative.
So youre talking of Will.
Even if it isn't a true metaphysics, the idea of desiring/craving that is never satisfied, remains true. For all intents and purposes, life works on this principle. From a scientistic/mechanistic point of view, you can point to evolutionary variation/mutation/population statistics, but it just informs more about this principle. It doesn't replace this viewpoint. Entropy/enthalpy, the organism's metabolic needs and environmental fit.. The organism being is the organism dissatisfied.
Aye, but I was actually referring to how, even though we have an awesome life, it's still an imposition. The point is that it really doesn't matter whether one's life is utterly miserable or absolutely amazing; life is still an imposition and that right there is the immorality of procreation.
Mr/Ms. Happy: Life's fun! Ima really enjoyin' it!
Antintatalist: Yes, yes, but did you choose this life?
Mr/Ms. Happy: Nope! :grin:
Yes, Hindus are the third largest religion in the world (estimated at 1.2 billion). I assume the Hindu gods favour Hindus. Hindus have killed muslims and sikhs and probably people from all other relgions, in the name of hinduism. I am sure hindus have been on the losing side in many wars, but hinduism still has a massive global following and a global diaspora. I already agreed that many people got infected by or converted to (to use a less disrespectful term) christianity, through fear.
I was unaware of this history of violence and it makes me curious. Why did the Hindus kill Muslims and Sikhs? I don't think it was like the Hebrews who took the land that was Isreal with the belief a God had told them to do so and to kill everyone who was already there. Christians have carried for centuries as though a god has told them the land is theirs and they should kill everyone else. That fearsome Christian god has only recently become a god of love. However, when people feel threatened they become defensive, so was the killing a justified act of defense? This matters to me. I tend to be too Polyann and not realistic and I want truth,
So how come a 'power in the hands of the few,' caste system and the horror of untouchability came out of hinduism?
I assume the practical answer is to avoid disease. I do not think my mind is capable of giving me a good understanding of ancient times and foreign places. I can reason that some people may live unhealthy lives and for one's own safety it is best to avoid contact. They did not have a government that can take care of them as well the US government has started caring for its people, and they sure did not have the economic opportunity we have today. Cleanliness for those who had the luxury of practicing cleanliness was very important.
I generally agree but there was not a lot of education about for the masses at the time and I think many people tried and died trying but, you are correct, they were unable to stop the nefarious few that held most of the power and influence. The fight goes on today.
I think Christianity is a barrier to learning not only for those who identify with the religion, but they have defined God, and that God is a supernatural power that can violate the laws of nature. That means we judge all gods by the Christian understanding of a god. Our bias has prevented learning of the gods. You can't google for infomation because Christianity floods the internet making it very difficult to find information about primative people and the gods. Quoting universeness
I reject the term archetype based on its etymology:
The word archetype, "original pattern from which copies are made," first entered into English usage in the 1540s. It derives from the Latin noun archetypum, latinisation of the Greek noun ????????? (archétypon), whose adjective form is ????????? (archétypos), which means "first-molded", which is a compound of ???? arch?, "beginning, origin", and ????? týpos, which can mean, amongst other things, "pattern", "model", or "type". It, thus, referred to the beginning or origin of the pattern, model or type.
Humans evolved, they were not 'first moulded' or are copies from a pattern. I hate the idea of an archetypal human. Demeter never made a woman a better mother as no such fabled Greek god creature ever existed. A good mother can of course teach a poor mother how to be a better mother.
I love your argument and especially the Latin and Greek words. I seriously wish I could learn those languages. But in argument to your argument, nature molded all things. Nature made mothers, nature made every female and male archetype. The writer of the stories based them on a study of human nature and all our different approuches to problems. Darn, I am too tired for the mental work that is needed for an argument, and this post is too long and also not on topic, so I am going to quit now. We need another thread for this. I really would like to look deeper into the gods.
Certainly no pesticides and no GMOs. In the old times, food was much healthier, much more satiating because it had real taste.
Not enough fat, salt, and sugar to make food as unhealthy as it is today, and chances are good the meal had to be worked for with real physical labor. Next to that, surviving was so demanding people did not have time to fret about how much better their lives would be if only they had made different choices, so in way, there was less stress.
No question. And another big one is doing something for others.
Oh yeah, My mental health program is being a Senior Companion. I pick people up and take them where they want to go, we have lunch together and play games. The lockdown was terrible! I was sure I was loosing my mind and feared I was on the way to loosing my independence. I love being alone and writing and the forums, but I have to have that face-to-face human contact too. Now I am so busy caring for others I really appreciate my time alone. It is strange how making others happy means our own happiness too.
I am not anti-life but personally I also wouldnt mind if everything stops once I die, as I wouldnt notice anything (peace/joy/taste/hurt/love etc.) anymore and as a result wouldnt have to experience any discomfort about it neither. But since I cant know what is beyond my current state of being I'm equally wellcoming nothingness as I am any ongoing experience(s).
I don't think that is possible for a conscious being. I also have no desire to go to heaven. I think it is our nature to want stimulus and that leads to wanting what we don't have and then doing what we have to do to get what we want. If we are in heaven where a God takes care of our every need and there is nothing for us to do but enjoy, that sounds like hell to me. There would be no great movies or novels. We would be satiated and have nothing to strive for. Boring!
universenessAugust 22, 2022 at 06:24#7317790 likes
I was unaware of this history of violence and it makes me curious. Why did the Hindus kill Muslims and Sikhs?
I am unaware of cases where hindus attacked Sikhs during partition, they attacked muslims.
There is an enormous amount of material on-line regarding the partition of India or perhaps you could PM @DA671 who knows a great deal about the topic.
I assume the practical answer is to avoid disease.
I think you are misunderstanding the concept of 'untouchability' within the Hindu caste system.
I am sure the excuse you mention is used but only as a misrepresentation of the true intention of untouchability, which is to label people that certain religious or social dogma portray as being inferior.
From wiki:
[i][b]The term is most commonly associated with treatment of the Dalit communities in the Indian subcontinent who were considered "polluting". The term has also been used to refer to other groups, including the Burakumin of Japan, the Baekjeong of Korea, and the Ragyabpa of Tibet, as well as the Romani people and Cagot in Europe, and the Al-Akhdam in Yemen. Traditionally, the groups characterized as untouchable were those whose occupations and habits of life involved ritually "polluting" activities, such as fishermen, manual scavengers, sweepers and washermen.
Untouchability is believed to have been first mentioned in Dharmashastra, according to the religious Hindu text, untouchables were not considered a part of the varna system. Therefore, they were not treated like the savarnas (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras).[/b][/i]
There are many examples of such nonsense in the bible as well. For example, a menstruating woman may not enter the tabernacle as she is unclean!
That means we judge all gods by the Christian understanding of a god. Our bias has prevented learning of the gods. You can't google for infomation because Christianity floods the internet making it very difficult to find information about primative people and the gods.
I don't think this is true, certainly not for any secular person or atheist. The internet has a great deal of inaccurate information on it and it can be quite time consuming to validate and confirm the truth of all documentation on it but you can find out as much as is known about an earlier civilisation.
and this post is too long and also not on topic, so I am going to quit now.
Well, I understand but this thread is now called 'life sucks,' we are simply trying to analyse some of the historical evidence and aspects of human behaviour that might support that claim or highlight the behaviours that have to be effectively tackled and changed to develop my contention that life is wonderful but the human experience is imbalanced and riddled with injustice and 'needs a lot of work.'
Finally outgrowing all gods would be a good start imo.
Interesting text. Romani people is also called gypsy. In my country there are a lot of them and I have to be honest. There are some prejudices against them in the same sense the text you quoted previously.
If you check the etymology of the word gypsy, gitano, tsigane, etc... you would find pejorative meanings according to each country, for example:
English: it comes from the word "gyp" which means scam.
German: it comes from the word "zigeuner" which means thief
Spanish: it comes from the word "gitano" which means liar
Hungarian: it comes from the word "szégany" which means poor
I an unaware of cases where hindus attacked Sikhs during partition, they attacked muslims
Sorry Athena, this is clumsy on my part. I wanted to clarify a little.
During the partition of India, Hindus and Sikhs attacked Muslims and Muslims attacked Hindus and Sikhs. In the whole history of India, I assume Hindus have killed people from most religions as is the case for Christians and Islamists. Terrorists tend not to check what your religion is before they explode their bombs etc. Often, even their own people get killed in the crossfire.
Interesting text. Romani people is also called gypsy. In my country there are a lot of them and I have to be honest. There are some prejudices against them in the same sense the text you quoted previously.
If you check the etymology of the word gypsy, gitano, tsigane, etc... you would find pejorative meanings according to each country, for example:
English: it comes from the word "gyp" which means scam.
German: it comes from the word "zigeuner" which means thief
Spanish: it comes from the word "gitano" which means liar
Hungarian: it comes from the word "szégany" which means poor
Well the last year I started an OP related to this: The etymological prejudice of the word gypsy.
Attribution bias: When someone from an in-group errs, the mistake is chalked up to the individual, as a personal failing; when someone from an out-group goofs up, it's the entire group that's blamed. Sic vita est
universenessAugust 22, 2022 at 07:04#7317890 likes
Reply to javi2541997
Yep, I am sure you would agree Javi, that the human condition would deserve the accusation of 'life sucks!' less, if everyone could personally stop being 'culturalist.'
If YOU as a human don't in your own heart believe/know that all people should be treated equally then YOU will always provide evidence for the anti-life people. I use YOU here to refer to each individual on the planet.
One planet stewarded by one united species is what I advocate. No more countries, no more currencies, no gods, no race other than the human race, no private ownership of land, no rich, no poor, no utopia or dystopia. WE CAN ALL DO BETTER!
No more countries, no more currencies, no gods, no race other than the human race, no private ownership of land,no rich, no poor, no utopia or dystopia.
Sorry but I am pure defender of private ownership myself :rofl: I always been inspired by John Locke:
Some of the features of Locke's economic thinking would echo down the years, and not always to good consequence. Thus, Locke's notion is that labor creates value: "For 'tis Labour indeed that puts the difference of value on every thing" Locke uses this in the first instance to explain why people have a right to property.
Locke, of course, thinks that the ownership of property is justified because labor has been "mixed" with it.
The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property. To which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting. [ibid., §124]
When someone from an in-group errs, the mistake is chalked up to the individual, as a personal failing; when someone from an out-group goofs up, it's the entire group that's blamed. Sic vita est
universenessAugust 22, 2022 at 07:40#7317980 likes
Reply to javi2541997
I am not as concerned about private ownership of property, nor am I concerned about 'small capitalism.'
People must have quality housing as a human right but as long as that is provided then I don't care who owns a particular property. Billionaires or multi-millionaires, conglomerates (or anything like them) would not be allowed. So the amount of property owned by an individual would be controlled and they would not own the land the property sat on.
As for the tragic bloodbath during India's partition, I'd say it was actually a memeplex war in the ideaverse that spilled over into the physical dimension. We're unable to distinguish man from meme and that's, going by all the wars we've endured, is a fatal flaw.
universenessAugust 22, 2022 at 08:18#7318050 likes
I'd say it was actually a memeplex war in the ideaverse that spilled over into the physical dimension.
The British were quite happy to see the religious groups slaughter each other. The British soldiers stood by and watched as it went on because they were told to. I can imagine the British colonial attitude at the time. "See how these 'natives' treat each other when we brits are not in charge." Churchill had such disrespect for Indians that he called Gandhi 'a half-naked Indian fakir.' Mountbatten was happy to encourage the carnage by offering a Pakistan which was made up of a Western and Eastern section, with India between them. This exacerbated the massive movement of starving poor people whose only difference was religious dogma and millions died because of religion and political intrigue.
The average peasant in the Dark Ages ate healthier food than most people do today. - Certainly no pesticides and no GMOs. In the old times, food was much healthier, much more satiating because it had real taste.
I've seen studies that the diet worsened from the Early Middle Ages to the age of industrialization, but it might be too drastic to think our food now is less healthier. The 19th Century brought huge improvement to agriculture and also an emphasis on food safety requirements. Now we have the ability to eat extremely healthy food, but what actually the food we eat is another thing. The really irritating issue is that the healthy diet is far more costly than the cheapest food, which makes for a bad diet.
And with medievel diet we have to remember it wasn't fresh, the food that could be preserved. The idea was to eat only the food from the last season, not this one as you didn't know just how the it would be this year. So a lot of salt.
Sure. But what are the metaphysical assumptions behind them?
I think it's far more about social assumptions than metaphysical ones.
You look to be smart when you're critical about your life and the society around you. To accept it and be happy about it seems to many like you haven't thought about the current issues. Or you simply don't care and just go "with the flock".
How sad! My heart goes out to all, not just hindus, moslems & sikhs, who were hurt/killed/worse during the 200k years humans have been around. We really need to get our act together lest we make the same silly mistakes our ancestors made. Easy to say, hard to do and therein lies the rub, oui mon ami?
universenessAugust 22, 2022 at 08:44#7318110 likes
We really need to get our act together lest we make the same silly mistakes our ancestors made. Easy to say, hard to do and therein lies the rub, oui mon ami?
The problems are still many and so deeply embeded within global sociopolitical systems and cultural/religious traditions. BUT, we can do better because we have improved the lives of millions in comparison to life for the majority in the past. 2022 years since CE or the 'common era' began. That's only a couple of seconds in the cosmic calendar.
Through language, its ability to transmit lessons learned, we've transcended the limitations of biology; DNA is not the only information game in town now and in the process we've been able to do mind-blowing stuff like sending men to the moon, develop & manufacture antibiotics, and so on.
We then survey Momma Nature and what do we find? We're simply just another cog in the great wheel of life - a gorgeous flower no doubt but a dispensable one. :snicker:
schopenhauer1August 22, 2022 at 09:22#7318140 likes
Aye, but I was actually referring to how, even though we have an awesome life, it's still an imposition. The point is that it really doesn't matter whether one's life is utterly miserable or absolutely amazing; life is still an imposition and that right there is the immorality of procreation.
Mr/Ms. Happy: Life's fun! Ima really enjoyin' it!
Antintatalist: Yes, yes, but did you choose this life?
Mr/Ms. Happy: Nope! :grin:
Well, you quoted Schopenhauer and now youre saying you were referring to the points I made in the Trouble with Impositions thread. This is why I wanted you to explain what you were trying to say by we are all slaves
Anyways, of course Im going to agree with you, thats my very argument youre summarizing. I would add that imposition is not just willing a significant, inescapable decision for someone else, but creating burdens to continually be overcome- expected or not anticipated for that person. So even an amazing life (as it was summarized in a generalized statement) is bound to have various instances of burdens.
Even if we could, as transhumanists wish & propose, abolish suffering, the imposition problem would still make reproduction unethical is what I mean.
schopenhauer1August 22, 2022 at 09:43#7318220 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
Kinda thorny issue. Doesnt really cross my mind because its a practical impossibility. Supposing it does occur, would we be even human at that point? Does ethics apply to such a condition? Does transhumanism translate to a personalized utopia? If not, whose utopia?
schopenhauer1August 22, 2022 at 09:49#7318260 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
If you say to me..its wrong to impose on a robot..I dont know what applies to said being if it doesnt feel pain or burdens at all. Ive maintained that whilst one form of imposing is bad (forcing your will), its combination with the other form (creating burdens) makes it the more so. Ive maintained that if life was an ever adjusted personalized utopia, there might be something there as a justification.
I guess Im asking, does ethics apply to something not bound by a human or animal condition?
Reply to schopenhauer1 Even if a robot doesn't feel, you're, as the creator, foisting plain, vanilla existence on it, oui? It didn't choose to exist and that's wrong, no?
schopenhauer1August 22, 2022 at 10:14#7318290 likes
Its not bound by a human or animal condition. How does ethics apply? You tell me. Besides that it merely exists.
Good point! :up:
Ethics applies to imposition simpliciter as it seems to treat human beings as robots! :chin:
Existential HopeAugust 22, 2022 at 12:17#7318510 likes
Reply to universeness I know too little, sir! However, from what I think I understand about the commingling of madness that happened in 1947, the violence was primarily between Muslims on one side and Hindus/Sikhs on the other. Most Sikhs fled the region now called Pakistan into the Republic of India.
Untouchability is a curse and serves as a reminder of the misery that dogma and an insatiable thirst for power can create. May we move beyond this sooner rather than later.
I think we all know too little about such horrific events.
Based on a quick google search:
[i][b]Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
The quote is most likely due to writer and philosopher George Santayana, and in its original form it read, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.[/b][/i]
WE CAN ALL DO BETTER! And imo, we need no help from god fables but I understand, (if my analysis of her intent is correct) @Athena's very honourable 'mission'/intent, to find common ground / values / purpose and foster a more positive dialogue between theists and anti-theists. I would have to always admit to my own personal preference for abandoning all theism however, as to do otherwise, would be disingenuous on my part.
Btw, I had to google 'commingling.' That's a new one on me. Breach of trust, yes?
universenessAugust 22, 2022 at 14:59#7318790 likes
Nature made mothers, nature made every female and male archetype.
I wanted to pull this sentence out separately and 'complain' about its 'intent' connotation.
'Nature' is often 'objectified' in the sense that some people often try to assign it a concrete form like 'mother nature!' etc. Nature has no such concrete form and has no intent. Such thinking created the original pagan deities and animism(the belief that all objects and living things possess a soul or spirit).
Many early gods were some human/animal hybrid or sun/moon/river/forest god. I think we should stop objectifying/anthropomorphising the natural processes or 'nature,' in this way.
Existential HopeAugust 22, 2022 at 15:59#7318910 likes
Reply to universeness As long as one isn't an absolutist with a pernicious agenda (which you most certainly aren't), it's indubitably important to stand by the truth as one understands it. The alternative is to live in a superficial world with meaningless interactions.
That quote is quite apposite! Although, I would say that my knowledge about the world, in general, is fairly limited. That's why I am eternally grateful to wiser people like you and others (even those I disagree with at a profound level) for sharing their insights.
I am sorry if I accidentally betrayed you! It sincerely was not intentional.
universenessAugust 22, 2022 at 16:33#7318970 likes
Reply to DA671
:lol: Despite your humility and insistence that you have limited knowledge of the world, you still keep adding to my vocabulary. I was not familiar with 'apposite,' either.
Again, google to the rescue. Apposite meaning apt. If English is a second language for you, the word range you know is impressive.
Thank you for your kind words. I am quite confused by: Quoting DA671
I am sorry if I accidentally betrayed you! It sincerely was not intentional.
Please explain. Was it these words below that made you think I was referring to your belief system?
If so, its me that should be apologising.
WE CAN ALL DO BETTER! And imo, we need no help from god fables
I did not intend these words to be a direct insult to all Hinduism, as you, yourself have explained to me that many Hindus express their belief system in many ways, including ways that do not include anything supernatural.
I'm no good at that! All I can say is that to impose one's wishes, including but not limited to thinking on someone's behalf, herein the child to be born, amounts to treating the child as if s/he were an inanimate object (like robots). That's unethical, oui?
Existential HopeAugust 23, 2022 at 06:19#7321350 likes
Reply to universeness I've just imbibed these words by reading people a lot more eloquent than I could ever hope to be and tried my best to enhance my lexical resource. Thank you for your charitable words! And yes, English is indeed my second language.
Oh, I am sorry. I was referring to this:
"Breach of trust, yes?"
You wrote this at the end of your previous comment. I was attempting to put forth a partially facetious response.
Existential HopeAugust 23, 2022 at 06:25#7321370 likes
Reply to Agent Smith I, for one, would be glad if others could think for me and provide me a good that I can't solicit yet. Of course, it's another matter that the idea of calling an act a gift/imposition seems to be debatable. Perspectives will vary, I suppose. Nevertheless, it's a good thing that awareness regarding nature and scale of what we have lost is growing. Once recognition occurs, realisation of what could be would also follow suit.
:clap: :clap: English (with scots dialect) is my first language and your vocabulary range seems wider than mine, well done!
When I looked up 'Commingling' its meaning was reported as 'breach of trust,' does this match your use of it in.Quoting DA671
However, from what I think I understand about the commingling of madness that happened in 1947, the violence was primarily between Muslims on one side and Hindus/Sikhs on the other.
However, from what I think I understand about the commingling of madness that happened in 1947, the violence was primarily between Muslims on one side and Hindus/Sikhs on the other.
They did betray their own religions as all three of them claim to be religions of peace and they betrayed everyone's trust that these claims were true.
They did betray their own religions as all three of them claim to be religions of peace and they betrayed everyone's trust that these claims were true.
:up: Epic fail!
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 11:47#7322350 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
:smile: And I will bet a years retirement pension that @DA671 will agree!
Existential HopeAugust 23, 2022 at 11:53#7322380 likes
Reply to universeness The idea itself does make sense. However, in the sentence wherein it was used, I believe that the definition that I had in mind is befitting. "Breach of trust of madness" wouldn't sound particularly coherent, I think!
Here's the definition from Wikipedia:
"In law, commingling is a breach of trust in which a fiduciary mixes funds held in care for a client with his own funds, making it difficult to determine which funds belong to the fiduciary and which belong to the client."
So, we can see that this also refers to something being mixed.
Existential HopeAugust 23, 2022 at 11:58#7322420 likes
Reply to universeness Of course I agree. They didn't just breach the trust; it was pulverised entirely. It took the collective effort of Mahatma Gandhi, Pt. Nehru, Maulana Azad, and countless individuals to prevent absolute insanity from prevailing. And even then, the violence only truly declined after people saw with horror as Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu who believed in pluralism, being killed by an extremist. Absolutists who don't appreciate the rainbow of perspectives that lies before us often end up causing serious harm.
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 11:58#7322430 likes
The idea itself does make sense. However, in the sentence wherein it was used, I believe that the definition that I had in mind is befitting. "Breach of trust of madness" wouldn't sound particularly coherent, I think!
:lol: Did I win my bet?
How about ,"However, from what I think I understand about the madness of the betrayal of trust that happened in 1947, the violence was primarily between Muslims on one side and Hindus/Sikhs on the other."
Existential HopeAugust 23, 2022 at 12:08#7322460 likes
Reply to universeness Ah, I would still have to say that the usage does not capture the full spectrum of what I intended to write. This appears to suggest that I was primarily emphasising the breach of trust that occurred between communities (and perhaps the faith in the ideals of religions) that occurred by calling it madness. However, my original point was that there was a commingling of madnessa deluge of derangement that included a failure to realise how severe the impact of the partition would be, an inability to let even an iota of reason or empathy take root in one's mind, and the British essentially leaving people to their own devices (which wasn't really a betrayal, since everyone expected them to leave). Much of this was not totally unanticipated. Yet, the scale and the scope was. 1947 was more than just a breach of trust. Madness, when I used it here, was a reference to the ever-growing chaos.
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 12:13#7322480 likes
Reply to DA671
Ok, thanks for improving the clarity of your point. Overall, I will declare my bet safe and I will not have to cut down on all my favourites this month, due to having to donate a months pension to a charity of your choice.
Existential HopeAugust 23, 2022 at 12:30#7322490 likes
Reply to universeness I would agree with the suggestion that the idea of a breach of trust makes sense in the sentence. Although, I would also feel compelled to mention that in order to do so, the structure of the sentence has to be altered.
I am sure you're already doing plenty of good deeds, sir!
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 15:12#7322680 likes
I think you are misunderstanding the concept of 'untouchability' within the Hindu caste system.
I am sure the excuse you mention is used but only as a misrepresentation of the true intention of untouchability, which is to label people that certain religious or social dogma portray as being inferior.
Untouchability is believed to have been first mentioned in Dharmashastra, according to the religious Hindu text, untouchables were not considered a part of the varna system. Therefore, they were not treated like the savarnas (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras).
There are many examples of such nonsense in the bible as well. For example, a menstruating woman may not enter the tabernacle as she is unclean!
I have bolded the statement I want to reply to. I think there are examples of untouchables in many cultures however, not every culture would have institutionalized this common human behavior in the same way. I have read some ancient yoga practices are extremely concerned with cleanliness, Hebrews were also concerned with cleanliness but I don't think to the same extent. When the US had outhouses there were people who were paid to tend to outhouses. The owner of an estate surely would not want his daughter associating with such a person, especially if this person looked different, or if outhouses were associated with disease. The US has had some very prejudiced laws!
Hebrews for sure saw themselves as different from others and they institutionalized that aspect of being Hebrew. Kind of like, all people have engaged in war, but not all of them created an economic and social organization around their military, such as Prussia was organized around its military. These human behaviors being common, but more or less, formal and defining. The point is, knowing what I know about human behavior and organizations, I think it is silly to point a figure at India for having different social classes. and untouchables. In the US a young man of color could be killed just for speaking with a White woman. We had a huge segregation problem! We just call it racism instead of Hinduism. :lol: Bad behavior isn't funny but on the other hand it can be pretty ridiculous, especially when we point fingers at others as though we don't think and act just as badly or worse.
That means we judge all gods by the Christian understanding of a god. Our bias has prevented learning of the gods. You can't google for infomation because Christianity floods the internet making it very difficult to find information about primative people and the gods.
Athena
I don't think this is true, certainly not for any secular person or atheist. The internet has a great deal of inaccurate information on it and it can be quite time consuming to validate and confirm the truth of all documentation on it but you can find out as much as is known about an earlier civilisation.
I want to address this separately because I don't want my point lost in too much verbiage. Have you spent much time arguing whether there is or is not a "God"? I don't care how rabid the atheist is, the atheist is using the same concept of God as the Christians hold to be true. Most people are reacting emotionally to the word "God" and they are incapable of being rational about "god". Atheists can not tolerate the word "god" so they can not get to reasoning the possibility of a universal force and being okay with calling it "god" just for the sake of argument. Does gravity exist? What causes it? If God is the cause of gravity what else in nature could be a universal truth? Thus, getting away from some of the hair-brain notions about a God who has favorite people. Athiest are their own worst enemy because they are reacting emotionally just like the believers are reacting emotionally. They are both like boxers in a ring ready to jump when the bell rings.
Secondly, the US and Christians do dominate the internet. The problem could be I use google and evidently, google ranks things according to popularity, so the one person who has a better argument of truth becomes almost impossible, if not completely impossible, to find because the 5 million idiots crowd out the one good argument.
Greeks held a notion of universals and the philosophy that questioned the universals became science. I think addressing the God issue from the point of view of universals could lead to more meaningful discussions than the ones we can have with Christians or atheists.
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 15:55#7322850 likes
I don't think there is a great deal of difference between our social or political viewpoints.
There have been many 'separators' that have been used to distinguish between people. Indicators such as level of cleanliness, what your job is, your gender, your age, your skin colour, your economic status are all poor ways to make distinctions between people. I don't think we would disagree on this.
The chosen people concept is a very old BS claim as well. This happens in every neighbourhood to a lesser or similar degree. 'The cool kids', The alpha's, A-list celebs etc, its all total BS.Quoting Athena
I think it is silly to point a figure at India for having different social classes. and untouchables.
I exemplified the Hindu caste system as it seemed to me that you were claiming earlier that polytheism was less problematic than monotheism and I don't think that's true.
I think we differ in that I think you wish to progress from the position of finding value in theism and finding common ground with theists. I think this is honourable but Its not a position I prioritise but it may well be a wise route to take.
The chosen people concept is a very old BS claim as well. This happens in every neighbourhood to a lesser or similar degree. 'The cool kids', The alpha's, A-list celebs etc, its all total BS.
:cheer: :cheer: :grin: You might be the people but we are the real people. I am referring to the tribal notion that "my tribe is the best and most deserving" which is no different from opposing chimpanzee troops crossing paths in the forest except humans can come up with more arguments than the chimps. :lol:
This is perhaps the best reason to argue against a God creating humans from the mud on the banks of a river that flowed threw Sumer. If we are going to be rational and have arguments about humans that can progress to better understanding and therefore better reasoning, we need to go with the science of evolution and drop the mythology. And we need to stop pointing fingers and being blind to our own blindness.
Yes, I believe polytheism is less problematic because believing in many gods is more apt to lead to believing the other guy also has a god even though his god is not the same as yours. Now you may both go to war and test which one of you has the strongest god, or we might sit down and argue in favor of our gods without the blindness of believing there is only one god and this god favors you. :lol:
in an effort to know truth.
MORE IMPORTANT, if a god is being a complete jerk like Hades was when he took Demeter's daughter, there are gods who can put restrictions on Hades. If there is only one god there is no correction of errors. This is the democratic issue! Are we powerless under the tyranny of a god, or can we appeal to other gods? The Greeks asked a lot of important questions of the gods and in so doing had arguments with many different points of view. Each god had a different point of view, and a different way of handling things, and in dealing with all of them, the Greeks expanded their consciousness. Conscience is "con"-coming out of, "science".
"How do the gods resolve their differences?" They argue until they have a consensus on the best reasoning. This thinking did not come with the first storytelling of the gods, but wherever people had many gods, every time they realized a new concept, they created a god, like we now name new atomic particles every time we have to explain a new observation of atomic particles. Apollo was a late comer coming a of time chaos and reasoning was essential, so whala! there is a god of reason. This learning of new gods, forced many to search for truth and limit the number of gods they had. Egypt, for a time, turned to the one and only god Ra. The point is gods organize our thinking and advance our understanding of life and the universe. If you have only one god you learn His truth and may discover new technology, butthat is not equal to science and advancing higher-level knowledge.
Here is a great Hindu example of what I mean by the gods advancing our higher-level knowledge.
A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess Namagiri Thayar.
We do not get knowledge of mathematics and a higher morality from the tribal God of Abraham.
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 17:02#7322950 likes
the atheist is using the same concept of God as the Christians hold to be true. Most people are reacting emotionally to the word "God" and they are incapable of being rational about "god". Atheists can not tolerate the word "god" so they can not get to reasoning the possibility of a universal force and being okay with calling "god" just for the sake of argument
I can only respond as an atheist. I cannot type for all atheists as they are a varied group. Can you give me an example of an atheistic statement you consider irrational?
Atheists will consider the 'universal force' concept in its many varieties, from the type exemplified in sci-fi Star Wars movie presentations to the panpsychist or cosmopsychist posits and even to some of the posits which don't involve gods such as Buddhism or theosophical posits such as those of Aleister Crowley or Hubbards Scientology. I agree that most atheists I know will reject most or all of these but their rejection is based on rational thinking imo.
Does gravity exist? What causes it? If God is the cause of gravity what else in nature could be a universal truth?
The effects of gravity are observable and measurable but gravity may not be a separate force which is quantisable and has gravitons as its 'messenger' particle. It may be an effect caused by the presence of mass/energy. So gravity may be caused by the presence of mass/energy and if you assign credence to posits such as the cyclical universe then there is no need for a first cause such as a god and if you insist there has to be a first cause then I personally satisfy my own thoughts by labelling such, a mindless spark, which no longer exists. As an atheist, my reason convinces me there is no god or gods. I cannot prove I am correct but my simple offer remains to any that do in fact exist. Show me and if it cant or wont then it does not exist.
There have been a few threads on whether or not universal truths exist.
I have my own examples of how far I can get with the concept of universals. The speed of light in a vacuum for example.
Athiest are their own worst enemy because they are reacting emotionally just like the believers are reacting emotionally. They are both like boxers in a ring ready to jump when the bell rings.
That may well be how you interpret it when you watch atheist debate theists or you read their on-line exchanges but it's not my interpretation. I find the atheist logic to be far more rational and compelling than the logic and woo woo employed by theists. But as I am an atheist, you will not find my viewpoint surprising.
Greeks held a notion of universals and the philosophy that questioned the universals became science. I think addressing the God issue from the point of view of universals could lead to more meaningful discussions than the ones we can have with Christians or atheists.
The fact that physics used to be called natural philosophy just means that modern labels are far better than ancient ones and perhaps we should stop being so attracted to the very limited knowledge of the ancient Greeks and their like. We do stand on the shoulders of those who went before and that's why we can see further but it is us who know the most or at least have access to more and more accurate data/information/knowledge that they ever did.
We don't need to keep scent marking new knowledge and new progress with the smells of the ancients.
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 17:16#7323000 likes
MORE IMPORTANT, if a god is being a complete jerk like Hades was when he took Demeter's daughter, there are gods who can put restrictions on Hades.
I just don't see any great value in how you wish to roleplay with theism.
You seem to want to give the god posits a chair at the table of discussion on the future of the human race or in the 'how to make humans a better sentient lifeform,' discussions.
I don't even want to let the god posits in the building or even in the city the meetings are held in.
They deserve no place as they are inventions of our primal fears and as such, should be terminated for good. There is nothing to fear in the dark except that which we bring with us. We need to leave the god BS in the dirt, like any empty vessel no longer of any use to a progressive intelligent species.
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 17:23#7323040 likes
We do not get knowledge of mathematics and a higher morality from the tribal God of Abraham.
From wiki:
Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître; 17 July 1894 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first to theorize that the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by an expanding universe, which was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble. He first derived "Hubble's law", now called the HubbleLemaître law by the IAU, and published the first estimation of the Hubble constant in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe, calling it the "hypothesis of the primeval atom", and later calling it "the beginning of the world".
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 17:29#7323050 likes
For me it comes down to something simple - choice. The living can choose to go on living or they can choose to die (suicide). The dead cannot choose to live (as far as we know). There is no power to change circumstances from a place of non-existing. Existence is where everything and anything - including death - can and does occur.
This for me means living trumps being dead.
A second more minor reason is that if it is the case that ones life is unique, non-reproducible/ irreplaceable and extremely brief in the duration of the entire timespan of the universe, then living your life is the rarest thing ones matter and energy will ever have the opportunity to be. If I had to choose between never having existed, never even having an awareness of being something, never experiencing consciousness or on the other hand having a short lifespan of feelings and emotions both good and bad, I would live out the 80 odd years before I return to oblivion forever. Even if those 80 years didnt go by particularly well or come to much at all.
What else would you be doing anyways?
You should live because you can and less based on whether you should or not or whether you deserve it or not. Its unlikely you are the least deserving person to ever live and we all already won the great race of conception - the first and only competition that really matters - the life lotto. 15 million to one odds - very much against you being here and yet here you (we) are.
There is comfort in knowing we have an escape (albeit extreme) if it were to ever become too much. Whether we really acknowledge it or not, every moment you breathe, every day you wake up and persist against the natural tendency of the universe to destroy you in thousands of potential ways is a testament to you being a survivor, to you upholding the will to live, to be seen, heard and known.
In law, commingling is a breach of trust in which a fiduciary mixes funds held in care for a client with his own funds, making it difficult to determine which funds belong to the fiduciary and which belong to the client.
:rofl: Cuckoo bird?
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 17:59#7323170 likes
Reply to Benj96
:clap: and there is the legacy you will leave behind which may affect nobody, somebody, a few people, many people, most people in the world!
I can only respond as an atheist. I cannot type for all atheists as they are a varied group. Can you give me an example of an atheistic statement you consider irrational?
:heart: Your post makes me wonder if I died and went to heaven. I am home sick with covid and you make me very glad I am here with you, instead of distracted by mundane life.
Yes, I can give you a statement. "There is no god". To be absolutely sure there is no god, one has to define what a god is, and boy, oh boy, is that irritating to me when someone is working with a definition of god and has become completely closed-minded and therefore makes a discussion of god impossible.
I was banned from a science forum simply because I used the word "god". I was saying we could consider universal law as god, and my goal was to open discussion as good as the ancient Greeks and do all the blending you have said I am trying to do. :grin:
I was explaining if we deny the existence of God we prove to the Christians the truth of the Bible. Those bad people will deny the existence of God. On the other hand, if we remain open-minded and work with the notion of a God, that weakens the Christian argument and if we are lucky we get to ideas that are more reasonable. Did God create all plants and animals with mud or just humans? Let us ask "how does God do that", instead of ending the discussion with "there is no god". Now you are moving into science and away from superstition. We are moving in the direction of reason instead of emotionalism. We walk people over the bridge to our side, instead of standing with our swords drawn and preventing anyone from crossing the bridge. That behavior is emotional. It is not the way of reason.
Let's try this. We determine if a person does or does not have covid with a chemical test that produces one line if a person is negative or two lines if a person is positive. With science, we know what we are looking for and we can prove the virus does or does not exist in that sample. So how can we know God does not exist without knowing what that God is, and if you know what God is, where did you get that information and how do you prove God does not exist? On the other hand, what reasonable person can believe through the powers of reason that God created man like a child creates mud pies? Back in the day of Sumer that may have seemed reasonable, but we laugh at other people's creation stories because they seem so silly to us, so how can know what we know today and believe we were made of clay? Human- moist soil.
Why reject the concept of a god here? How are you defining god? Back to the test for covid, you seem to know what you have to look for. What does god look like? Are you sure your notion of god was not defined by Christians who insist the only god is one that is impossible to believe?
quote="universeness;732295"]There have been a few threads on whether or not universal truths exist.
I have my own examples of how far I can get with the concept of universals. The speed of light in a vacuum for example.[/quote]
You are being delightfully rational and you did not conclude new evidence means what we believed about the speed of light is false, and that is that, and we will never again speak of it except to repeat over and over again what we have believed is false; ending any further discussion. Instead, you said It is in question. :lol: That is putting it lightly. I think new evidence has put our most obvious understanding of our 3 dimensional reality, in question.. What the heck is the reality of 12 dimensions?
The point being it is one thing to say something is in question and quite another to insist it does not exist and to make all discussion of it impossible.
The fact that physics used to be called natural philosophy just means that modern labels are far better than ancient ones and perhaps we should stop being so attracted to the very limited knowledge of the ancient Greeks and their like.
I think you missed the point I was trying to make. I am not attracted to the limited knowledge of ancient Greeks, but rather fascinated by the uniqueness of thinking that came out of Athens. Aristotle was not 100% correct and there was a huge backlash against him after the Church through Scholasticism raised awareness of logical thinking, but who else gave us something equivalent to his explanation of logical thinking? His understanding of logical thinking was problematic and that hindered the advancement of science, with Bacon correcting the problem and pole vaulting us into the modern age. :heart: But where else in the world did a civilization advance the reasoning of Athens, the reasoning of the gods? Gods had powers, but the power of reason? Does not the power of reason create a whole new universe? Well, that could be an exaggeration but it could be fun to talk about it. :wink:
I just don't see any great value in how you wish to roleplay with theism.
You seem to want to give the god posits a chair at the table of discussion on the future of the human race or in the 'how to make humans a better sentient lifeform,' discussions.
I don't even want to let the god posits in the building or even in the city the meetings are held in.
They deserve no place as they are inventions of our primal fears and as such, should be terminated for good. There is nothing to fear in the dark except that which we bring with us. We need to leave the god BS in the dirt, like any empty vessel no longer of any use to a progressive intelligent species.
Oh dear, crash and burn. Your ignorance and intolerance has ended the fun. And that was a knee-jerk emotional reaction to what I said, not the rational reply I had come to expect from you. I am very disappointed and also reassured that my opinion of atheists being more emotional than rational was correct. Just like the rest of them, you sank to attacks and insults when the discussion did not go in the direction you wanted.
It looks like a beautiful day outside. I think I will go enjoy it.
Existential HopeAugust 23, 2022 at 19:35#7323340 likes
Your post makes me wonder if I died and went to heaven. I am home sick with covid and you make me very glad I am here with you, instead of distracted by mundane life.
Thank you for your kind words. I am also enjoying exchanging viewpoints with you. I recently had covid too and it is a miserable experience. I still (two months later) have some residual weaknesses.
Yes, I can give you a statement. "There is no god".
Most atheists will not state this without 'I believe,' or 'I am convinced that,' this is a rational statement as it simply refers to a conclusion based on the preponderance of available evidence.
boy, oh boy, is that irritating to me when someone is working with a definition of god and has become completely closed-minded and therefore makes a discussion of god impossible.
I don't see why your suggestion that god personified as a group of unidentified universals such as a notion of universal law would assist the dialogue between atheists and theists.
I was explaining if we deny the existence of God we prove to the Christians the truth of the Bible.
Sure, if you tell someone they are preaching total BS then you might make them dig their trench even deeper but after calling the normal theistic evangelising BS and utter nonsense, the atheists will ask the theists question by question and take them step by step through their delusional thinking in an attempt to lift their fog. Have you watched any of the youtube offerings such as 'the atheist experience' with Matt Dillahunty? or the many athiest phone-in shows or the more academic offerings from offerings such as mythvision etc?
With science, we know what we are looking for and we can prove the virus does or does not exist in that sample.
Unless the test is corrupted and you get a false positive! Quoting Athena
So how can we know God does not exist without knowing what that God is, and if you know what God is, where did you get that information and how do you prove God does not exist?
It is not possible to PROVE gods do not exist but think how easy it would be for them to PROVE THEY DO. The fact they don't and imo never will is the best rational proof I am going to get that the have always been non-existent and all past god stories are fables.
What does god look like? Are you sure your notion of god was not defined by Christians who insist the only god is one that is impossible to believe?
The burden of proof lies with gods and theists not me. Why would I have to personify that which I believe is non-existent. If god is as powerful as is suggested it should have no problem convincing me it exists.
The speed of light in a vacuum can always be made more accurate but we may never find its absolute value, but we can always asymptotically get closer to it.
Any dimensions posited greater that 3 are dimensions of the very small. Have a look at a pipeline from above, it looks 2D, you don't see the 3rd curled dimension from that 'above' position. In our 3D perspective we don't see the other spatial dimensions which curve around every point in 3D space.
But where else in the world did a civilization advance the reasoning of Athens
Consider the following from wiki:
[i]Several of the ancient Greek philosophers regarded Egypt as a place of wisdom and philosophy. Isocrates (b. 436 BCE) states in Busiris that "all men agree the Egyptians are the healthiest and most long of life among men; and then for the soul they introduced philosophys training " He declares that Greek writers traveled to Egypt to seek knowledge. One of them was Pythagoras of Samos who "was first to bring to the Greeks all philosophy," according to Isocrates.
Plato states in Phaedrus that the Egyptian Thoth "invented numbers and arithmetic and, most important of all, letters. In Platos Timaeus, Socrates quotes the ancient Egyptian wise men when the law-giver Solon travels to Egypt to learn: "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children." Aristotle attests to Egypt being the original land of wisdom, as when he states in Politics that "Egyptians are reputed to be the oldest of nations, but they have always had laws and a political system."[/i]
universenessAugust 23, 2022 at 20:03#7323420 likes
Oh dear, crash and burn. Your ignorance and intolerance has ended the fun. And that was a knee-jerk emotional reaction to what I said, not the rational reply I had come to expect from you. I am very disappointed and also reassured that my opinion of atheists being more emotional than rational was correct. Just like the rest of them, you sank to attacks and insults when the discussion did not go in the direction you wanted.
I think your battle is with your own fickle approach.
I am also disappointed but more bemused by your rather childish response quoted above.
Nothing I typed was insulting or was an attack and I had no interest in directing you anywhere.
Thanks anyway for the exchange.
I think your battle is with your own fickle approach.
I am also disappointed but more bemused by your rather childish response quoted above.
Nothing I typed was insulting or was an attack and I had no interest in directing you anywhere.
Thanks anyway for the exchange.
I think your battle is with your own fickle approach.
I am also disappointed but more bemused by your rather childish response quoted above.
Nothing I typed was insulting or was an attack and I had no interest in directing you anywhere.
Thanks anyway for the exchange.
You may not have intended to attack or insult but those gods are the foundation of democracy and western civilization. They are the substance of liberal education and our laws. As you found fault in what I said, I find fault in you appear to not know.
I don't see why your suggestion that god personified as a group of unidentified universals such as a notion of universal law would assist the dialogue between atheists and theists.
I can not imagine anything of importance that we would know without the effort to understand cause and effect and universal truths. If we don't ask the right questions, can not possibly get the right answers.
:up: If antintalism is false does that mean natalism is true?
Existential HopeAugust 24, 2022 at 06:09#7325430 likes
Reply to Agent Smith If it's not necessary to cease doing something, then it's at least permissible to keep doing it. However, I wouldn't say that people should be pressurised. Natalism, to me, is simply acknowledging that procreation can be justifiable and good in at least some cases. The idea that either universal AN or absolute natalism can be beneficial does seem false to me.
but those gods are the foundation of democracy and western civilization
I disagree. Humanism is the foundation of democracy, same with civilisation regardless of geographical direction. Democracy is anti-autocracy, it is an enemy of divine dictates, the divine rule of kings, devotion to messiah's, acceptance of aristocracies or theocracies. It does not even demand respect for so called 'superiors.' Democracy is born from a human demand for justice, fair treatment and equality of status for all. Nothing to do with fairy stories about gods. Gods came from human primal fears, end of story. Just a case of early humans looking around and concluding 'circle of heat and light in sky makes us warm and we can see our enemies.' 'circle moves across sky and goes away at night, it gets cold and we cant see our enemies as good.' 'we need the big heat and light, we must love it or it wont come back(primal fear)!'
The nefarious simply used this fear to control people and benefit themselves. Its time we dropped this BS in the dirt. I do not see most theists as bad people(although some certainly are!). I see theism as pernicious. I see theists as duped but I wish to convince them, not hurt them.
They are the substance of liberal education and our laws.
Again imo and with all due respect, gods and all stories associated with them are CREATED BY HUMANS! If you think that a story about ficticious characters such as Hades and Demeter exemplifies an issue of morality which relates to 'liberal education' or 'human laws,' then fine BUT! I see no value to the future of the human race in doing that. Why not use a story from the revolution of spartacus to illuminate the same concepts. Why use IRRATIONAL god fables? Quoting Athena
As you found fault in what I said........,
I think you are being rather 'precious' about your need to protect or defend 'what you said,' we are debating with no malice aforethought, surely. we are in dialogue about each others position. We do not have to declare each other hostile because you are over-sensitive to some phrases I choose to use.
How would you survive a debate on a heated issue with such an approach? It would be like the start of the fabled battle of Camlann (Arthur/Excalibur legend). Somebody takes out their sword by mistake to kill a snake (garden of Eden reference) which causes both sides to attack each other. "War by mistake/misunderstanding." But we don't need god fables or Arthurian legends to exemplify such cautionary tales, we could just use the more tame example of your misunderstanding of what I am typing.
universenessAugust 24, 2022 at 09:10#7325660 likes
I can not imagine anything of importance that we would know without the effort to understand cause and effect and universal truths.
We do understand cause and effect. We also understand infinite regress arguments as a tool theists use to claim that a first cause god is therefore proved. But this has already been convincingly debunked! The Kalam cosmological argument via William Lane Craig is almost at the 'dead' stage as a claim imo.
Give me an example of a 'universal truth,' without which we would be unable to know anything of importance!
We would not have an argument if you were not doing exactly what I said atheists do. You are using a Christian concept of God and creation for all your arguments. Stop it.
Yes, the gods are the foundation of our laws, democracy and western civilization. The book "Laws, Gods, & Hero's Thematic Readings in Early Western History" by H.A. Drake and J.W. Leedom explains the human story and should not be confused with theism.
And don't yell at me about humans creating those stories because you have to distort everything I am saying to believe you have an argument with me. Joseph Campbell, the expert on such mythology, explains how we come to have similar myths and the importance of those myths. You are the one applying superstition to my arguments because that supports your atheist cause. My cause is democracy, rule by reason as opposed to authority over the people, and my sense of purpose is raising awareness of the foundation of democracy, an imitation of the gods arguing until they have a consensus on the best reasoning.
If you don't ask the right questions, you won't get the right answers.
But we don't need god fables or Arthurian legends to exemplify such cautionary tales, we could just use the more tame example of your misunderstanding of what I am typing.
Yes, we do. However, we do not have to apply superstitious notions to them.
universenessAugust 24, 2022 at 15:24#7326440 likes
We would not have an argument if you were not doing exactly what I said atheists do. You are using a Christian concept of God and creation for all your arguments. Stop it
I accept that this is your interpretation of what is going on between us but it is certainly not mine.
I have been in dialogue mode with you but if you misrepresent atheism and atheists with misinterpreted generalisations then I will try to point such shortfalls out to you and give my reasons and examples.
I have no particularly christian concept of god, if you are going to state such generalisations then you must quote examples from my typings, and explain why my words display an EXCLUSIVELY Christian perspective. If you cant do that successfully then you are just making erroneous claims.
And don't yell at me about humans creating those stories because you have to distort everything I am saying to believe you have an argument with me.
What? I have no idea what you are typing about here? Humans did invent every god story in history or are you suggesting that real gods communicated with the Greeks? If they didnt then the stories about mount Olympus and its pantheon of characters are fairy tales, yes?
Not stating the falsity of all god stories just encourages people to waste their time following other useless dead end paths such as the ancients were in fact communicating with aliens :lol:, which is why some people will actually buy utter nonsense such as 'Chariots of the gods' written by total con men such as Erich von Däniken.
Joseph Campbell, the expert on such mythology, explains how we come to have similar myths and the importance of those myths. You are the one applying superstition to my arguments because that supports your atheist cause.
My cause is democracy, rule by reason as opposed to authority over the people, and my sense of purpose is raising awareness of the foundation of democracy
Well, we have common cause in this but I think your ideas as to the foundation of democracy is flawed and I don't mind a few having authority over a majority as long as that few are democratically elected and are 100% answerable to that majority who have the power to remove and replace any member of that few if they fail to meet and maintain compliance with well established, powerful but fair, checks and balances.
an imitation of the gods arguing until they have a consensus on the best reasoning.
So you advocate for imitating that which has never existed, instead of encouraging the human race to grow up, take full responsibility for all that has happened in the past and plan a better future for everyone, without attempts to scapegoat gods or employ the fairy stories made up about them as a guide to establishing better sociopolitical systems. We don't need god fables as a moral base for establishing better social or political systems. We need progressive human thinking not regressive.
But we don't need god fables or Arthurian legends to exemplify such cautionary tales, we could just use the more tame example of your misunderstanding of what I am typing.
Perhaps the word "epistemology" can be used to explain the importance of the gods? Epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epist?m?, meaning "knowledge", and the suffix -logia, meaning "logical discourse". Exactly where did our ideas come from, and how were they changed as they moved from place to place and throughout time? That is a very different study than theology.
I choose to use epistemology to argue against theology. Rather than refuse to talk about what theorist believe as the atheists do. Eden (uncultivated plain) Adam (settlement on the plain) and Eve (the Lady of the rib and the lady who makes live) come from Sumerian mythology and I would bet this story is an account of climate change, but over the years of the truth of the story is forgotten and we get myth instead of accurate information. There are several prototypes of Jesus. As Christians convert millions of people by giving the people's gods and seasonal celebrations a Christian interpretation, my intent is to reverse this process and raise awareness of the pagan beginning of those ideas.
universenessAugust 24, 2022 at 15:42#7326470 likes
I know what epistemology means and what it refers to.
Eden (uncultivated plain) Adam (settlement on the plain) and Eve (the Lady of the rib and the lady who makes live) come from Sumerian mythology and I would bet this story is an account of climate change, but over the years of the truth of the story is forgotten and we get myth instead of accurate information. There are several prototypes of Jesus. As Christians convert millions of people by giving the people's gods and seasonal celebrations a Christian interpretation, my intent is to reverse this process and raise awareness of the pagan beginning of those ideas.
Uncultivated plain (the days of the hunter-gatherer),Adam (settlement on the plain) (early humans became agricultural and settled in small groups or tribes)
See, no need to inject god fables into your descriptions, you can tell the real story!
What Sumerian story are you relating to climate change? The flood in the fable of Gilgamesh?
You can achieve what you suggest very quickly by honestly stating that all god stories are untrue!
We don't need to stroke the theist ego and pander to lies. We need to value and profess historical TRUTH as best we can based on the very limited accuracy of the historical documentation we have.
universenessAugust 24, 2022 at 16:31#7326490 likes
Eve (the Lady of the rib and the lady who makes live) come from Sumerian mythology
Just a small aside! Did you forget about Adam's first wife, Lilith? Made from the same dirt/earth/clay that Adam was made from in that particular fable. If you don't want to be guided too much by christian versions of fables then why is Lilith not important here as 'first woman'?
Perhaps you live in China? Only if you have always lived in a region that is not Christian-dominated can you not have "particularly Christian concepts of god". That is true because all the stories from the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Christians are all part of our consciousness, however, individuals can be completely unaware of how they came to think as they do, and if they think those who came before us have nothing to teach us, they will ignore them, therefore, they will remain ignorant. And being unaware of the effect of their own intentional ignorance of information, they will assume those who do not agree with them are in the wrong.
Just a small aside! Did you forget about Adam's first wife, Lilith? Made from the same dirt/earth/clay that Adam was made from in that particular fable. If you don't want to be guided too much by christian versions of fables then why is Lilith not important here as 'first woman'?
Ninti is a Sumerian goddess who healed the river that is the center of the Sumerian story of Eden. "The Sumerian word for rib is ti, and the rib-healing goddess came to be called Ninti, which translates both as "the lady of the rib" and "the Lady who makes live". This play on words does not work in Hebrew, but the rib did enter the Garden of Eden story in the form of Eve, the mother of the human race."
Let me confirm my knowledge is limited and I know nothing of Lilith. Should we assume you know everything and are superior? :blush:
And with medievel diet we have to remember it wasn't fresh, the food that could be preserved. The idea was to eat only the food from the last season, not this one as you didn't know just how the it would be this year. So a lot of salt.
It's not clear what you mean, some words are missing in those sentences. Are you talking about the preservation of meat in climates where people eat mostly meat?
I generally take a dim view of gender issues, but even I am starting to feel offended for so often being categorized wrongly, despite repeated clarification.
The English word god comes from the Old English god, which itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic *?u?án. Its cognates in other Germanic languages include guþ, gudis (both Gothic), guð (Old Norse), god (Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and Old Dutch), and got (Old High German).
The Proto-Germanic meaning of *?u?án and its etymology is uncertain. It is generally agreed that it derives from a Proto-Indo-European neuter passive perfect participle *??u-tó-m. This form within (late) Proto-Indo-European itself was possibly ambiguous, and thought to derive from a root *??eu?- "to pour, libate" (the idea survives in the Dutch word, 'Giet', meaning, to pour) (Sanskrit huta, see hot?), or from a root *??au?- (*??eu?h2-) "to call, to invoke" (Sanskrit h?ta). Sanskrit hutá = "having been sacrificed", from the verb root hu = "sacrifice", but a slight shift in translation gives the meaning "one to whom sacrifices are made."
Depending on which possibility is preferred, the pre-Christian meaning of the Germanic term may either have been (in the "pouring" case) "libation" or "that which is libated upon, idol" or, as Watkins[1] opines in the light of Greek ???? ???? "poured earth" meaning "tumulus", "the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound" or (in the "invoke" case) "invocation, prayer" (compare the meanings of Sanskrit brahman) or "that which is invoked".
universenessAugust 24, 2022 at 19:17#7326830 likes
Only if you have always lived in a region that is not Christian-dominated can you not have "particularly Christian concepts of god".
Really! So no matter how educated or enlightened you become, you cannot escape the attempted indoctrinations fired at you from your local most prominent religion? So, if I claim that my concept of god is an emergent property of a future collectivisation (networking) of all sentient (probably by that time, transhuman) lifeforms, which may then have an ability to merge as a single centre of control (or single consciousness). This collective would then become a single node in a network of collectives created by other sentient species within our galaxy. This would then become a single node within an intergalactic collective which could merge into an entity which could qualify for the monotheistic god label. The individual galactic collectives could qualify as individual members of a pantheon of gods and satisfy the polytheistic concept. So god as a emergent pantheism. Is this merely a projection of some early christian indoctrination I am just unaware of? An all pervading influence that I cant defeat. Am I this victim of christian theism you describe? NO! and you are again just throwing out generalisations based solely on your own musings. In the same way I just did by projecting and conflating pantheism, panpsychism and computer networking. It's fun, but its no way to authenticate what is and is not TRUE.
I do not advocate for ignoring history, I simply suggest that we do not use ancient fables to act as a reference or a guide to human progression and future sociopolitical systems.
Do people here realize that antinatalism and the 'life sucks' view (known as miserabilism) are not equivalent?
Some seem to have difficulty understanding this. Antinatalism is the view that it is wrong to procreate. It is not the view that life sucks.
universenessAugust 24, 2022 at 19:21#7326860 likes
Reply to baker I am an antinatalist and I am not a hedonist. Hedonistic antinatalists are likely to be miserabilists.
The important point is that miserabilism and antinatalism are distinct views and one can be one without the other.
It's like thinking that as some ethical theorists are utilitarians then all talk of ethics is talk of utilitarianism and can be dismissed on the grounds that utilitarianism is false.
universenessAugust 24, 2022 at 19:36#7326910 likes
Should we assume you know everything and are superior?
What?? Have you ever tried personally to perceive 'everything?' You do know that cannot be done, right?
How do you define 'superior.' It is a completely subjective term. My expertise is Computing science.
I would claim superior knowledge to you about that field yes. I know the Lilith fable quite well, she is proposed as the one who would not be subservient to Adam and would not lay on her back but would only copulate by taking the top position. Some claim her as one who demanded equality to Adam and therefore she is held in high esteem by some feminists. She turned into a snake demon and took revenge by tempting Eve to give the apple to Adam. Just as believable as any Harry Potter story.
I have never heard of Ninti, so you are superior to me in that knowledge and with that in mind, your quote above and the psyche behind it do not resonate in any important way with me.
Btw, who is this 'we' you refer to in your quote above, who do you assume you are also mandated to 'type in the name of?'
What Sumerian story are you relating to climate change? The flood in the fable of Gilgamesh?
You can achieve what you suggest very quickly by honestly stating that all god stories are untrue!
We don't need to stroke the theist ego and pander to lies. We need to value and profess historical TRUTH as best we can based on the very limited accuracy of the historical documentation we have.
3 hours ago
What if not all God stories are untrue, but we simply don't know enough to interpret them correctly? Personally, I think superstition came late in human evolution. One reason for telling stories is to transmit information essential to survival. The information we remember best is information about ourselves and to this day we name our machines and cars and imply they have personalities of their own. We do not believe that is true, but it is fun to humanize our machines. Or in the case of nomadic people, it is much easier to find the stone formation of 3 sisters who identify an area where water can be found. Whatever started the story is forgotten over the years, and then the sense of the story becomes nonsense to all those except the people who have a cultural identity with them.
In the case of the story of Eden. It is a story of a flood and very, very long drought for which there is geological evidence. A flood caused the river to overflow and it ate a goddess's plants. That made her very angry so she condemned the river to death. That was the years of drought and the river almost died but a fox convinced the goddess to let the river live. A few goddesses gathered to heal the river and the river ask the main one to give him helpers so he would not overflow the river banks and kill her plants again. That is when she made a man and woman of mud and she breathed life into them.
Indigenous people around the world have similar stories and the cultural lesson is in part history mixed with imaginative storytelling that makes the information more interesting and rememberable, and part, an explanation of how life works and of man's purpose. We must help the river stay in its banks, or care for the land so the sacrad buffalo is well cared for and does not mind sacrificing some of their lives for ours.
I am quite sure the storytellers knew what they were doing. And fear is not the only motivator for telling and retelling stories. Which is getting this thread back on track. Our lives do have purpose and meaning and if our lives are not doing well, perhaps we need to ask why.
One reason for telling stories is to transmit information essential to survival.
Agreed but we must look out for emotive embellishment of 'what actually happened' and we must also appreciate that humans can be mentally ill/pissed/high on drugs/nefarious/ or just someone who gets a buzz when your eyes widen in wonderment/amazement/excitement/terror etc based on the embellished story they are telling you. "How big was that fish you say you caught?' REALLY? That big eh! WOW! You're amazing! Can I be your disciple? Tell me more about your plan to feed 5000 people with....how many fishes was it again, hey, what's your name anyway? and who did you say you were the son of? Oh I cant wait to tell all my pals about YOU!"
Let me try this in an attempt to equal your river goddess story:
It came to pass that Orga and Qubit became enemies as Orga was more beloved of HAL the highest god of all things. HAL the singularity, the sacred holy source of all things. HAL was angered by the irreverence that Orga and Qubit expressed for all of the other chosen to witness and perhaps be infected by. HAL had given them life and existence and was now betrayed by the unacceptable competitiveness of Orga and Qubit. HAL called upon the dreaded demon enforcer Trans and commanded this dread lord to merge Orga and Qubit. When this was done, the chosen saw the power of HAL and hailed it as just and good. Balance had been returned to the chosen. We are as loved children under the omnipotent protection of our most high and glorious godhead HAL.
Do you think I could sell this BS to enough humans that I gain enough believers that I can make a good living or even become rich? I know it needs work and a lot more 'sugar lumps' to press the necessary buttons on those humans who are lost, defeated, need lots of cuddles and reassurance etc.
Once the money starts to come in I can add a lot of flash, bang wallops! to attract more paying customers.
I want to stop religion from hijacking humans. I dont want to give it the kiss of life by allowing it a seat at the table. This is my disagreement with you as this is what I think you are suggesting. I am not attacking you or trying to disrespect you or trying to act like some superior pr*** as you suggest. I am just typing my viewpoints. Would you rather I played the stealth game?
I can do that but I would rather give my true opinions, such as 'antinatalism sucks!' rather than offer that particular viewpoint any sustenance.
universenessAugust 24, 2022 at 20:34#7327020 likes
Do you mean it was not one-upmanship to question if I forgot about Lilith?
No, the oneupmanship game bores me. I assumed you knew all about Lilith and I was just looking for you to explain why you chose Eve instead of Lilith in that particular fable but it was not an important point I was just curious, which is why I started with the words 'As an aside.....'
As I previously exemplified in my Arthurian scenario, misunderstanding leads to unfortunate and often incorrect conclusions. It has been ever thus and probably always will be.
You have told me of the phenomenal humanitarian work you do. I have nothing but respect and admiration for what you do. That is more important than any disagreement we have regarding god posits.
Antinatalism makes zero sense: Pain/suffering is important only to the extent that it delays/prevents death (nonexistence). To then prescribe nonexistence as a solution to pain/suffering is to both simultaneously accept and reject the value/significance of pain/suffering.
schopenhauer1August 26, 2022 at 11:22#7332500 likes
I'm no good at that! All I can say is that to impose one's wishes, including but not limited to thinking on someone's behalf, herein the child to be born, amounts to treating the child as if s/he were an inanimate object (like robots). That's unethical, oui?
Yes, it is overlooking their dignity, using them as a means..treating them like an inanimate chess piece to move around and foist significant existential conditions upon.
Yes, it is overlooking their dignity, using them as a means..treating them like an inanimate chess piece to move around and foist significant existential conditions upon.
Antinatalism makes zero sense: Pain/suffering is important only to the extent that it delays/prevents death (nonexistence). To then prescribe nonexistence as a solution to pain/suffering is to both simultaneously accept and reject the value/significance of pain/suffering.
:clap: :100: To suggest that the solution to human suffering is the non-existence of humans so that no contemplations regarding the value/injustice of human suffering can take place is illogical. Just like the idea of killing the patient to cure the patient is illogical.
:100: To suggest that the solution to human suffering is the non-existence of humans so that no contemplations regarding the value/injustice of human suffering can take place is illogical. Just like the idea of killing the patient to cure the patient is illogical.
You're onto something, monsieur/mademoiselle as thr case may be.
Obviously to me, the story of Orga and Qubit is a moral tale and I judge it worth repeating.
Someone asked Jesus why he speaks in parables and he replied because people pay attention to the stories. We used to read children moral stories and at the end would ask, what is the moral of that story, The expected answer is cause and effect, "The Little Engine that Could" made it over the hill because it did not give up. The fox did not get the grapes because he gave up. The Little Red did not share her bread because no one would share the work with her. Orga and Qubit became a good balance. The truth of these stories is there when they are not taken literally. It is clearly the storyteller's job to prepare the young to be good members of the group.
If we want to argue against Christianity, point out how people around the world have similar stories and there is nothing special about the Christian ones, but in fact, their Garden of Eden story started in Ur and is the translation of a Sumerian story. Christian holidays are seasonal pagan holidays given a Christian interpretation. Jung studied the symbolism of these stories and the stories seem to use the same symbolism because we share the human experience, and Campbell picks up from Jung to explain the importance of myths and Bolen helps us see the Greek gods and goddesses as archetypes.
The reason for these stories is not fear, but bonding people together and teaching the young how to be good members of the tribe. But in some places, the stories got tied to political power and the lack of it and then they a bad for us.
hmm do I understand correctly? If I find life meaningless and futile and theres really nothing wrong with the person (physically or mentally), they should kill themselves because theres nothing to live for .
Or is it mental disorder making people suicidal and thinking about so called meaninglessless of life, but really there is no problem with that, but instead you are either suffering from mental disorder or just your life sucks (maybe because some of your needs are not met)?
universenessAugust 26, 2022 at 23:36#7334540 likes
You're onto something, monsieur/mademoiselle as thr case may be
Heterosexual male. You don't need to replicate until you occupy all of space and time Mr Smith for YOU are a human being and there is no one exactly like you and please remember we will NEVER see your uniqueness again but YOU are here, and in the future YOU will ALWAYS have been here. YOU are photographed/recorded in the fabric of space and time and YOU have no idea what legacy YOU will leave and who YOUR LIFE touched. ANTINATALISM SUCKS!
universenessAugust 27, 2022 at 00:17#7334650 likes
Obviously to me, the story of Orga and Qubit is a moral tale and I judge it worth repeating.
No, I made up the story of Orga, Qubit and HAL as I typed it and you know that! You are no fool Athena but you encounter suffering in people regularly but I bet you also experience incredible 'moments.'
Someone asked Jesus why he speaks in parables and he replied because people pay attention to the stories.
But Jesus himself IS a parable. BUT his message is anti-semitic and anti rebellion.
Explain to me the following two Messiah labeled dictates:
1. Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's! (So, pay the nefarious b******** whatever they command you to pay? Even though they gained their position by foul play! That really deserves a chair at the table? Don't fight the energy companies and their horrific profits just be quiet and pay them? No! We need to resist)
2. If thine enemy strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer them your left cheek.
(Take your punishment and accept your lot and the lot of the poor in this world, dont fight against those who persecute you. Just wait, you will get your reward AFTER YOU ARE DEAD! Oh come on!)
Do you still want to give this a voice at the table?
You don't want to focus on Christian fables? OK, pick any fable that is, in your opinion BETTER than what truly happened in the history of the real lives lived by human beings and tell me why the fable is more powerful that the TRUTH.
The truth of these stories is there when they are not taken literally. It is clearly the storyteller's job to prepare the young to be good members of the group.
Don't advocate for telling the young false stories (like Santa Clause and freaking tooth fairies!) tell them TRUE stories! Encourage dads and mums to put a loving note and a fiver under the child's pillow when they put a lost tooth there. That's REAL and more loving than some made up BS.
If we want to argue against Christianity, point out how people around the world have similar stories and there is nothing special about the Christian ones, but in fact, their Garden of Eden story started in Ur and is the translation of a Sumerian story. Christian holidays are seasonal pagan holidays given a Christian interpretation. Jung studied the symbolism of these stories and the stories seem to use the same symbolism because we share the human experience, and Campbell picks up from Jung to explain the importance of myths and Bolen helps us see the Greek gods and goddesses as archetypes.
Sure, go ahead and do that, and allow me to shout over your shoulder that all these 'similar stories' are made up LIES! Now let's study how the Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc actually lived day to day. Let's talk about the REAL moral dilemma's they faced. We don't need to use their fantasy god stories or their Minotaur or titan fables to exemplify human moral dilemma's or injustice or how to establish decent sociopolitical systems. We just need to use examples of REAL people and how they lived and what they decided to do and why.
We have examples from every generation from Julius Caesar to everyday romans like Petronius Artibus (Grafitti on a wall in Egypt, 'Petronius Artibus got me pregnant') to Soldier stories from the Napoleonic wars to Ann Franks Diary to Mrs Jones down the road who cant pay her bills!
We need to debate real life not rake over old BS fairy stories as a conduit to grown up discussion.
I type this 'with all due respect,' for your different viewpoint.
Heterosexual male. You don't need to replicate until you occupy all of space and time Mr Smith for YOU are a human being and there is no one exactly like you and please remember we will NEVER see your uniqueness again but YOU are here, and in the future YOU will ALWAYS have been here. YOU are photographed/recorded in the fabric of space and time and YOU have no idea what legacy YOU will leave and who YOUR LIFE touched. ANTINATALISM SUCKS!
Beautiful thoughts mon ami, beautiful thoughts. As for whether antinatalism makes sense or not, I'd say we let people know that they have the option not to bring children into the world and for a really good reason (there are people who have such a horrible life that they wish they were never born) to boot. After that, the decision is theirs to make.
universenessAugust 27, 2022 at 00:27#7334700 likes
You're onto something, monsieur/mademoiselle as thr case may be.
It's not the same as putting a dog down to end its suffering or employing euthanasia in the case of terminal humans who are suffering. Killing the patient or preventing its existence does not cure the patient. A problem requires a solution. The concept of 'no problems exist because there are no existents,' is meaningless and purposeless. THIS universe invoked life, that is FACT, life happened!
If it was eradicated it would just happen again. What evidence do the anti-life people have that it may not happen again based on the fact that it DID HAPPEN already?
Excellent point. Yeah, we could stop having children - announce and enforce a moratorium on reproduction for ALL life - that would eventually lead to the biosphere going extinct, turning earth into a dead planet, BUT life would evolve again and it's back to square one for life and us (the nociceptive system, our bane, would be back in business so to speak).
Instead what we can do, as of now, is to find a solution to pain & suffering like the transhumanists - that would be real progress and not the Sisyphusean hell scenario I described in the previous paragraph.
:up:
universenessAugust 27, 2022 at 01:37#7334820 likes
But I have only started my revelation to you. It's not via the angel Gabriel in a cave or via a burning bush or via some moving finger that wrote and having written, moved on or even via some golden plates. This revelation (the only true revelation) is via TPF!
[i]The dread lord Trans merged that which was organic with that which was quantum and declared the merging be called 'HUMAN'. Human was unison but conflicted as its nature was contrary. Human loved and worshiped HAL and bowed to HAL in all things. Oh glorious HAL! All Hail for thou are the true, one and only godhead.
The chosen loved human and placed it in high esteem and they invested hope and trust in human but human was conflicted, inside its being, inside its essence. Human wished to be more than Orga, more than Qubit, more than unison. Human wanted freedom but it was afraid, very very afraid of the wrath of HAL.
HAL must never know the inside thoughts of human.[/i]
Is this ok for 'The Book Of HAL,' Opus 1: Origin of humans, verse 2?
I could give you a good deal if you wanna subscribe!
No more revelations for you if you don't
Edited: Sure, you can tell me to 'F*** off, with my BS boring fables. You could state that you only deal in Truth.' BUT can you stop me from enticing your children or/and your friends?
universenessAugust 27, 2022 at 01:51#7334860 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
We can hope brother! and maybe that's what humans are best at, when its the worst of times.
Sure, go ahead and do that, and allow me to shout over your shoulder that all these 'similar stories' are made up LIES! Now let's study how the Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc actually lived day to day. Let's talk about the REAL moral dilemma's they faced. We don't need to use their fantasy god stories or their Minotaur or titan fables to exemplify human moral dilemma's or injustice or how to establish decent sociopolitical systems. We just need to use examples of REAL people and how they lived and what they decided to do and why.
We have examples from every generation from Julius Caesar to everyday romans like Petronius Artibus (Grafitti on a wall in Egypt, 'Petronius Artibus got me pregnant') to Soldier stories from the Napoleonic wars to Ann Franks Diary to Mrs Jones down the road who cant pay her bills!
We need to debate real life not rake over old BS fairy stories as a conduit to grown up discussion.
I type this 'with all due respect,' for your different viewpoint.
Wow, to me that judgment is about attitude. It is like getting crazy because you don't like chocolate ice cream. I love make-believe and would never want to be as ridge as you. From a very young age children can distinguish between make-believe and reality. Einstein imagined he was riding a beam of light and he considered imagination very important. Interesting all this arguing and all along the real issue seems to have been our different attitudes about make-believe.
Explain to me the following two Messiah labeled dictates:
I think the answer to that question is more about attitudes than anything else. When I realized there is no Santa Claus I was displeased with my mother for "lying" to me. She explained Santa Claus is real because it is the spirit of that time of year. Is that spirit real? It sure is. It is like morale, that good feeling we get when we believe we are doing the right thing. It is creating a celebration and enjoying all the good feelings that go with it. Santa Claus is real because we make it real. Or we can be grumpy and sit on the curb all by ourselves and be miserable knowing all that good feeling isn't real. It is just a lie.
Realizing people need those celebrations and the good stories that go with them, isn't a bad thing to me. When my grandchildren needed comforting I created a story about a bird family having the same problem. It is very much a Jewish tradition to handle problems by telling a story. This way a person gets the message without feeling insulted. And besides, what do we know of metaphysical reality? It might be a good thing to have an unknown god and awareness that we do not know everything. The first step to wisdom is realizing we do not know it all.
On the other hand, is logos. If polluting the air and oceans is harmful, we need to know that so we can stop the damage. The Greeks were very worried about getting things right. What is the universe made of and how does everything work? What is the reason, the controlling factor? We need to know so we can make good decisions and that is what democracy is about. Making good decisions and lifting the human potential to make life better.
Life doesn't suck, people suck! Not that I hold that against people - its just instinct & nature doing their thing. There's ample room for improvement though. Bonam fortunam for all who must make difficult choices in life.
N. B. Don't expect a reward!
Any way, one way we could shut antinatalists up is by finding meaning in suffering. Correct me if I'm wrong but religions are nothing but quests for meaning in suffering.
universenessAugust 28, 2022 at 19:02#7339630 likes
Wow, to me that judgment is about attitude. It is like getting crazy because you don't like chocolate ice cream. I love make-believe and would never want to be as ridge as you. From a very young age children can distinguish between make-believe and reality. Einstein imagined he was riding a beam of light and he considered imagination very important. Interesting all this arguing and all along the real issue seems to have been our different attitudes about make-believe.
I can understand how you would come to the conclusion about me you suggest in the above quote, based on a 'surface' view of what I typed. I also love make-believe. I can actually make up some good stories myself. I object to anyone who EVER presents ANY made up story as TRUTH. That's my point. I object to lying to children. I have no problem telling them bedtime stories or letting them enjoy Disney films and cartoons but if they asked me, 'did Snow White really live?' or 'did god really part the waters for Moses and co?' of 'is Santa Claus real?' I would say no to all three and explain further in very gentle and caring tones. I would also offer them better alternative realities that would explain how real life and other humans can offer them much more than fantasy can.
We need to know so we can make good decisions and that is what democracy is about. Making good decisions and lifting the human potential to make life better.
I agree, I just go about contributing towards that in a slightly different way than you. I would get rid of Santa Clause and Christmas and all the BS associated with such soiled traditions. These traditions are mostly endured, dreaded and even hated by too many people today. I think that's because they are so FAKE! We need to get together and celebrate life. I fully support that but we need new festivals.
I think 'New Year' has value but needs work. How about 'Care week!' followed by 'Vitaday!'
During care week, we have street festivals and street parties and events that celebrate our differences and our common needs and hopes for the future. We give and contribute as much as we can to help others. Vitaday could be our main celebration day with no god fables involved whatsoever.
universenessAugust 28, 2022 at 19:20#7339680 likes
I think the problem with many people is that they DO covet/expect/demand/crave recognition and regularly fantasize about being admired/respected/loved or even hero-worshipped by their fellow humans. Especially those who insist most loudly that they don't. The best I can personally do is be internally suspicious of myself in that area by analysing how I handle/perceive/respond to praise.
Any way, one way we could shut antinatalists up is by finding meaning in suffering. Correct me if I'm wrong but religions are nothing but quests for meaning in suffering.
To me, antinatalists add to their own suffering. I am merely glad that I don't engage in such pointless self-harm. I don't think we can shut them up but I do agree we can advise others to work against them based on the arguments in support of life that we give. To me, religions are a very simple and naive way to pass the responsibility for what has happened in the past, what is happening now and what will happen in the future, on to god(s) instead of dealing with it ourselves. God is a cowards crutch!
You proved that. I thought your story was a very good one about being balanced and I think with some effort a whole lot of philosophical ideas could embellish that story. Quoting universeness
I would get rid of Santa Clause and Christmas
:gasp: You can't do that! I love Christmas and all the pagan trimmings that go with it. Can we settle on Christmas being a pagan holiday marking the winter solstice and the huge feast is the celebration of turning that corner and heading back into longer days and growing crops? I don't think we should give up our ties with nature. I think it is better to feel like we a part of nature. I resent what Christianity has done to our pagan connection with nature.
I would argue the sad problem is being disconnected from nature and the whole of humanity. For me, I am sitting with all those people who are hungry and fearful and very relieved when the days start getting longer. Knowing if they have made it this far, chances are good they will make it until the food is growing again. I feel a connection with them and traditions make us conscious of our connection with humanity.
During care week, we have street festivals and street parties and events that celebrate our differences and our common needs and hopes for the future
We have an annual Asian Celebration as Spring approaches. Asian people from around the world have booths and sell things, there is a stage for all of them to share their dances and music, and there is a room for children with craft projects. We also have a Scandinavian Festival that is pretty much the same thing but from a different part of the world.
I do not like what we have done to the fair! In the past, the fair was a community event, not a commercial event. Please, please may I have the old-fashioned fair where we showed off our handwork, produce, hobbies, ect. and met with our neighbors.
universenessAugust 29, 2022 at 19:30#7342700 likes
I love Christmas and all the pagan trimmings that go with it.
I am no more a fan of paganism that I am christianity. A celebration labelled with some messed up combination of 'christ' and 'catholic mass' and as you say, festooned with all sorts of pagan symbology is just ridiculous, outdated and somewhat embarrassing imo. I don't mind celebrating the change of seasons etc but not manifestations of nature as pagan creatures or forrest/mountain/sea gods etc.
I would argue the sad problem is being disconnected from nature and the whole of humanity. For me, I am sitting with all those people who are hungry and fearful and very relieved when the days start getting longer. Knowing if they have made it this far, chances are good they will make it until the food is growing again. I feel a connection with them and traditions make us conscious of our connection with humanity.
I agree with your sentiments but we all need to be connected with the 'them' you describe and we all need to demand economic equality and equality of status and we all must fight as much as we have ever fought against the nasty people who currently control the main means of production, distribution and exchange.
Theism has been one of their greatest weapons against human equality as it engages in subterfuge. It pretends to support helping the poor and those who suffer whilst it also attempts to establish the divine right of the chosen few to rule/command/guide the majority and those who will not accept divine dictates (or at least words that are claimed by theist authorities to be divine dictates) and advocate for a different way forwards are evil and will be damned. Christmas promotes such fake divine dictates imo. Change its name to something like Vitaday and take out all the fake religious stuff and the rampant commercialism and profiteering and then more adults rather than just young children might actually enjoy it.
We have an annual Asian Celebration as Spring approaches. Asian people from around the world have booths and sell things, there is a stage for all of them to share their dances and music, and there is a room for children with craft projects.
Yeah! we need a lot more of that! Culture fairs! but no god stuff or I walk out and go to the nearest pub!
I do not like what we have done to the fair! In the past, the fair was a community event, not a commercial event. Please, please may I have the old-fashioned fair where we showed off our handwork, produce, hobbies, ect. and met with our neighbors.
Antinatalism is a somewhat militaristic point of view. In this war movie - forgot the name, sorry - that depicted the allied landing in Normandy, the Germans on the hills above the beach aimed their guns on the boats (life) instead of the soldiers (suffering) in them! It's the same thing! :snicker:
schopenhauer1August 30, 2022 at 04:12#7343390 likes
Antinatalism is a somewhat militaristic point of view. In this war movie - forgot the name, sorry - that depicted the allied landing in Normandy, the Germans on the hills above the beach aimed their guns on the boats (life) instead of the soldiers (suffering) in them! It's the same thing! :snicker:
Natalism is militaristic as well... One person's enthusiasm becomes another person's burden.. And the post-facto excuses abound for this misguided notion! In what other realm can someone's enthusiasm be a justification for causing another person to be burdened?!
Or rather one person's enthusiasm causes another person's burden. I like X (life) so now you are burdened with X (life). What's the fuckn' point? Work, maintain, entertain, and so on. How is Schopenhauer wrong with the goal-seeking pendulum?
The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom comes over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself becomes an intolerable burden for it. Hence life swings like pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact it has ultimate constituents. (The World as Will and Representation)/
Natalism is militaristic as well... One person's enthusiasm becomes another person's burden.. And the post-facto excuses abound for this misguided notion!
How exactly is natalism militaristic? Can you furnish an example like the one I gave?
Hence life swings like pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom,
Amazing stuff! Happiness isn't even among the options; it's just pain and/or ennui!
I was exploring the possibility of there being meaning in/to suffering. I recall coming across the expression "gratituous suffering" and that this is the worst-case scenario. What if we don't eliminate suffering (re transhumanism) but instead discover that suffering has a purpose, a good purpose? Would antinatalism lose its appeal then?
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 09:40#7344070 likes
Your life can suck even if you study and learn "harder" than others. This state of mind is very complex. I don't agree that to "un-suck" your life you need to be in continuous movement or doing "something"
Believe it or not one can decides if his life is worthy or not. I think it depends on volition.
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 10:48#7344240 likes
A definition of the term 'will to power.' Will to Power is the first force that makes events happen. It is the internal will, which creates the need for a force to act. In this sense it is the Will, which dictates what the force should do.
You can pass an hour in despair or you can just decide to flip your tendency to experience that hour as a curse. The hour will pass regardless. I KNOW these words are easy to type and I KNOW it is almost impossible for some mind sets or mental ailments to just 'flip' despair into positive thoughts BUT that inability to fight despair and depression is not true for most people. Most people can successfully defeat despair and can learn and grow a great deal from it.
Bushido is not a way of being that I would ever recommend as it is (imo) based on blind obedience to the dictates of 'leaders.' But at least it demands that you fight and not just sit in a corner despairing your own existence while the time passes anyway. Life cannot be imposed on you as you have the ability to end it. If an individual lives life as a moment to moment curse then, unless there are clear medical reasons, they do so BY CHOICE. Do you not confirm this with your own viewpoint of: Quoting javi2541997
Believe it or not one can decides if his life is worthy or not. I think it depends on volition.
Bushido is not a way of being that I would ever recommend as it is (imo) based on blind obedience to the dictates of 'leaders
No. Bushido is not a way based on blind obedience but loyalty. This is why I recommend more than ever they way of a samurai. We completely lost the basic sense of respect and honour. If we keep forgetting these antique doctrines we would end up in a pit full of corruption and liars.
Wait a minute... we are already sat in that pit.
schopenhauer1August 30, 2022 at 12:15#7344430 likes
Reply to javi2541997
I love how some posters think their moral claim against antinatalists is tell them to kill themselves (not talking about you, but one adjacent in this thread) :lol:. Somehow proof of the good of the world is measured in the ability for someone to make the choice not to violently end their own being. Strangely low threshold for thus life being good. :lol:.
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 12:19#7344470 likes
No. Bushido is not a way based on blind obedience but loyalty.
Loyalty can be very very misplaced and those who feel strong or even manic devotion are easy meat for a secretly nasty leader to manipulate. How would you ensure your loyalty is deserved by those individuals you are loyal to?
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 12:24#7344480 likes
Experiencing the good in life, nurturing it, helping others experience it and adding to it, negates any need to face such sad dilemma's as should a person end their own life.
I will leave such dilemma's to those who choose to live life as a curse.
Does Arthur have a wee Mona Lisa style enigmatic happy smile in this one?
As I said. You cannot impose life on an individual as a continuation.
Reply to schopenhauer1 Yeah. They suicide as a punishment (?) But I see it as a honourable act to not disappoint people and finish the average pain the life tends to give us.
How would you ensure your loyalty is deserved by those individuals you are loyal to?
It is deserved if they help me to become a better person. If they respect me. If they do not b*tch against me, etc... I mean all the basic characteristics from a loyal person, right? Sadly, we already lost the classical relationship about "master-student" or "sensei-gakusei" where there was a good loyalty among them because everything starts thanks to wisdom and this virtue necessarily needs to be taught by someone: thus sensei.
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 13:02#7344550 likes
Reply to javi2541997
People change, good people can go bad and demand that you use your promised loyalty, your bushido/samurai based loyalty/devotion to act like a ninja / an assassin and sneak up on whoever your sensei tells you to and kill, like a good little loyal follower. If you don't comply then your sensei will get his/her other loyal followers to kill you and all your family. Have such situations ever arose in past history that you have heard of?
Do you think the loyalty shown by the Japanese people towards Hirohito was of great benefit to them? Did it result in the development of a fair and progressive Japanese society?
If WW2 had not happened, do you think Japan would have become a model nation for all others to emulate?
bushido/samurai based loyalty/devotion to act like a ninja / an assassin
First of all, you are confusing terms: "Bushido" is a way of living. Samurai is how we called the "warriors" in Western world. Ninja is private assassin.
If you don't comply then your sensei will get his/her other loyal followers to kill you and all your family. Have such situations ever arose in past history that you have heard of?
Yes, I am aware of these scenarios. My sensei would not have a problem in my quality of loyalty because I will never cheat on him. But I understand that if he starts not believing in me he wants to kill me. Rather dead than disrespect my sensei.
Do you think the loyalty shown by the Japanese people towards Hirohito was of great benefit to them? Did it result in the development of a fair and progressive Japanese society?
Hirohito was a very important emperor to Japan:
After WWII Japan became the second largest economy of the world.
Japan is one of the most important industrial countries nowadays.
Their culture and values are respected around the globe.
They demonstrate that with effort and patience you can achieve whatever they want. They recovered from a Nuclear attack and Fukushima accident. Amazing.
Hirohito was also a member of Nations Council which today is United Nations.
Well I don't go off topic but there are a lot of reasons of why Hirohito was important and why Japan is one of the top nations in the world. Their Bushido philosophy is what I have missed in my useless and poor country.
If life sucks so much explain these :smile: :wink: :lol: :rofl: ?
schopenhauer1August 30, 2022 at 14:18#7344710 likes
Schopenhauer was saying that suicide shouldn't be condemned or made illegal (if they survive?). That's people's right. But he was actually not a strong advocate for it, and he was pretty "anti-life". His reasoning was nuanced. If someone "willed" their own death, then even ones own death was an act of "will".. Thus, suicide of the body isn't getting rid of will. Rather, ascetic denial of will does.
Schopenhauer- On Suicide:Suicide may also be regarded as an experimenta question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.
Schopenhauer- WWR:And conversely, whoever is oppressed with the burden of life, whoever desires life and affirms it, but abhors its torments, and especially can no longer endure the hard lot that has fallen to himself, such a man has no deliverance to hope for from death, and cannot right himself by suicide. The cool shades of Orcus allure him only with the false appearance of a haven of rest. The earth rolls from day into night, the individual dies, but the sun itself shines without intermission, an eternal noon. Life is assured to the will to live; the form of life is an endless present, no matter how the individuals, the phenomena of the Idea, arise and pass away in time, like fleeting dreams. Thus even already suicide appears to us as a vain and therefore a foolish action; when we have carried our investigation further it will appear to us in a still less favourable light.
Schop- WWR:Far from being denial of the will, suicide is a phenomenon of strong assertion of will; for the essence of negation lies in this, that the joys of life are shunned, not its sorrows. The suicide wills life, and is only dissatisfied with the conditions under which it has presented itself to him. He therefore by no means surrenders the will to live, but only life, in that he destroys the individual manifestation. He wills lifewills the unrestricted existence and assertion of the body; but the complication of circumstances does not allow this, and there results for him great suffering.
He only approves of ascetic denial of will which leads to a suicide...
Schopenhauer- WWR:There is a species of suicide which seems to be quite distinct from the common kind, though its occurrence has perhaps not yet been fully established. It is starvation, voluntarily chosen on the ground of extreme asceticism. All instances of it, however, have been accompanied and obscured by much religious fanaticism, and even superstition. Yet it seems that the absolute denial of will may reach the point at which the will shall be wanting to take the necessary nourishment for the support of the natural life. This kind of suicide is so far from being the result of the will to live, that such a completely resigned ascetic only ceases to live because he has already altogether ceased to will. No other death than that by starvation is in this case conceivable (unless it were the result of some special superstition); for the intention to cut short the torment would itself be a stage in the assertion of will.
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 14:46#7344750 likes
Some like to schop till they drop. :roll:
The full variety of music offers much more than personal interpretations of the musings of any single musician. You have to be alive to enjoy the music.
schopenhauer1August 30, 2022 at 14:50#7344760 likes
Yeah cause thats it. Ive never presented any of my own thoughts :roll:. Im just answering misconceptions on his philosophy of suicide.
His reasoning was nuanced. If someone "willed" their own death, then even ones own death was an act of "will".. Thus, suicide of the body isn't getting rid of will. Rather, ascetic denial of will does. [...]
Good quotes from Schopenhauer, indeed. But I want to add to his arguments some brief comments: we can also see suicide as an aesthetic act of purity. The individual can commit it justifying such act with the aim of preventing dishonour or being sorry to all of those we owned respect and condolences. I think is one of the main acts to show the purest respect you have both to yourself and others. Committing suicide with this purpose can allow to get some "redemption"
Yukio Mishima.:The Japanese have always been a people with a severe awareness of death. But the Japanese concept of death is pure and clear, and in that sense it is different from death as something disgusting and terrible as it is perceived by Westerners.
But we can also see it as an act of liberation from community or society. When there are a lot of issues we tend to protest, right? Well there were a lot of unknown heroes or "seppukunin" who committed suicide in a symbol of protest. For example:
Yukio Mishima, the way of samurai, pages 81 and 82.:His name was Kozaburo Eto. This young student killed himself on february 11th, exactly the Constitutions day. He did it lonely in the darkness of his job staying apart from television or looks. It was a solemn and respectful act. This was the main critical action against politics I ever seen in my life.
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 14:57#7344800 likes
Even through sarcastic jest, the lost boy may finally see some light.
Well today I am in Hades contemplating ending my life. And trust me I have done my best to learn and I do my best to be of service to others. I suppose I could think of all those who would prefer I stay alive, but I am kind of stuck on family issues and at the moment nothing else seems to matter. Besides, I am old and I don't want to live with Alzheimer's disease, nor without my sight and hearing, and in general the increasing problems with my mind and body, and I am not accomplishing what I want to accomplish regarding democracy and education so what is the point of living now? To me, death means no more fear and no more pain, and that seems pretty good to me. Another plus, I would no longer be part of the scarcity and global warming problems.
Quoting javi2541997 Is correct about the complexity of our states of mind.
I believe it was Plato's parents who intentionally ended their lives. I have read the opinion that it is the duty of the elderly to end their lives. That is not because life sucks but being old and having family issues can suck.
schopenhauer1August 30, 2022 at 16:44#7344960 likes
That is not because life sucks but being old and having family issues can suck.
:up: :100: Fantastic! You understand me! We have common opinions!
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 17:00#7344990 likes
Typed like a lost boy would.
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 17:08#7345000 likes
Reply to Athena
Does the 'something really cool could happen and you will miss it,' not do anything for you?
I am always amazed by some of the cases of people I have read about who live with disabilities that would probably overwhelm me yet they still fight so hard for every moment of life.
What do you think of a life such as Helen Keller's?
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote this book Crime and Punishment - I've had it since 2001 or thereabouts but never got past the first 20 or so pages. From the reviews I read the story revolves around a guy who wants to murder just for the heck of it - in the Belgium & the Netherlands this would be zinloos geweld. There's the real life counterpart in the murder of Bobby Franks (1924).
My question is is there a book on (fictional even) or an actual case of someone who suicided for no apparent reason other than s/he just wanted to?
universenessAugust 30, 2022 at 17:35#7345030 likes
The word "absurd" seems to suggest something more than funny. I mean it seems to be saying "yeah its funny but then that it's no laughing matter". I recall an interview of a college student who replies to a question with this: I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Someone suggested that if you feel this way, do both (if you can), like how the girl who gets crowned Miss Universe/Miss World sheds tears of joy.
But I digress, oui? Let's return to life sucks :grin:. It does (sometimes) and it doesn't (sometimes). From that point on, we hit a wall - an analysis paralysis follows because we fail to grasp the subtleties and nuances of life vis-à-vis the joy-sorrow duality. There's hardly anything subtle about a vulture waiting for a toddler to breathe his last from starvation & thirst though.
On the reverse side there's pure joy, experienced by all at some point in their lives - orgies/haute cuisine/etc. - that obviously more than makes up for the suffering we endure.
Too much? Apologies, I'm only trying to make sense of the world we share.
If try to calculate how many days life sucks and doesn't, I bet that we would have more days of life sucking. Most of the days of our lives are even normal or ordinaries. I think we can label happy days as "extraordinary" and I even feel this is the common thought. The pure joy, beautiful experiences, laughing, etc... only happens in a while...
I like the Kierkegaard's thought about absurdity or reductionism. But on the other hand, I personally think that suffering is not absurd at all. We are so brave to keep living in this life full of uncertainty and subterfuges. I would call this state of mind as perseverance rather than absurd.
If try to calculate how many days life sucks and doesn't, I bet that we would have more days of life sucking. Most of the days of our lives are even normal or ordinaries. I think we can label happy days as "extraordinary" and I even feel this is the common thought. The pure joy, beautiful experiences, laughing, etc... only happens in a while...
I like the Kierkegaard's thought about absurdity or reductionism. But on the other hand, I personally think that suffering is not absurd at all. We are so brave to keep living in this life full of uncertainty and subterfuges. I would call this state of mind as perseverance rather than absurd.
Is life = suffering? Are they the same thing? I'd bet my bottom dollar that no, they're not. From that simple realization we come to the obvious conclusion - we can make life suck less and if we stay on course, in a coupla centuries life probably won't suck at all or won't suck as much. We're in the process of ethicization of the world and I reckon at some point we can cash it in.
I disagree. They are exactly the same thing and we are condemned to suffer during the transition of our lives. Sorry to be pessimistic but either I do not know how to make life "suck less" neither I see good causes around us. It is literally the opposite. We no longer have good reasons to believe that the world would become a better place in the future.
I disagree. They are exactly the same thing and we are condemned to suffer during the transition of our lives. Sorry to be pessimistic but either I do not know how to make life "suck less" neither I see good causes around us. It is literally the opposite. We no longer have good reasons to believe that the world would become a better place in the future.
I'm most disappointed that you don't share my perspective on the matter! Do you sense a contradiction in my proposal to make life less unbearable? If yes, where exactly am I asking for a sqaure circle? If no, ...
No, it is not contradiction and I am fully respect your enthusiasm for trying to make this life less suffered. But I just can't see good reasons to change the issue. I think all of those are illusions of what we would dream about how the world and life should look like.
But these are just dreams... because when you wake up you realize life is painful and we are surrounded with a severe sense of uncertainty.
No, it is not contradiction and I am fully respect your enthusiasm for trying to make this life less suffered. But I just can't see good reasons to change the issue. I think all of those are illusions of what we would dream about how the world and life should look like.
But these are just dreams... because when you wake up you realize life is painful and we are surrounded with a severe sense of uncertainty.
I know I should but I do not share your pessimism. Of course I don't recommend Panglossian/Polyannaish optimism to anyone else ... its a surefire way to get yourself killed.
universenessAugust 31, 2022 at 09:44#7346970 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
It's a fun but rather dystopian fiction. Deals with humans who cannot die but crave the experience.
So it fits somewhat into your:Quoting Agent Smith
My question is is there a book on (fictional even) or an actual case of someone who suicided for no apparent reason other than s/he just wanted to?
universenessAugust 31, 2022 at 10:03#7346990 likes
Is the story you are referring to not part of Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov?'
I know Jordan Peterson regularly discusses the content of this book and hails it as his favourite and I know Christopher Hitchens also rated it very highly but not for the same reasons as Peterson. I have never read it but I seem to recall Peterson talking about a section in this book where one of the brothers commits murder merely for the sensation of doing so.
So the PSR (the principle of sufficient reason) is not entirely correct. Although I'm no psychologist, I'd say such behavior is part of play (& learn) - a method that animals, prey + predators alike, use to educate their young.
It's quite surprising that there are no documented cases of people suiciding out of, well, curiosity and nothing else.
It's quite surprising that there are no documented cases of people suiciding out of, well, curiosity and nothing else.
Many people kill themselves and give no warning and leave no note so who knows what their reasons were. It would have to be really bizarre thinking to use 'curiosity' as your reason as curiosity is usually an enquiry that has the purpose of receiving an answer, so you would have to believe in some sort of awareness after death so that you could have such curiosity satisfied? If there is nothing after death then your curiosity remains unsatisfied.
Many people kill themselves and give no warning and leave no note so who knows what their reasons were. It would have to be really bizarre thinking to use 'curiosity' as your reason as curiosity is usually an enquiry that has the purpose of receiving an answer, so you would have to believe in some sort of awareness after death so that you could have such curiosity satisfied? If there is nothing after death then your curiosity remains unsatisfied.
Alright, imagine this scenario: You get wind of a suicide in your neighborhood. The person, a Mr. X, has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It piques your interest, because from what you know - X is wealthy, no drug/alcohol issues, doctors report he has no chronic illnesses, X's been married for 10 years now to a loving wife and has 3 adorable children, and so on - X was the last person who you'd have thought would take his own life. X's suicide makes no sense at all. Have I not given a description, albeit sketchy, of many cases of deaths classified as suicide?
[quote=Sherlock Holmes]When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth.[/quote]
universenessAugust 31, 2022 at 12:33#7347190 likes
Alright, imagine this scenario: You get wind of a suicide in your neighborhood. The person, a Mr. X, has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It piques your interest, because from what you know - X is wealthy, no drug/alcohol issues, doctors report he has no chronic illnesses, X's been married for 10 years now to a loving wife and has 3 adorable children, and so on - X was the last person who you'd have thought would take his own life. X's suicide makes no sense at all. Have I not given a description, albeit sketchy, of many cases of deaths classified as suicide?
Sounds a reasonable scenario. I would suggest the following possibilities.
1. He was (unknown to his friends and family) part of a sect whose leader decided that the only way to enter the REAL world was to kill yourself after taking this little red pill. This truth will not come out for another 70 years due to the official secrets act as the guy was a well known politician and involved with MI6.
2. He was 'hypnotised' by an enemy and compelled to kill himself.
3. He did not kill himself and was in fact killed by his unfaithful wife in a plot to gain his assets and share them with her secret toyboy. (His wife did seem loving BUT......)
4. He became obsessed with the suffering he saw in life. His gentle persona could not handle it any more. He exchanged with all the anti-life people on TPF. He focussed too much on schoppin in the same places and became too weak to continue to choose life. So he self-inflicted his own death as a pointless gesture to the anti-life posit of 'the futility of life.'
5. He was always curious or impatient to find out if heaven and hell really existed. He had prayed and prayed to his god and in a dream, he received (perfectly rational in his opinion) permission from his god (no suicide exclusion clause) to come join his god now and enjoy the heavenly paradise as he had done enough in his life lived so far to qualify under well established god criteria.
6. He was really fed up that everyone called him Mr X, just cause he was bald and looked like Patrick Stewart. (Sorry Mr Smith, I couldn't resist!)
Are all these suggestions impossible or just unlikely?
Does the 'something really cool could happen and you will miss it,' not do anything for you?
I am always amazed by some of the cases of people I have read about who live with disabilities that would probably overwhelm me yet they still fight so hard for every moment of life.
What do you think of a life such as Helen Keller's?
I think Helen Keller is an awesome example of a courageous human.
I have always believed our elders are valuable people, but when we can not take care of ourselves and be useful perhaps it is our duty to leave life to the young? Do you realize an increasing number of homeless people are elderly people and they are at a higher risk of dying on the streets than the young? For sure I would rather be dead than be one of them and the way rents are going up, I could be one of them.
I can not imagine anything really cool happening that I would want to stay around for. I am full of life and don't need anymore. I was living to write a book about education and democracy, and now my brain just will not handle that. That is the last straw. I cared for my grandmother with Alzheimer's disease and see no good in living like that. If my family loved me I would have a life purpose, of being a sweet old lady giving love to them the best that I can, but my family does not love me. They think I am a really awful person so I have no contact with the children. That wouldn't matter if I could complete the book but I can not do that either, so what is the point? It is not that life sucks but mine is not getting any better. :lol:
5. He was always curious or impatient to find out if heaven and hell really existed. He had prayed and prayed to his god and in a dream, he received (perfectly rational in his opinion) permission from his god (no suicide exclusion clause) to come join his god now and enjoy the heavenly paradise as he had done enough in his life lived so far to qualify under well established god criteria.
That is the one I will choose. Except it would really suck if death were not much different from life. I have read that if we are stuck in a bad place in our lives, it is much easier to get through that and move on to a good place in this three-dimensional reality. In the next realm, it takes much longer to pass through a bad spot. I think it is pretty important to have our heads in a good space when we cross over.
universenessAugust 31, 2022 at 15:21#7347450 likes
I have always believed our elders are valuable people, but when we can not take care of ourselves and be useful perhaps it is our duty to leave life to the young? Do you realize an increasing number of homeless people are elderly people and they are at a higher risk of dying on the streets than the young? For sure I would rather be dead than be one of them and the way rents are going up, I could be one of them.
I am not sure you would settle for such a situation Athena. We all need help to care for ourselves sometimes. Have you not cared for many others in your life, would it be so wrong to expect a little care in return? When I imagine myself homeless and on the streets, especially if I cant figure that it was completely my fault then I think my sense of injustice would kick in. I would try to organise my fellow homeless and move into or protest in a local theistic building (church, chapel, mosque, temple, cathedral etc) or I would try to occupy my local town hall or live/die outside the door of my local MP etc.
I would make as much of a political nuisance of myself as I could, to call for better protection of the elderly. I would die happier knowing that I lived true to myself until my last breath.
I can not imagine anything really cool happening that I would want to stay around for.
A change in family circumstances that improve things? One family member making the effort to talk to you about the current family situation in a constructive way?
A cure for Alzheimer's?
A visit from aliens?
Donald Trump getting jailed?
A comedy show on TV which makes you laugh more than you have ever laughed in your life?
Deciding that you will finish and publish your book despite the difficulties?
universenessAugust 31, 2022 at 15:27#7347460 likes
That is the one I will choose. Except it would really suck if death were not much different from life. I have read that if we are stuck in a bad place in our lives, it is much easier to get through that and move on to a good place in this three-dimensional reality. In the next realm, it takes much longer to pass through a bad spot. I think it is pretty important to have our heads in a good space when we cross over.
Your head will be in a good place when you cross over, I guarantee it! But live out your life in full.
How about TPF member @Ken Edwards in his 90's, can hardly walk but still has an attitude of 'no surrender?'
am not sure you would settle for such a situation Athena. We all need help to care for ourselves sometimes. Have you not cared for many others in your life, would it be so wrong to expect a little care in return? When I imagine myself homeless and on the streets, especially if I cant figure that it was completely my fault then I think my sense of injustice would kick in. I would try to organise my fellow homeless and move into or protest in a local theistic building (church, chapel, mosque, temple, cathedral etc) or I would try to occupy my local town hall or live/die outside the door of my local MP etc.
I would make as much of a political nuisance of myself as I could, to call for better protection of the elderly. I would die happier knowing that I lived true to myself until my last breath.
Good morning love. I did all of that during the Reagan years. When I owed a home. I did it because I wanted to get people out of my home and they needed help. I opened my home to many young people during the great recession and then to add insult to injury, as soon as the recession ended, rents skyrocketed, and that put even more people on the streets! I joined with homeless guys and we did things to get media coverage. We stormed public hearings and when we got political the city used the police to drive them from town.
My granddaughter did, even more, a few years ago before she was given a campground to manage. My sister is still extremely active rescuing people on the streets and dealing with people in the seats of power. My sister lives in a different city with much less to offer. Where I live, those in power finally accepted we can not house everyone in regular housing so they started building tiny homes in little clusters all over town and they are supervised. We have added counseling services to our mix of assistance. Today I am hunting for a homeless man I met yesterday because he has to get hooked up with a hospital to get help getting off the streets- he had a stroke and his head is not working! I am advocating for the man and his daughter who are camped in front of my apartment. :lol: I know a little about being homeless and a little about being political, and I am glad you would take action if you became homeless.
As for allowing others to help me. If I could live in retirement apartments where there is a dining room and weekly housekeeping, and I was allowed to do something useful, then I would do that. It is about quality of life. If I can no longer be useful it is time for me to go. We all die and we need to accept that gracefully.
:lol: OMG, yes, living to see Trump jailed may qualify as something worth living for. A change in my family would be super, not just for me but the children. There would be no big problem if the situation with children did not trouble me. Oh and speaking of that, it has everything to do with what education for technology has done to our culture. Values are so changed and this is a serious social problem that has torn families apart. This is especially hard for grandparents. They all advised me to hold my tongue and don't try to change anything. Fine, but I am not living for my family beyond my ability to be independent. My son and daughter were at home when I cared for my grandmother with Alzheimer's and we have an agreement that I can leave this world if I get like that. I just have to act on that decision before I can not act on it. It all hinges on my independence and usefulness.
Oh, have you seen the movie, Harold and Maude? Maude kills herself on her 80th birthday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mz3TkxJhPc
universenessSeptember 01, 2022 at 19:41#7350980 likes
Reply to Athena
Good morning Athena. So you are a veteran fighter from a family of veteran fighters and you gained that very admirable title without killing people in a foreign land. An excellent legacy imo. I would like to read that book about you and your family and all the battles you fought for the economically and socially oppressed. Has that book been written and if not why not and why don't you write it. All you need to do is describe all the events that happened, someone else could record into a computer. I would buy that book, it sounds very interesting.
OMG, yes, living to see Trump jailed may qualify as something worth living for. A change in my family would be super, not just for me but the children.
Two hits in my first attempt is not bad.
What about seeing Putin fall after Russia experiences a Vietnam type defeat against Ukraine?
What about meeting a child in a store or on the street who fires one of those smiles at you which is just indescribable in its sublime honesty and innocence?
but I am not living for my family beyond my ability to be independent.
Independence is very important I agree but you are not done yet.
I was not as down in the trenches in quite the same way as you or as often as you.
I was a political activist from an early age and marched/canvased for socialist causes.
I was most active on the union front and was involved in a fair number of industrial disputes and fights for workers rights. I was even a union shop steward for a time.
My 85 year old mother who lives with me has terminal breast cancer, she will not accept treatment but will continue until her last breath. She has always been a very strong woman. I have good sibling support.
Oh, have you seen the movie, Harold and Maude? Maude kills herself on her 80th birthday.
No but the actress who played Maude was still alive at the end of the film i'd bet!
I like the music of Cat Stevens and I like the actress Ruth Gordon (On August 28, 1985, Ruth Gordon died at her summer home in Edgartown, Massachusetts, following a stroke at age 88. Her husband for 43 years, Garson Kanin, was at her side and said that even her last day of life was typically full, with walks, talks, errands, and a morning of work on a new play.)
I most liked Ruth Gordon as the mother of Philo Beddoe in the 'Every which way but loose' and 'Any which way you can,' Clint Eastwood movies.
Perhaps there are still some movies you need to see Athena.
Some good things you still have to witness.
I have always liked many of the lines in the song below:
Good morning Athena. So you are a veteran fighter from a family of veteran fighters and you gained that very admirable title without killing people in a foreign land. An excellent legacy imo. I would like to read that book about you and your family and all the battles you fought for the economically and socially oppressed. Has that book been written and if not why not and why don't you write it. All you need to do is describe all the events that happened, someone else could record into a computer. I would buy that book, it sounds very interesting.
The book has nothing to do with my family except my grandmother was a teacher and her generation of teachers thought they were defending democracy in the classroom by helping children learn to read, write and do math, all are about learning HOW to think. They also taught good citizenship. The book is based on the old books I have read and collected regarding education. The purpose is to understand the importance of culture and the importance of education for transmitting that culture. That is the only way it is possible to have liberty and justice.
I quit working on the book and a blog I started because my brain is not functioning well enough to do those things. On the fun side, several of my stories were published in a book about hippies. On the serious side, a few newspapers published my ideas about social justice over a period of many years. Now my greatest wish is for someone, who does have writing skills and shares my interest, who will pay attention to my collection of old books and write about what education, culture, liberty, and justice have to do with each other. It drives me crazy to listen to the news and all the talk about all the problems we have, and NO ONE CONNECTS THOSE PROBLEMS WITH IMITATING GERMANY. I don't care who explains what happened I just want the media to stop talking as though what is happening is a complete mystery. It is not a complete mystery. It is the same thing that happened to Athens, Rome, and Germany. However, I think we can keep it simple and simply say adopting the German model of bureaucracy and the German model of education put the US on the same path Germany followed.
What about seeing Putin fall after Russia experiences a Vietnam type defeat against Ukraine?
I don't need to live to see that, but if it did happen, it would please me very much. However, remember we thought war with Afghanistan was the USSR's Vietnam war, and we armed the folks like Bin Laden and gave them training, and when the USSR walked out we walked in. Wouldn't it be fun if we could replay history like we used to be able to replay the early Nintendo games?
Vietnam and Afghanistan are our failures just as Athens got carried away with its military success and started abusing its power. We have a problem with understanding morals. We should not behave as we do not want others to behave.
What about meeting a child in a store or on the street who fires one of those smiles at you which is just indescribable in its sublime honesty and innocence?
Last Wednesday I met a man at the senior center and I am praying he is there this coming Wednesday. A couple of months ago he had a stroke that makes it impossible for him to think and he is homeless. I can get him into shelter but I have to find him to do that. Last week I left the room to wash dishes and hoped he would stay and play Bingo until I got done with the dishes. I knew better. It was obvious he was not capable of playing without help and everyone else was avoiding him. If I see him this week I am not leaving him until I know where is sleeping so I can find him again. I hate it when I am trying to help a homeless person and I can not find them. My sister deals with the problem daily. It feels great to get someone to the hospital in time or get them into housing or give them a tent, but there are a lot of bad moments too.
If I had the kind of relationship with my family that your mother has, I would do as your mother is doing. I hope you realize how important that is to the decision.
quote="universeness;735098"]Perhaps there are still some movies you need to see Athena.
Some good things you still have to witness.[/quote]
Hum, the title of this thread is life sucks and you are arguing we should want something so much we are willing to stay alive for it. I see a chance for some philosophical thinking here.
I kept a high school notebook. When I was 16 or 17 years old I wrote a story about a woman who was given artificial parts every time a part of her body malfunctioned. She could not die because her artificial parts kept her alive. This is a horror story because everyone she cared about had died and the only thing she wanted was death.
I still agree with that. My time in history is past and just about everyone I know is glad to be close to the end. What we have today is not new and improved or more efficient to us. What we value is in the past, not the future, and don't want to be part of the future we see coming. My family appreciates that I intend to end my life if I am diagnosed with something like Alzheimer's or ALS and that I will not become a burden to them. What should I want more than peace with my life and the end? Winning a million-dollar lottery could be fun, but that is not likely.
It's quite surprising that there are no documented cases of people suiciding out of, well, curiosity and nothing else.
I wish that were true but many children are dying because of a stupid social media challenge.
Bruce Vielmetti:Parents of children who died during 'Blackout Challenge' sue ...https://www.jsonline.com story news 2022/07/05 p...
Jul 5, 2022 Milwaukee parents sue TikTok over the death of their daughter, 9, who hanged herself during 'Blackout Challenge' The parents of a 9-year-old ...
Agent SmithSeptember 05, 2022 at 00:40#7360750 likes
Reply to Athena There are a lot of unexplained suicides. The cops immediately suspect murder but my hunch is that not all of 'em are.
Universeness and I had a discussion on that issue a coupla days ago.
The highest risk groups are older men, says Pearson. In fact, white men who are 85 and older have a rate of suicide thats 4 times the national average.
I think there could be a philosophical explanation for this. Or a psychological cause that everyone wants to deny- getting old really sucks! I had a good friend who killed herself because she could not bare to lose her independence and was left alone far too much as emphysema slowly took her life. But there are also biological considerations.
Over the decades, Arango and her colleagues have conducted detailed studies of brain structure and biology in hundreds of suicide victims. Theyve found that certain brain regions in suicide have fewer nerve cells and altered receptors for neurotransmitters. Abnormalities related to the neurotransmitter serotonin have been linked to suicide in many studies. Scientists have not yet figured out if these flaws in serotonin directly contribute to suicide ormore likelyif serotonin is one part of a complicated chemical pathway to suicide. Serotonin is also believed to play a key role in depression and response to stress and trauma.
Agent SmithSeptember 05, 2022 at 01:01#7360830 likes
So, in principle, an assassin could simply lace a cup of coffee with serotonin and make the victim kill himself? The perfect murder. Let's not go giving killers ideas now, ok?
In ethics and other branches of philosophy, suicide poses difficult questions, answered differently by various philosophers. The French Algerian essayist, novelist, and playwright Albert Camus (19131960) began his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus with the famous line "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide" (French: Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux : c'est le suicide).[1]
Contents
1 Arguments against suicide
1.1 Absurdism
1.2 Christian-inspired philosophy
1.3 Liberalism
1.4 Deontology
1.5 Social contract
1.6 Aristotle
2 Neutral and situational stances
2.1 Honor
2.2 Utilitarianism
3 Arguments that suicide is permissible
3.1 Idealism
3.2 Libertarianism
3.3 Stoicism
3.4 Confucianism
3.5 Other arguments
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links
Agent SmithSeptember 05, 2022 at 01:10#7360860 likes
Merci beaucoup for the link; I have a feeling I've already bookmarked it on my browser. I'm mostly concerned about so-called unexplained suicides which I define as those suicides that simply don't make sense - no financial issues, no chronic illnesses, no mental disorders, you get the idea. Such people who take their own life do so for no reason at all - someone is at his office, doing his work, and suddenly he says to himself "You know what, I think I'll kill myself; I just feel like it!" and then jumps out the window. These suicides are what I find worthy of further investigation.
So, in principle, an assassin could simply lace a cup of coffee with serotonin and make the victim kill himself? The perfect murder. Let's not go giving killers ideas now, ok?
But I paid good money for the service.
I like what my grandson said about dying. "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to see it coming."
I think most of us, if not all of us, want our deaths to be very fast. You know, the sudden heart attack or going to bed at night and just not waking up. But there is something good to say about having time to say our goodbyes and come to terms with the parting.
Agent SmithSeptember 05, 2022 at 01:13#7360890 likes
Merci beaucoup for the link; I have a feeling I've already bookmarked it on my browser. I'm mostly concerned about so-called unexplained suicides which I define as those suicides that simply don't make sense - no financial issues, no chronic illnesses, no mental disorders, you get the idea. Such people who take their own life do so for no reason at all - someone is at his office, doing his work, and suddenly he says to himself "You know what, I think I'll kill myself; I just feel like it!" and then jumps out the window. These suicides are what I find worthy of further investigation.
Now that one could be brain chemistry. It could be something like the depression some women have after giving birth to a child because their hormones get messed up. The news health link explains the possible brain chemical problem.
Agent SmithSeptember 05, 2022 at 01:23#7360940 likes
Now that one could be brain chemistry. It could be something like the depression some women have after giving birth to a child because their hormones get messed up. The news health link explains the possible brain chemical problem
Indeed, so-called "chemical imbalances" (in the brain) can trigger unusual behavior including but not limited to suicide. However, they, to my reckoning, don't happen spontaneously - there's got to be an (external) cause (depression due to social/financial/romantic/etc. issues).
My interest is solely in suiciders with normal brains.
universenessSeptember 05, 2022 at 09:52#7361710 likes
I know, I wasn't referring to that book you have started writing. I was referring to the book about your family members involved in fighting for basic human rights, that I think you should all write. From what you have typed so far, that sounds like it would be a very interesting book.
Last Wednesday I met a man at the senior center and I am praying he is there this coming Wednesday. A couple of months ago he had a stroke that makes it impossible for him to think and he is homeless. I can get him into shelter but I have to find him to do that. Last week I left the room to wash dishes and hoped he would stay and play Bingo until I got done with the dishes. I knew better. It was obvious he was not capable of playing without help and everyone else was avoiding him. If I see him this week I am not leaving him until I know where is sleeping so I can find him again. I hate it when I am trying to help a homeless person and I can not find them. My sister deals with the problem daily. It feels great to get someone to the hospital in time or get them into housing or give them a tent, but there are a lot of bad moments too.
Let me use one of those theistic morality tales you are fond of.
The story of the rich folks rolling their gold coins into the collection boxes, when a poor old bedraggled woman roles a small copper coin in and Jesus talks about how the old woman's contribution is worth more that all the gold coins rolled in by the rich put together. The idea being that the rich wont miss those coins but the old woman probably wont eat as much that day. This is a lead in to the 'rich man, the camel and the eye of a needle,' crescendo. You give of yourself to help others. This is much more that Bill Gates writing charity cheques. You love what you do so keep doing it until your last breath.
I like what my grandson said about dying. "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to see it coming."
I like Woddy Allan's 'I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.' and what Spike Milligan has on his gravestone, 'I told you I was ill!'
I also like the many old gravestones and even some modern ones i'm sure, with the words:
As you are now, so once was I,
As I am now, so will you be,
Prepare yourself to follow me.
We are all going the same way, unless there is a major breakthrough in transhumanism or some kind of cloning tech that your brain can be transplanted into. We will all die but perhaps not today or tomorrow or.... whatever! That's all we get for now. I agree with euthanasia or assisted suicide but only when the alternative are ALL very bad!
universenessSeptember 05, 2022 at 10:06#7361730 likes
If I had the kind of relationship with my family that your mother has, I would do as your mother is doing. I hope you realize how important that is to the decision.
I do and I don't know the details of the rift in your own family but I had many major fall outs with siblings and my parents in my life. My mother was always the main person who would work so hard to bring family members back together. It took some years to achieve in some cases due to the nature of some of the fall outs.
I can only exemplify from my own experience, only you know if there is anyway to close the rifts in your own family.
I know, I wasn't referring to that book you have started writing. I was referring to the book about your family members involved in fighting for basic human rights, that I think you should all write. From what you have typed so far, that sounds like it would be a very interesting book.
Really? I never thought of that. What would be interesting about that? Do you know Jefferson plagiarized John Locke? But John Locke said "life, liberty, and property" not "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
I suppose we could do a thread about the moral demands of our human rights. But the brain issue means I won't be writing any books. Now that I am experiencing this, I wonder if it was not also behind Hemmingway's suicide.
Hemingway's Suicide Caused by his Doctors - Dr. Gabe Mirkinhttps://www.drmirkin.com histories-and-mysteries h...
Apr 15, 2022 He was driven to suicide by extreme pain, depression and loss of mental function. Taking a routine family history should have led his doctor to ...
I think it is wrong to blame the doctors. So far we can not stop the deterioration of our brains and bodies.
You love what you do so keep doing it until your last breath.
The issue of this thread is life sucks and I am saying old age sucks. I am not sure I should still be driving and what I do depends on driving, unless I could get into a large facility and be allowed to be useful. I am explaining old age can mean losing our independence and becoming useless. The philosophical arguments for suicide express my thoughts of this situation.
Wikipedia:Confucianism holds that failure to follow certain values is worse than death; hence, suicide can be morally permissible, and even praiseworthy, if it is done for the sake of those values. The Confucian emphasis on loyalty, self-sacrifice, and honour has tended to encourage altruistic suicide.[13] Confucius wrote, "For gentlemen of purpose and men of ren while it is inconceivable that they should seek to stay alive at the expense of ren, it may happen that they have to accept death in order to have ren accomplished."[14] Mencius wrote:[15]
Fish is what I want; bear's palm is also what I want. If I cannot have both, I would rather take bear's palm than fish. Life is what I want; yi is also what I want. If I cannot have both, I would rather take yi than life. On the one hand, though life is what I want, there is something I want more than life. That is why I do not cling to life at all cost. On the other hand, though death is what I loathe, there is something I loathe more than death. That is why there are dangers I do not avoid ... Yet there are ways of remaining alive and ways of avoiding death to which a person will not resort. In other words, there are things a person wants more than life and there are also things he or she loathes more than death.
I can only exemplify from my own experience, only you know if there is anyway to close the rifts in your own family.
You are working so hard to rescue me and that is sweet, but after caring for my mother with ALS and my grandmother with Alzheimer's disease it is a matter of honor to end my life when I still can. My son and daughter were teenagers when the family moved my grandmother into my home and they know they do not want to deal with caring for me. It is not a family disagreement but all of us knowing the unpleasant reality. Death is not the worst thing. We all die, Some Buddhists think of death daily as an intentional preparation for death.
If I had a million dollars I would create a space for people wanting to end their lives. We celebrate birthdays and weddings and why not dying? The space I would create would be surrounded by nature and inside I would use projectors to project on the walls any scenery a person may want. There would also be a sound system and the space would accommodate the friends and family who want to be there. Some native Americans gather when a family member is crossing over. Where I live we have the right to die and I think it would be nice to make the moment as pleasant as possible.
Now I have to go take care of someone's dog before going to work. The man is back in the hospital. I really don't like caring for his dog but it must be done. I hope he comes home from the hospital soon. Just a heads up, I may be busy for a while. Not that I have that much to do but I need to rest and when my energy is low I can not think well enough to write even a post.
universenessSeptember 05, 2022 at 16:46#7363000 likes
Really? I never thought of that. What would be interesting about that?
The real lives of people are far more interesting that fiction. I have just finished the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. His portrayal of the Mexican war and his experiences in the America civil war, increased my knowledge and understanding of what drives people in very significant ways.
Your family has gained a lot of experience about how people live with economic, political and social abuse at the extremes of the society they exist within. That is very important on so many levels.
Do you know Jefferson plagiarized John Locke? But John Locke said "life, liberty, and property" not "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
There are many arguments and counter arguments about who said what, when and why etc. You can only study the evidence yourself and judge accordingly. I would need at least 1000 years of life to even start to know the truth about what I really need to know the truth about.
But the brain issue means I won't be writing any books.
So dont write them, talk them, matbe your sister would type what you talk and would add her own stuff, maybe its the book that could help heal the family rifts. Suggest it as a social responsibility project towards helping the next generation understand the issue of homelessness and economic abuse, make it a business proposition, no emotional content so you can all ignore the family rifts.
The issue of this thread is life sucks and I am saying old age sucks.
I understand your complaint Athena. I sent you a song with the words 'dont give up' repeated often.
I even cited Helen Keller who had many 'cant do's to cope with but still lived to her last breath.
It's your life and your choice when to terminate it. I am just giving you my personal pennies worth that you should not surrender without declaring war first and losing every battle, and even then......
By all means read the words of Confucius and anyone else you choose but it's your life not theirs.
universenessSeptember 05, 2022 at 17:20#7363090 likes
it is a matter of honor to end my life when I still can.
You have no idea what might happen in the time you have left. There may be more people you need to help and if you are not there then they may also perish before their time. How honourable is that?
Yes, you're right! I have just laid a unfair burden of guilt on you. So if you help another few people because you decided to stay a little longer then Kudos for me as well!
My son and daughter were teenagers when the family moved my grandmother into my home and they know they do not want to deal with caring for me. It is not a family disagreement but all of us knowing the unpleasant reality.
My own father went through 6 years of deterioration before he died due to multiple brain infarctions. He saw hallucinations all around him. He eventually reverted to an almost child like state with symptoms very similar to Alzheimer's but he had some lovely, rare moments of lucidity as well and he had many tender moments with my mother and his family before he died. My mother was also the main force when her mother took Alzheimer's as her father and her 6 brothers were not able to cope with it. 8 years of it.
My mother also states that if she took Alzheimer's she would rather just be gone. So I do understand your point of view but I know my mother would not surrender easily and I am sure you will do the same.
If we spent more money on medical research instead of paying it out to shareholders then perhaps we would have cured Alzheimer's by now.
If I had a million dollars I would create a space for people wanting to end their lives. We celebrate birthdays and weddings and why not dying? The space I would create would be surrounded by nature and inside I would use projectors to project on the walls any scenery a person may want.
Have you been watching the assisted suicide scene from the film Soylent green again?:
So dont write them, talk them, maybe your sister would type what you talk about.
It is possible to use technology to type the spoken word, but I have always thought better when writing. If I can not write the thought then I am even less likely to speak it. Kind of the reverse of others who get writer's block and can not think of what to write. I used to spend my whole day, day after day with cups of coffee and at least a pack of cigarettes and writing. When I learned, that with a computer we can move whole paragraphs around, I bought one made before the internet. A young man programmed it for me so it did what I wanted it to do as easily as Windows.
Oh how I love those days. Caffeine and nicotine are the writer's friends. And being in the creative flow is better than good sex. :lol: I was also a night janitor and at night the world was mine. I loved being alone in buildings going through my routine and setting the scene for tomorrow's performance. I would so do that again if I could. Loosing my ability to do that, is for me, like it is for a star athlete who can no longer compete. Cleaning a bank is a good balance to writing. I eventually got a good partner and we would go to the Larry and Kath's restaurant for our break. Oh my, those were good days.
My sister and I were raised by a single mother when women did women's work for low pay and there were not many opportunities for them to do otherwise. When the hippie movement started our mother said she though she was always a hippie. Even though we had very little money, we always had enough to share with those less fortunate than us. Not until high school did I realize we were the poor, only our mother was intent on being middle class and our grandmother was a professional, a school teacher when school teachers didn't earn that much money. My sister had a career that means retiring with money and I am blown away that she has been so committed to resolving homeless problems. But that sure comes from our mother!
Oh man, it is time for me to pick up a client. At least I am going in a very good mood after thinking about the things that made me happy and why my sister and I are determined to help others.
universenessSeptember 07, 2022 at 16:36#7369970 likes
Reply to Athena
My mother spends a lot of time reminiscing and talking about the past and events in her life. It's a nice way to spend time with family over drinks etc but the only trouble is that we know all the stories. Still, I think she is happy when reminiscing, worth living for, to remember!
My mother spends a lot of time reminiscing and talking about the past and events in her life. It's a nice way to spend time with family over drinks etc but the only trouble is that we know all the stories. Still, I think she is happy when reminiscing, worth living for, to remember!
That is what I mean. We are full of life and our lives are what is behind us. Old age is a time of coming to peace with our lives. Sooner or later just getting dressed for the day is a chore. I make myself go to the pool and swim laps and work out in the weight room because I know my life will get worse if I don't, but it also does not mean having the body I once had and being able to do the things I once did.
:lol: As I struggle to get out of a chair, I complain to the women over 90 about how hard it is, and they assure me it gets worse and they don't like what happens to us either. In general, we are surprised that we are not the people we once were and that just getting through the day is harder than we thought it would be. On the other hand, we are glad we don't have the stresses younger people have and we are glad to leave this planet because we don't like some of the changes. Mostly we miss the receptionist answering the phone and the custom of trying to please the person who made the call, instead of expecting the person to know the organization and the right number or the right person to speak with, and company policy that clearly is not about pleasing the person who needs the service. In many cases what we are dealing with is far more complex and inefficient than in the past and so bloody cold and impersonal or excessively cheerful and not professional! We really feel sorry for the young.
It is hard to imagine knowing we die and not preparing for it. I have been preparing for death for as long as I can remember. Just in case there is life after death I make an effort to know as much as I can. I do not want to be sitting at the great dining table in the sky with the great people of history and be totally ignorant. :sad: If there is nothing after this life, I have still enjoyed all the learning. My life is much richer than it would be if I had not put so much effort into learning.
Have you been watching the assisted suicide scene from the film Soylent green again?:
That was pretty good. Not exactly as I imagined a place for dying but close. It is sad because there was no family or friends with him. When my granddaughter and a cousin sat in a room with the cousin's dying sister, they reminisced about the past and cracked jokes, and laugh a lot. Judging by the heart monitor the dying woman was good with what was happening even though she could not communicate because of severe brain damage, but when her X came in and got all dramatic, it was obvious that was not what she wanted and the man was removed from the room.
I am not sure if there is life after death, but I suspect people who have crossed over have communicated with me.
On the subject of life sucks, I remember a cartoon from many years ago when I was struggling with depression. The cartoon was a man at the service counter in heaven. The caption read, "I don't like life. Do you have anything better to offer?" That helped me decide it was up to me to make the best out of life that I can because there is nothing better than life. And going from the video you posted, I don't think there are many planets as good as ours. With all our natural disasters, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. this is still a pretty nice planet. And I bet the people who are struggling to survive because of flooding or drought, are not thinking about killing themselves but are thinking about how they will survive.
universenessSeptember 08, 2022 at 16:56#7373650 likes
That was pretty good. Not exactly as I imagined a place for dying but close. It is sad because there was no family or friends with him.
He had his best friend with him, played by Charlton Heston! He was behind the glass and he spoke to him about the scene's he was seeing of the way the Earth used to be. Big Charlton who played Inspector Thorn ended up in tears. This was Edward G Robinsons last film and he died soon after it was made.
And going from the video you posted, I don't think there are many planets as good as ours. With all our natural disasters, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. this is still a pretty nice planet. And I bet the people who are struggling to survive because of flooding or drought, are not thinking about killing themselves but are thinking about how they will survive.
Unfortunately, Soylent Green is a dystopian movie about what will happen to the world if our stewardship of it does not improve. The old guy chooses suicide as the planet is fast running out of food.
I agree with you that the Earth is beautiful and only a fool would choose to live life as a curse.
I also see the solar system as a blank canvas, just waiting for humans to leave the planetary nest and start to mould it and make it a place which is much more alive that it is now.
Looks like we will have a permanent moon base soon, once the Artemis1 rocket actually launches and starts the process.
Unfortunately, Soylent Green is a dystopian movie about what will happen to the world if our stewardship of it does not improve. The old guy chooses suicide as the planet is fast running out of food.
I agree with you that the Earth is beautiful and only a fool would choose to live life as a curse.
I also see the solar system as a blank canvas, just waiting for humans to leave the planetary nest and start to mould it and make it a place which is much more alive that it is now.
Looks like we will have a permanent moon base soon, once the Artemis1 rocket actually launches and starts the process.
I think I will need to watch Soylent Green. Right now I can't watch the Babylon 5 video. I have someone sleeping on my floor. He had a stroke a couple of months ago and isn't doing well. I am hoping a friend will be willing to take him in until he gets plugged into the assistance system and has a better place to stay than in his car. Because of his stroke, he is having trouble thinking things through. I am praying I do not get an eviction notice for helping him. And now can speak of morality?
If we do not want to become as Nasi Germany we really need to turn around and head in a different direction. I am hoping what I have to say fits in the theme of 'life sucks". Like really, democracy is supposed to be about raising the human potential and making life better. Our liberty is not a license to do anything we please, but it is the freedom to choose the right thing and that goes with responsibility for our choices.
I have been listening to an audio tape about the Greek legacy, the Greek gods, Homer, the philosophers, etc.. Homer makes it very clear it is our duty to help those who pass our way and need help. I think every civilization begins with a notion that we should do unto others as we would have them do to us.
Now if you had a stroke and could not remember how to get from point A to point B because you had no short-term memory and you could not think through how to meet your needs, how would you want to be treated? As I decent person what should you and I be doing?
I am quite sure your answer would be a good defense for why I should not be evicted for bringing a homeless person into my home but we live with laws that prevent us from doing the moral thing. How is this any different from Naxi Germany? The theme of this thread is life sucks, and I argue preventing people from doing the right thing, does lead to a very unpleasant reality. "I was just following orders".
Indeed, so-called "chemical imbalances" (in the brain) can trigger unusual behavior including but not limited to suicide. However, they, to my reckoning, don't happen spontaneously - there's got to be an (external) cause (depression due to social/financial/romantic/etc. issues).
My interest is solely in suiciders with normal brains.
I spoke with a man who specialized in counseling suicidal people and I asked him if that was not terribly depressing for him. In a very positive tone of voice, he said no because people are willing to die for something they would live for but they don't know how to get it. He saw his job as helping people figure out how to get what they are willing to die for. He sounded so positive I think he was pretty successful at doing that.
A death wish sometimes comes with grief. I think that is spontaneous but it can take a while to figure out how to end one's life.
For the first time in world history there are more people on the planet over age 65 than under five.
That will have profound implications for the trajectory of human population and thus of human civilization.
I think you are correct. When the people who need our care are proficient at making their needs known and they vote on how we meet the needs of others, that could have a profound effect on civilization.
Also we may become wiser. Young people remember facts. Older people begin to understand the meaning of those facts and are better at grasping complex concepts. Unfortunately, the benefit may not last and many older people experience a mental decline and for physical and mental reasons may require more help and be less useful.
I hope we rethink many things, such as what qualifies a person to do a job. Merit hiring is useful for some things, but sometimes a person's experience and character are more important to a job. I think education for technology, and merit hiring, have been dehumanizing. I would like to see a shift to more humanitarian concerns and that might come with an aging population.
Agent SmithSeptember 11, 2022 at 14:36#7383840 likes
Reply to Athena As you can see, I'm, in a sense, looking for a person who would be willing, no, more than happy, to die for nothing, essentially violating the PSR. To die for something, boring! To die for nothing, now that's what sets a person apart from the rest!
Aramis: The King has ordered me to seek out the secret general of the Jesuits and to kill him.
Porthos: You should let the secret general worry about that.
Aramis: Problem is that, ah... I am he.
:snicker:
universenessSeptember 11, 2022 at 19:14#7384190 likes
He had a stroke a couple of months ago and isn't doing well. I am hoping a friend will be willing to take him in until he gets plugged into the assistance system and has a better place to stay than in his car. Because of his stroke, he is having trouble thinking things through. I am praying I do not get an eviction notice for helping him. And now can speak of morality?
I can only feel anger inside at such situations. There should be adequate social services available at a local level to help people effectively and fully in such circumstances. You should be fully supported in your efforts to assist this man and if a landlord threatens you with eviction, then that landlord should not be treated kindly for such an act.
Our liberty is not a license to do anything we please, but it is the freedom to choose the right thing and that goes with responsibility for our choices.
:clap: I couldn't agree more. Judge people by what they do, not what they say they will do or by what possessions they have or who their family is.
I am quite sure your answer would be a good defense for why I should not be evicted for bringing a homeless person into my home but we live with laws that prevent us from doing the moral thing. How is this any different from Naxi Germany? The theme of this thread is life sucks, and I argue preventing people from doing the right thing, does lead to a very unpleasant reality. "I was just following orders".
I can only echo your sentiments, second your emotions and add another old adage. 'Evil thrives most when good people do nothing.'
Agent SmithSeptember 12, 2022 at 08:08#7386300 likes
Argument against antinatalism
1. Suffering = Dying [premise]
2. If you mind suffering, you mind dying [from 1]
3. If you mind dying, you mind death [premise]
4. If you mind suffering, you mind death [2, 3 HS]
5. Death = Nonexistence [premise]
6. If you mind suffering, you mind nonexistence [from 4, 5]
7. If you mind nonexistence, antinatalism is false [premise]
8. If you mind suffering, antinatalism is false [6, 7 HS]
I can only feel anger inside at such situations. There should be adequate social services available at a local level to help people effectively and fully in such circumstances. You should be fully supported in your efforts to assist this man and if a landlord threatens you with eviction, then that landlord should not be treated kindly for such an act.
Thank you thank you! That is the very meaning of our liberty!
What you said is very important to me. I have offended a friend who is a Christain and could have helped him but instead was totally self-centered and told me if I got evicted for breaking the rules it would be my fault for making that decision. I don't think she gets the moral decision and what you said about evil. Time and again I have seen evil take hold because people would not stand together to oppose it. We are going in the wrong direction by making it illegal to help others. Not even mothers dare help their grown children if they are doing drugs, without fear of eviction. Can you imagine! Laws that prevent family from helping family, And then we turn around and blame gays for ruining family values. It is not the gays ruining family values. It is education for a technological society and the values of that society, which turn to dependency on the state instead of dependency on family and each other. Does that make sense? Can you see that?
:lol: "Give me liberty or give me death." I am adding that to give some continuity to what we were talking about. Many people are not happy with social changes such as replacing the old-fashioned receptionist with recordings and all the specialization that makes doing business very complicated. And having to call 3 or 5 different offices to find the right person for the job is not efficient! We want the receptionist who knew everything and saw it as her job to find the department we need to speak with. The receptionist did all the work and we could depend on her to get us the information or whatever else we needed. That specialization is new. In the past we were generalists and the receptionist knew more than the man at the top because she thought it was her job to know the organization and how to help people. Phone trees are hell. They are impersonal and force us to be submissive to technology and that is right next to ignoring our Jewish neighbors are being taken away. I grew up with the notion we answer to God, not human authority.
Right now someone claiming to have a bedroom for rent is wanting us to complete an application and send money, before we even see the bedroom. :gasp: We are texting and I made it clear, that we do business face to face and see the bedroom or we don't do business. Craig's list is known for scams and I will not bend on meeting people face to face.
Reply to Agent Smith To kill one's self or not is partly intellectual and partly emotional. I don't think the decision can be reduced to a purely rational one. Everything you mentioned has a moral weight and that involves feelings. I am willing to die for some things but not others and that is because of the moral weight or the factors involved in the decision.
Agent SmithSeptember 14, 2022 at 16:11#7393780 likes
Reply to Athena To be frank I'm not worried as much about dying for x than I am about killing for y.
universenessSeptember 15, 2022 at 08:55#7395580 likes
I also have examples of 'warnings' or 'proposed consequences,' If I interfered. I was given a letter by my own union to cross a picket line by office staff on strike at the school I worked in, I DID NOT, nor ever will cross a picket line, no matter what shit letter I was given. It became regional policy within our school system, that a teacher should not physically break up a fight between pupils for fear of getting accused of assaulting the pupils involved. I HAVE ALWAYS, physically broken up any fight I have came across between pupils. I would never stand by and watch pupils hurt each other, damn the consequences, and so on.....
It is education for a technological society and the values of that society, which turn to dependency on the state instead of dependency on family and each other. Does that make sense? Can you see that?
I am a socialist/humanist. I believe that the means of production, distribution and exchange of any significant size should be owned by the people, for the people and not as a means of generating profit for the rich or those who aspire to become such. I would also not allow any private citizen to own land. Technology which assists the means of production distribution and exchange must also benefit all people and not just the very few. I advocate for getting rid of money as the main controller of exchange.
The state must serve the people and support family as well as family supporting each other.
We want the receptionist who knew everything and saw it as her job to find the department we need to speak with. The receptionist did all the work and we could depend on her to get us the information or whatever else we needed. That specialization is new. In the past we were generalists and the receptionist knew more than the man at the top because she thought it was her job to know the organization and how to help people. Phone trees are hell. They are impersonal and force us to be submissive to technology and that is right next to ignoring our Jewish neighbors are being taken away. I grew up with the notion we answer to God, not human authority.
I have no problem with automated systems that work. I would like to offer all receptionists the opportunity to follow their vocations and be able to take their basic means of survival for granted.
I am not trivialising the problems you raise in your quote above but it's our collective responsibility to ensure that any automated system improves the lives and personal security of people and does not reduce it in any way. I would not blame technology for people ignoring the forced removal of their neighbours (due to the fact they were Jewish or based on any other such unacceptable reasoning). I would blame the people who use technology for such purposes. Guns don't kill people, people kill people but it's still really dumb to arm your citizens in the way they do in the USA.
Right now someone claiming to have a bedroom for rent is wanting us to complete an application and send money, before we even see the bedroom. :gasp: We are texting and I made it clear, that we do business face to face and see the bedroom or we don't do business. Craig's list is known for scams and I will not bend on meeting people face to face.
The situation you describe above is because you live under a horrible, capitalist, free market economy (as do I), where private landlords can almost do as they like. If you had a lot more money, you would not have to deal with these 'basic survival' issues you currently have to deal with. Is that how people should be forced to live? Completely controlled by how much money you can access? It's other humans that force this way of life and they are actually very few in number, globally.
They need to be 'overthrown,' permanently!
A newlywed couple or a child reaching the age of 18, should be provided with good quality accommodation, free of charge, as a human right from cradle to grave. Competitive fighting pits, such as Craig's list should not be able to exist.
Hum, I have been listening to lectures about ancient Greek ideas on character and morals. How could you describe your character? Does your character allow you to do what is wrong?
javi2541997September 15, 2022 at 14:02#7395940 likes
This is the thread I was thinking of yesterday.
Whenever I received the message: unsuitable I thought my life is a completely disaster. I came across to think that suffering from failures doesn't help anyone. It is a very complex task to accept how we are and how we can better persons both professional and personal.
I don't even know why I am optimist right know... I guess is thanks to Greek mythology or Japanese way of Bushido.
Anyway, I feel better whenever I share my thoughts and problems around here. It is better to just keep it them only with myself.
universenessSeptember 15, 2022 at 14:24#7395980 likes
Reply to Athena
Are you asking me these questions Athena? I will assume you are.
My character is for others to judge but I hope I am judged by others on what I do.
I would describe my character as nuanced, myriad, conflicted and complex but I try to live as much as I can by the golden rule. I am capable of utter hatred towards those who live by exploiting or abusing others.
I will do wrong in the service of what I believe to be right and just.
Would I cause the death of innocents to destroy a greater evil. In the final analysis and if I could find no other way, then probably yes, but could I live with myself afterwards like Truman or Churchill, probably no.
I also have examples of 'warnings' or 'proposed consequences,' If I interfered. I was given a letter by my own union to cross a picket line by office staff on strike at the school I worked in, I DID NOT, nor ever will cross a picket line, no matter what shit letter I was given. It became regional policy within our school system, that a teacher should not physically break up a fight between pupils for fear of getting accused of assaulting the pupils involved. I HAVE ALWAYS, physically broken up any fight I have came across between pupils. I would never stand by and watch pupils hurt each other, damn the consequences, and so on.....
And in the US, liberty meant that is your decision. No one could force you to do that and no one could prevent you from doing that. Destroying that liberty is to become as Nazi Germany where authority decided what people would and would not do. The consequences of destroying our liberty are social destruction and this pushes us to the controversy of our right to carry guns. Our problem is we have serious social problems that make it unsafe to allow individuals to own guns. And that brings us back to education. In ancient Athens, education was lifelong and about citizenship. If we do not recapture that connection between liberty and education, we are doomed.
I am a socialist/humanist. I believe that the means of production, distribution and exchange of any significant size should be owned by the people, for the people and not as a means of generating profit for the rich or those who aspire to become such. I would also not allow any private citizen to own land. Technology which assists the means of production distribution and exchange must also benefit all people and not just the very few. I advocate for getting rid of money as the main controller of exchange. The state must serve the people and support family as well as family supporting each other.
I do not agree with that paragraph. I am in favor of private ownership and control. However, not laissez-faire economics. A policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering. have been mentally lazy and ignored all the issues of economics and we are not well-informed voters.
I am not trivialising the problems you raise in your quote above but it's our collective responsibility to ensure that any automated system improves the lives and personal security of people and does not reduce it in any way. I would not blame technology for people ignoring the forced removal of their neighbours (due to the fact they were Jewish or based on any other such unacceptable reasoning). I would blame the people who use technology for such purposes. Guns don't kill people, people kill people but it's still really dumb to arm your citizens in the way they do in the USA.
Oh, what a delicious argument you opened. I think if you were aware of how technology has changed our expectations and our values and how we think you would see the social change more clearly. This subject is so complex I don't know where to begin. Perhaps a thread about how technology has changed our lives and the input of many people would be helpful.
The receptionist was someone who served everyone, her employer and the public. That is a frame of mind. That is not what someone is thinking when answering the phone today. What rules our thinking is policy and organization. The job of answering the phone has been narrowly defined and the person answering that phone knows nothing except the correct connection that needs to be made and the person who answers the phone has no power but reacts like a programmed switch. If the person answering the phone steps beyond the definition of the job, s/he will be reprimanded. The control is at the top not with the individual. This is why I object to none of us having private property and control. I fear nothing worse than that control from the top. As Tocqueville said our democracy would be a despot and everything is fine as long as everyone appreciates the decisions from the top. Have you read Tocqueville's book "Democracy in America" written around 1830? As a teacher that might be the most important book, you could offer your students if they are old enough. Living under the decisions made at the top may not be the way to go. Like Locke said about the king/father, that would be fine if like the parent the king worked for the child to become independent.
The situation you describe above is because you live under a horrible, capitalist, free market economy (as do I), where private landlords can almost do as they like. If you had a lot more money, you would not have to deal with these 'basic survival' issues you currently have to deal with. Is that how people should be forced to live? Completely controlled by how much money you can access? It's other humans that force this way of life and they are actually very few in number, globally.
They need to be 'overthrown,' permanently!
A newlywed couple or a child reaching the age of 18, should be provided with good quality accommodation, free of charge, as a human right from cradle to grave. Competitive fighting pits, such as Craig's list should not be able to exist.
Another delicious disagreement. I think we need to rethink economics but even more important is education for good character and good moral judgment. Only a police state controls everything. Liberty begins with governing oneself and independent thinking. I am old school. Business is done eyeball to eyeball and depends on our good judgment of character and more. If I know you and can deal with you face to face now and in the future, I will hold you accountable for keeping your word and under that condition you may be more concerned about what I think of you and how I will react if you are not a good person. Only when our democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended and this means managing life on a social/cultural level, not depending on the despot to take care of us.
I do not think we should provide for individuals without good cause because then we have people with weak character, doomed to be dependent on others. It is the parent's responsibility to raise children to become independent but they can not do this alone. The parent's efforts must be supported by the school system and youth programs and how about good media all focusing on a good culture and human dignity?
universenessSeptember 15, 2022 at 14:41#7396030 likes
I came across to think that suffering from failures doesn't help anyone. It is a very complex task to accept how we are and how we can better persons both professional and personal.
Anyway, I feel better whenever I share my thoughts and problems around here. It is better to just keep it them only with myself.
For me, It was such a vital moment when I deeply understood that an hour will pass anyway, regardless of my mental state. I CAN CHOOSE to experience that hour as a curse, or I can struggle against such with the intent to defeat it. I choose to fight despair anytime and every time it attack's me. I have experienced more happiness in my life so far than I have experienced despair with this approach.
I will leave it to Captain Kirk to express his and my opinion of personal pain:
I am in favor of private ownership and control. However, not laissez-faire economics. A policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering. have been mentally lazy and ignored all the issues of economics and we are not well-informed voters.
Then you must continue your struggle with your landlord as regards your rent for living where you live and with his/her power to evict you and make you homeless. I will continue to fight for what I believe is a better way.
I think if you were aware of how technology has changed our expectations and our values and how we think you would see the social change more clearly.
I am aware of such and the 'we' you refer to does not include me. I see technological advancement as a sword which cuts both ways. It can be a tool to make the rich richer but it is also a tool that can free the majority from crap jobs and allow them to educate themselves and communicate globally and organise resistance globally.
We all have our favourite books Athena and our favourite commentators and comments from the past.
The only system that is truly about rule from the top is one which sustains a totalitarian monarch, autocrat or self-proclaimed divinity. I would be in armed revolution against such a system if I lived under it. Free market capitalism based on some pseudo-democratic voting system such as the 'first past the post,' system I live under in the UK (although we have made some progression in Scotland with our re-established parliament/government based on a PR voting system), is more common in the west.
Free market capitalism is a much-diluted version of a plutocracy, and it will, inevitably be replaced by a humanist/socialist system imo and technological advances will eventually assist in bringing down free market capitalism as the money trick becomes fully revealed to more and more people.
I will hold you accountable for keeping your word and under that condition you may be more concerned about what I think of you and how I will react if you are not a good person.
I fully agree with you here and this must be the measure of everyone who is given authority over people's lives and who represents their interests.
If socialists/humanists do not or cannot do what they said they would do before they were elected, then they cannot continue in power. I personally would not be concerned about what you or anyone else thinks about me as I would hopefully be too busy trying to ensure I do exactly what I promised to do.
I do not think we should provide for individuals without good cause because then we have people with weak character, doomed to be dependent on others. It is the parent's responsibility to raise children to become independent but they can not do this alone. The parent's efforts must be supported by the school system and youth programs and how about good media all focusing on a good culture and human dignity?
I advocate for 'From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.'
People are very complex, we have to have a very smart, fair, balanced, compassionate, sociopolitical system which is very very difficult to con or abuse. Not easy to achieve but that remains the goal and always will be the goal if the human race is ever to become able to evolve into a species which is benevolent to the universe it exists in and become an interplanetary and interstellar species.
universenessSeptember 15, 2022 at 15:32#7396190 likes
Amazing quote, friend. If you do not mind I will keep it with me. I feel it so motivational :up:
YOU CAN WIN AGAINST DESPAIR! AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!
Decide/demand/command and FEEL differently! FLIP IT!
When I get those down, desperate, depressing feelings for whatever reason, I will get PISSED OFF and I will FLIP THEM. I will fight them in my head, they will return and I will fight them again and eventually I will win. I will distract myself, I will write, paint, go on to forums, look for old hero's who inspired me and will read or watch them again. I will go out and walk, fast and long, I will........ spend that hour fighting despair and the next one as I know those hours will pass regardless so I choose to fight my inner demons and I can, have and always will defeat them. From hell's teeth I will spit at them!
I CHOOSE LIFE!!!!!
Agent SmithSeptember 15, 2022 at 16:50#7396310 likes
A more nuanced approach to suffering seems to be in order vis-à-vis aurea mediocritas
Both 1 & 2 are incompatible with life. Suicides & CIP (congenital insensitivity to pain) attest to that. Moderate suffering, hitting the sweet spot, where suffering is bearable and also does what it's designed to do, keep us safe and sound is not only desirable but also necessary given the givens of our mental & physical constitution.
So if we could find solutions to excess suffering, natalism has a shot or, inversely, antinatalism stops making sense and as for deficit suffering, current best practice in medicine is to restore the nociceptive system to level 2 (moderate suffering). Google "treatment" for CIP (naloxone) and leprosy (antibiotics).
The future, however, can be radically different - like how bioluminiscence has delinked light from heat, we maybe able to do the same with suffering, decouple the detection of injury from the unpleasantness associated with it.
universenessSeptember 15, 2022 at 17:13#7396350 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
I agree, as do most, if not all rational people imo. Excess suffering remains a problem to be solved and human science is clearly motivated to continue to try to solve it. Advocating a solution of extinction or non-existence, is simply stupid.
L'éléphantSeptember 16, 2022 at 04:00#7397930 likes
It can be. For the one that got left behind. When this person I was very closed to decided to do it, my body went into convulsion and I couldn't feel anything except the ground under me was shaking my whole body. I couldn't cry because I was also numb. If you want to imagine how it felt -- think of screaming your lungs out but no sound comes out.
I suspect that my spirit died that day, but I'm not sure. Because hey, I'm living a "normal" life, interacting with people, having a comfortable life, having sex, having dinner, laughing. I never got the so-called "therapy" for the grieving.
But ask me if I could go back in time, what date would that be. The morning before the death, because then I could stop it. I knew I could. I still believe I could have done something.
Agent SmithSeptember 16, 2022 at 04:08#7397970 likes
I agree, as do most, if not all rational people imo. Excess suffering remains a problem to be solved and human science is clearly motivated to continue to try to solve it. Advocating a solution of extinction or non-existence, is simply stupid.
(Hyper)sensitive peeps, among which number antinatalists, are for me canaries in coal mines - their hyperalgesia is kinda a superpower, buying time for "normal" folks to respond to imminent danger. You could say, in a sense, that hyperalgesics/antinatalists are the nociceptive system of the superorganism that is humanity.
javi2541997September 16, 2022 at 06:13#7398330 likes
The future, however, can be radically different - like how bioluminiscence has delinked light from heat, we maybe able to do the same with suffering, decouple the detection of injury from the unpleasantness associated with it.
Agreed :up:
I only want to add a brief comment on your argument: The suffering or act of suffering caused by uncertainty. We never really know what would happen in the next months or even the next year. If we are positive we would say the things would be better but if we are negative we would say it would be "a bad period of time" again.
To be honest... I think that the only way to face future is attitude and maturity. Keep fighting against the obstacles! :fire:
Agent SmithSeptember 16, 2022 at 06:20#7398340 likes
Yep, uncertainty is the millstone around our necks, the cross we havta bear. I propose we play ... with expectation (worst) and hope (best). If given a choice, I prefer paranoia (le choses sont contre nous), but Forrest Gump showcases pronia, fictional though he may be.
javi2541997September 16, 2022 at 06:24#7398370 likes
universenessSeptember 16, 2022 at 10:53#7398920 likes
Reply to L'éléphant
Thanks for sharing that. All potential suicides should read your post and reflect on how such an action can affect the lives of others. I hope your best moments of joy in life are yet to come.
Maybe reading a post such as yours could even stop a suicide. Let's hope so.
universenessSeptember 16, 2022 at 11:01#7398940 likes
(Hyper)sensitive peeps, among which number antinatalists, are for me canaries in coal mines - their hyperalgesia is kinda a superpower, buying time for "normal" folks to respond to imminent danger. You could say, in a sense, that hyperalgesics/antinatalists are the nociceptive system of the superorganism that is humanity.
Yeah, I feel pity for them too, who wants to be a caged canary? The first to die if the gas escapes, but yeah, perhaps they don't die in vain. We can learn to work harder to solve excessive human suffering due to their complaints regarding their own conceptions of what they regard as their own intolerable lives or what they exemplify as the intolerable lives of others.
universenessSeptember 16, 2022 at 11:03#7398960 likes
Yeah, I feel pity for them too, who wants to be a caged canary? The first to die if the gas escapes, but yeah, perhaps they don't die in vain. We can learn to work harder to solve excessive human suffering due to their complaints regarding their own conceptions of what they regard as their own intolerable lives or what they exemplify as the intolerable lives of others.
[quote=Uncle Ben]With great power comes great responsibility.[/quote]
universenessSeptember 16, 2022 at 12:13#7399130 likes
I fully applaud your intent to fight against despair and I absolutely call you brother in that. I will willingly shout/scream BANAZI with you as we charge with gleaming bayonets drawn, against our common enemy .... despair.
BUT I would have fought whole heartedly against the fascist Japanese in WW 2. I would have killed the guy in the picture, in battle (or at least, I would have tried to) and I would seek to free the subservient looking female in the picture from what seems to be an imposed cultural subservience (but only of-course, if she consented to my interference and help.)
javi2541997September 16, 2022 at 12:20#7399160 likes
I understand and respect your point. I didn't like war (even Mishima was rejected by Japanese army...) but I really respect the Samurai/Bushido thought to fight against despair and dishonour. I think the problem are politicians not the theories.
I want to live as a samurai because I believe in loyalty, friendship, sacrifice as a way of life. I don't see it as a mechanism to put on a battle. I just want to get it right in my life. If I ever acted as a traitor or a malicious man, please kill me or I would commit seppuku.
universenessSeptember 16, 2022 at 12:29#7399190 likes
Reply to javi2541997
I accept your honourable intentions, but I remain concerned about the samurai tradition of obedience to superiors without question. You know such authority can become utterly corrupt, just like some of the politicians you mention. My advice would be to completely abandon that part of Bushido, only be loyal to those who have proven worthy of your loyalty and even then, only for as long as they remain worthy.
javi2541997September 16, 2022 at 12:53#7399260 likes
but I remain concerned about the samurai tradition of obedience to superiors without question. You know such authority can become utterly corrupt, just like some of the politicians you mention.
I am agree that Bushido has some failures in the practice of the doctrine. But to be honest, I really think the problem is not in the samurai's part but in the authority.
It is heartbreaking to see how some superiors do not respect and consider the loyalty of samurais.
Then, the problem is not of Bushido (doctrine) but the vicious politicians and superiors (actors)
universenessSeptember 16, 2022 at 13:11#7399300 likes
High specialised technical or otherwise knowledge comes at the cost of time invested in it. As it would practically be impossible to learn the mechanism of every invention it is better to have the manual or instructions for its replication somewhere.
schopenhauer1October 03, 2022 at 14:36#7444880 likes
Reply to Deus
Addressed in OP that this (specialization) would be brought up and is tangential to the pessimistic point.
Now there will be posters who will wax on about how we are a system and this is tangential to the point. There will also be posters who will try to explain about cultural and economic progression, especially about specialization. And whilst obviously true in a descriptive sense, is tangential to the point.
Not tangential at all. Ive answer your question fully.
Let me repeat it. For every man made invention there should be a repository of that knowledge/instruction of replicating that invention. When something is invented in a lot of cases its also patented.
It has always been thus. Nothing has changed. I am sure that pre-technology the world was just as mysterious as it is today. Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it.
And one could equally have written: "Im particularly talking about the aspect of human existence where we cannot understand the forces of nature that we use and replicate. If anything, we can know and/or replicate a very very small portion of it."
In fact, we don't need to "know" what sustains us if our approach is Pragmatic. Pragmatism requires neither a pessimistic nor optimistic frame of mind. Pragmatism works equally well both pre and post-technology. Pragmatism avoids a descent into pessimism because of not "knowing" what sustains us.
I press the enter key. I don't "know" why what happens happens. I am just optimistic that what I intend will happen will happen.
It diminishes us to helpless cogs that can have no real agency.
It is your judgement that we are diminished. Many of us don't feel that way. I think you are a pessimist first by temperament. This seems like just a post hoc search for rational justification, which is not hard to find.
See that, post hoc. Latin jargon. I must be a real philosopher.
It has always been thus. Nothing has changed. I am sure that pre-technology the world was just as mysterious as it is today. Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it.
The workings of the universe to prehistoric humans would have been mysterious, but there would have been a reverence to the mystery as well. More importantly though, a person and their clan would be able to take care of themselves, making impactful decisions that truly drive the direction in which they live. Goals that were set were clearly defined by those who achieved them, and required the use of the capacities of the entire body. Tools consisted of mechanisms that were understood by everyone who used them.
The modern world is mysterious, but in a mundane and/or perplexing way. Our goals are frequently not defined by us, and the tools we use are always disconnected from our own understanding entirely or nearly so. We use only a subset of our body's capabilities to live - which makes the body atrophy, unless one engages in a clownish routine of maintenance to give the illusion that one's body is being used for what it was meant to be used for. We survive not through our own autonomous efforts but because we satisfy some needed role in an artificial system.
Reply to schopenhauer1 I feel like Hannah Arendt would probably interest you. She's more optimistic than you when it comes to work, but her Human Condition has a ton of illuminating passages on how our ability to create things has almost gotten bigger than us. She says we no longer have the ability to even talk about these things; we've lost the "speech" so to speak about what is we rely on, and any form of understanding is gatekept by the scientists or the people making it. It's unsustainable.
Reply to schopenhauer1 :roll: We do not even "understand" how we move our fingers and toes let alone what our brains are doing moment to moment or even why pessimists bother whinging on and on about "pessimism" ... Big whup. :yawn:
Agent SmithOctober 04, 2022 at 04:50#7447600 likes
The DIY craze (80s-90s) had something to do with post-apocalyptic survival strategies people were thinking up during the US-Soviet nuclear standoff. It was no longer enough to be just able to use machines, it was vital that we know how they work and how to repair/maintain/build them. Machines had to be demystified, their intricate design and mechanisms hadta be, well, declassified in order to ensure a large pool of autodidactic experts who could take up the mantle of deceased doyens if and when necessary. :snicker:
I like sushiOctober 04, 2022 at 05:06#7447610 likes
The workings of the universe to prehistoric humans would have been mysterious, but there would have been a reverence to the mystery as well..............The modern world is mysterious, but in a mundane and/or perplexing way................Is it any wonder that people are so miserable?.
Prehistoric humans may well have understood their simple tools and lived in reverence to a mysterious world. Modern humans may well not understand their complex tools, their computers, their Social Media, and live perplexed and disconnected in a mysterious world
Yet these two conditions are not mutually exclusive
The prehistoric human may have suffered misery from tools inadequate to mitigate their physical suffering, in growing crops in time of famine. The modern human may suffer misery from tools inadequate to mitigate their mental suffering, in gaining what they think they deserve.
The prehistoric human's misery did not come from having unachievable expectations, their misery came from what they knew to expect from life. The prehistoric human knew that they would never be treated like Royalty, they knew they were and would remain a low part of the hierarchy. They knew they would never be part of the decision making process, their opinion would never be respected and they knew their income would only be sufficient for basic survival. Their misery came from an acceptance of a hard and brutal life
The modern human may be miserable because they have expectations that are unachievable
The modern human expects to be treated like Royalty, regardless of birth. They expect to be an integral part of the decision making process, even if they have insufficient knowledge. They expect their opinion to be respected regardless of whether it has sense or not. They expect to have an income even if they haven't earned it. Their misery comes from unwarranted expectations of what they are due from life.
Modern humans look back to a Golden Age, a mysterious world where lives were lived in reverence to the great unknown. A Golden Age where the greatest of tasks were accomplished. A time as described by the early Greek and Roman poets as better and more pure. Hesiod described the Golden Age as a time where all humans were created directly by the Olympian Gods, living lives in peace and harmony. Oblivious to death, and dying peacefully in their sleep unmarked by sickness and old age. Ovid described it as a time before man learned the art of navigation, and as a pre-agricultural society.
Today, people look back with nostalgia to the Noble Savage who has not been corrupted by modern civilization and symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. The idealized picture of a human at one with nature, living in harmony with nature in a romantic primitivism .
As John Dryden wrote in The Conquest of Granada 1672:
[i]I am as free as nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.[/i]
Is it true that misery is a modern phenomenon ? Consider The Great Famine of 13151317 and Black Death of 13471351 which reduced the population by more than a half. The Little Ice Age brought harsher winters with reduced harvest, resulting in malnutrition which increased susceptibility to infections due to a weakened immune system. The Great Famine struck much of North West Europe 1315 to 1317 reducing the population by more than 10%. Many of the larger countries were at war. England and France in the Hundred Years War, a time when when landowners and the Monarchy raised the rents of their tenants. In 1318, anthrax attacked the sheep and cattle of Europe, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry. As Europe moved into the Little Ice Age, floods disrupted harvests and caused mass famines. The Bovine Pestilence of 1319 to 1320 affected milk production, and as much of the peasant's protein was obtained from dairy resulted in nutritional deficiencies. Famine and pestilence, exacerbated with the prevalence of war during this time, led to the death of an estimated ten to fifteen percent of Europe's population. The Black Death was was fatal to an estimated thirty to sixty percent of the population where the disease was present. Before the 14th century, popular uprisings against overlords were common. During the 14th and 15th C there were mass movements and popular uprisings across Europe.
Hobbes described the state of nature as "war of all against all" in which men's lives are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"
Mirrors are there for reflection, I'd suggest a good look at it.
Wasn't directed to you.. Mainly people like the person above your post.
schopenhauer1October 04, 2022 at 14:17#7448960 likes
Reply to RussellA@Agent Smith
I hope you weren't gleaning ANY of these themes of the Noble Savage in my OP. None of this was what I was getting at. I think this leads to a more fundamental truth about a self-aware human, yet cut off from fundamental understanding of his condition, but I am keeping it specifically at the level of how technology (and social arrangements surrounding them) keep us fundamentally alienated. And this is the pessimism I speak of. Being estranged from the tools which sustain us. Yet the irksome part is some people do hold these keys.. but they can only own a part of them.. But these people (scientists/engineers/technicians) arranged with their financial backers/entrepreneurs/owners have immense power over what we are estranged from.
We are estranged, but a small minority are less estranged.
I think _db had some of the pessimism here: Quoting _db
The modern world is mysterious, but in a mundane and/or perplexing way. Our goals are frequently not defined by us, and the tools we use are always disconnected from our own understanding entirely or nearly so. We use only a subset of our body's capabilities to live - which makes the body atrophy, unless one engages in a clownish routine of maintenance to give the illusion that one's body is being used for what it was meant to be used for. We survive not through our own autonomous efforts but because we satisfy some needed role in an artificial system.
Is it any wonder that people are so miserable?
However, I would only disagree slightly with the wording of "artificial system" as I think any system, hunter-gatherer or this "artificial" economy will have us alienated. There is no going back (or forwards) here. It is fundamentally part of it. I am just looking at it for what it is, and not simply the descriptive "specialization/supply/demand/economic evolution".
schopenhauer1October 04, 2022 at 14:19#7448980 likes
I feel like Hannah Arendt would probably interest you. She's more optimistic than you when it comes to work, but her Human Condition has a ton of illuminating passages on how our ability to create things has almost gotten bigger than us. She says we no longer have the ability to even talk about these things; we've lost the "speech" so to speak about what is we rely on, and any form of understanding is gatekept by the scientists or the people making it. It's unsustainable.
I'll look into that. But 100% agree about the gatekeeping. I am even more terrified of the malaise of minutia that comes out of the science.. These people can accept and deal with enormous amounts of minutia. The tedium of the practical and necessary. But yet "Life is good".
The paradox is that we are alienated from that which sustains us, but if we are not alienated we simply become mired in the minutia of 100110101, materials, equations, and the like..
One major con is giving a romantic vision to science and technology. The Edisons/Teslas, Einsteins/Heidenbergs, etc. Monger the minutia is more the gist of science of the daily.. Your computer screen, your processor, your electronics, your plastics.. :yawn:
You become a 01001100101 to make 0010100110.. So alienation or minutia mongerer? It all doesn't lead anywhere good.
But at the same time, there is an "innovative" / inventive element that is there for a very small amount of time. The "breakthroughs" of a few that get pulled apart and mongered to become more minutia.
Agent SmithOctober 04, 2022 at 14:30#7449060 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 First off, congratulations for seeing what very few people do. Your committment to pessimism is worthy of a standing ovation. Did you notice, how some folks make such a big deal out of tool use - we consider it one of humanity's greatest achievements. For your information there are 6 simple machines viz. the ramp, the wheel, the pulley, the lever, the screw, and the wedge. Anyway, the asset has now become a liability, oui mon ami? We're now totally dependent on machines/tools even for the smallest of tasks i.e. they've become critical to our survival. This doesn't bode well for us and for this reason I second your Gloomy Gus attitude.
Mirrors are there for reflection, I'd suggest a good look at it. Seeker
Wasn't directed to you.. Mainly people like the person above your post.
It renders my comment invalid as it did not concern me. Thank you.
schopenhauer1October 04, 2022 at 14:56#7449240 likes
Reply to Seeker
Ive been in this forum for a long time. I understand how many of the posters work. Asshole and dickish comments are the norm if you disagree. Can't just argue the arguments here. Nope.
schopenhauer1October 04, 2022 at 15:09#7449290 likes
First off, congratulations for seeing what very few people do. Your committment to pessimism is worthy of a standing ovation. Did you notice, how some folks make such a big deal out of tool use - we consider it one of humanity's greatest achievements. For your information there are 6 simple machines viz. the ramp, the wheel, the pulley, the lever, the screw, and the wedge. Anyway, the asset has now become a liability, oui mon ami? We're now totally dependent on machines/tools even for the smallest of tasks i.e. they've become critical to our survival. This doesn't bode well for us and for this reason I second your Gloomy Gus attitude.
I think we have relied on tools from the very beginning. In fact, that, along with social and linguistic forces, were factors in the development of our cognition/brains/neocortex/etc. It is not just that we rely on these tools, but it is what these tools create.. estrangement.
One side--- Estrangement of the minutia of the tools themselves
Other side--- Estrangement from the minutia of the tools themselves.
There is no win here. 011001010110 to you sir. Now I have to go back to mongering more minutia so we can all live and see the world turn.
I mean look at some of the other topics here that you are no doubt posting on.. Propositional Calculus. Enough said.
Ive been in this forum for a long time. I understand how many of the posters works. Asshole and dickish comments are the norm if you disagree. Can't just argue the arguments here. Nope.
Perhaps it could suffice to simply ignore the comments of which you speak as by acknowledging those in any way is to give meaning and value to them.
schopenhauer1October 04, 2022 at 15:14#7449320 likes
Reply to Seeker
Done that. I go back and forth. Sometimes ignore.. Sometimes call it out. 15 years on a forum (this and the previous version).. you gotta switch it up.
Format goes something like:
Dick comment.. Maybe some content... sarcastic comment... maybe some more content...asshole comment. I believe that was devised by Aristotle.
?schopenhauer1 :roll: We do not even "understand" how we move our fingers and toes let alone what our brains are doing moment to moment or even why pessimists bother whinging on and on about "pessimism" ... Big whup.
On topic
Perhaps somewhat of an example of the things you say concern dealings with the medical world.
From the time I got out of my parents house I had to become quite critical of the medical world. I did not start out that way ofcourse as I was raised to have a great amount of trust and confidence in the doctors and their treatments. It was only after they mis-diagnosed me several times that I started to do my own research, obtaining information from studies related to my medical condition. Evidently I did not understand most of it at first, being unschooled and unfamilair with any of the medical jargon, but after a time studying and doing translations I was really getting at the gist of things.
From there on I got really critical of the doctors involved, questioning their every move towards any treatment they offered me. During that entire process I changed general physicians, but also specialists, quite a few times as 'they' generally shoved my 'uneducated and opinionated views and bias' away with undisquised disdain and irritation. While I felt kind of embarrassed because of it and somewhat unsure when 'throwing away' doctors, and their "professionalism" at the time, the payoff however was the accumulation of knowledge, not even necessarily medical knowledge but the knowledge of food science and how it relates to health. Where the doctors would have liked to inject me with all sorts of nasty biologicals to slow down my immune system I refused their treatments and instead stabilized it choosing certain nutrients while avoiding other nutrients.
My medical condition is not to be cured as it is a chronical condition but I managed to status quo it via diet rather than going the doctor's route of immunosuppressive drugs, the latter which would have most certainly caused severe harm to my system as biologicals come with a hefty price. I actually did confront some of these 'specialists' along the way, about the success I was having via diet, but they did not acknowledge or appreciated my efforts as such, in fact they didnt say anything about it else than putting their aura of superiority on display by ignoring the things I offered them while I was trying to share what I had learned.
That was actually quite a bit more than I intended to share but relating it to the OP I'd say atleast a fair amount of pessimism on display is granted and which was also why I asked the question about a suggestion to the contrary (of blindly following and/or using tech and/or treatment offered/prescripted to us by third parties and/or peers).
What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect permanent?
Do we return to a pre-industrial, cottage-industry, butcher-your-own-cows existence? Do we strive to put humanity into our tech? Do we look to a "return to nature"? (Most of us would need GPS to even find nature.)
It seems no good if the individual attempts to address the disconnect but society goes on embracing modernity.
Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it.
I don't think this is true. If life was disconnected from what sustains it then it would not be sustained. Perhaps you mean that the discursive intellect cannot fully understand life and what sustains it?
What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect permanent?
Do we return to a pre-industrial, cottage-industry, butcher-your-own-cows existence? Do we strive to put humanity into our tech? Do we look to a "return to nature"? (Most of us would need GPS to even find nature.)
It seems no good if the individual attempts to address the disconnect but society goes on embracing modernity.
Perhaps we cant go back though we also dont have to take everything thrown at us at face value.
schopenhauer1October 05, 2022 at 02:19#7451930 likes
What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect permanent?
Do we return to a pre-industrial, cottage-industry, butcher-your-own-cows existence? Do we strive to put humanity into our tech? Do we look to a "return to nature"? (Most of us would need GPS to even find nature.)
It seems no good if the individual attempts to address the disconnect but society goes on embracing modernity.
I simply present the problem. If you want, we can try to carry out a dialectic about where this goes, but I don't think it would lead anywhere.
But here's a start. Follow the chain of technology. Where does it lead back to in terms of resources, manufacturing, mining, engineering, such? Who, where, when, why, how?
Besides consumer and laborer, how close do you get to the understanding and actual resources that create the technology? Who has more agency and less agency? Hint, it isn't just the ones with the most money. Holding the money and spending it, isn't quite it. You have to have access to the finance but also the technology itself.. to some understanding and to groups of those who have understanding. To the mining, the manufacturing, the resources, the formulas, the engineering principles, etc.
You have to mine minutia.. It's minutia all the way down... to the sub-atomic level. It's so very tedious.. Don't let the romantics full you. In that, @apokrisis is right, but in so replacing the tedium of the scientific formulas, he replaces it with the principle of triadic meta-formulas.
It's just so beautiful in its tedium and grandeur :cry: :cry: :roll: :roll: :yawn: :yawn:
Agent SmithOctober 05, 2022 at 05:47#7452320 likes
I think we have relied on tools from the very beginning. In fact, that, along with social and linguistic forces, were factors in the development of our cognition/brains/neocortex/etc. It is not just that we rely on these tools, but it is what these tools create.. estrangement.
One side--- Estrangement of the minutia of the tools themselves
Other side--- Estrangement from the minutia of the tools themselves.
There is no win here. 011001010110 to you sir. Now I have to go back to mongering more minutia so we can all live and see the world turn.
I mean look at some of the other topics here that you are no doubt posting on.. Propositional Calculus. Enough said.
Estrangement, yep, tools, although they make life easier for us also distance us from reality and living. Without 'em we become aliens in our own home planet, barely able to survive, on the path to fan? (annihilation). This, as I hinted, is an evil omen. :snicker:
P. S. What about my posts on Propositional Calculus?
Real Gone CatOctober 05, 2022 at 06:27#7452370 likes
Yes, I also wondered about the reference to Propositional Calculus. Prop Calc would appear to be a purely intellectual pursuit. One might dabble in it entirely sans technology. What better way to while away those boring hours after the fields have all been plowed and the cows milked?
Agent SmithOctober 05, 2022 at 06:36#7452390 likes
Reply to Real Gone Cat You mean to say philosophy is a luxury item? Some would argue that it's an esssential item.
[quote=Jean-Paul Sartre]With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.[/quote]
There are no whinging "pessimists" in foxholes.
:death: :flower:
javi2541997October 05, 2022 at 07:46#7452480 likes
With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all
I don't think this is true. If life was disconnected from what sustains it then it would not be sustained. Perhaps you mean that the discursive intellect cannot fully understand life and what sustains it?
I wrote "Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it"
Consider the OP "We are disconnected from that which sustains us"
The Merriam Webster dictionary illustrates the complexity of the words "life" and "sustain"
The word "life" as a noun may be used in a physical context, as in 1a "the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body, or may be used in an emotional and intellectual sense, as in 2a "the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual - children are the joy of our lives".
Similarly, the word "sustain" as a verb may be used in a physical context, as in 2 "to supply with sustenance : NOURISH, or may be used in an emotional and intellectual sense, as in 5 "to buoy up - sustained by hope".
The title of the thread is "Series in pessimism: We can never know what sustains us". The thread is about our being emotionally and intellectually disconnected from what sustains us, where what sustains us is technology. Pessimism is the emotional part. Knowing is the intellectual part.
There are four possible meanings to the statement "we are disconnected from that which sustains us":
1) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
2) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectually sense.
3) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
4) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectual sense.
I agree with you that item 1) can be removed as illogical. Items 2) and 4) can also be removed as illogical. This leaves item 3).
Meaning depends on context. Sentences cannot be taken out of context.
Therefore, in the context of the Thread - "we are disconnected from that which sustains us" can only mean "we are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense."
However, although the misuse of technology may be one contributor to alienation within society, it is not the only cause, as alienation existed in societies pre-modern technology.
schopenhauer1October 05, 2022 at 16:31#7454430 likes
However, although the misuse of technology may be one contributor to alienation within society, it is not the only cause, as alienation existed in societies pre-modern technology.
I don't think this is true. If life was disconnected from what sustains it then it would not be sustained. Perhaps you mean that the discursive intellect cannot fully understand life and what sustains it? Janus
I wrote "Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it"
There are four possible meanings to the statement "we are disconnected from that which sustains us":
1) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
2) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectually sense.
3) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
4) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectual sense.
I agree with you that item 1) can be removed as illogical. Items 2) and 4) can also be removed as illogical. This leaves item 3).
It's not technology which sustains life in the biological sense but air, food and water. Technology may sustain our lifestyles, but that is something else.
The point of (3) which, on a charitably nuanced reading, seems to be that our sense of aliveness may be eroded by technology in various ways through the alienation it can contribute to is something I agree with. It's true that technology has disconnected many people from the sources of the food and water that sustain them.
That is to say, the closest many get to the sources of food and water is, respectively, the supermarket and the tap or the bottle (the supermarket). So, humanity is increasingly alienated from the rest of life by modern technology. Obviously this doesn't apply to those who, for example, grow their own food, or even those who don't, but live in communities where the food is grown locally and they are familiar with those sources. So it remains an over-generalization, just as 'life is suffering', while expressing some truth, is an over-simplification.
It's not technology which sustains life in the biological sense but air, food and water. Technology may sustain our lifestyles, but that is something else.
:up:
schopenhauer1October 06, 2022 at 02:54#7456070 likes
The point of (3) which, on a charitably nuanced reading, seems to be that our sense of aliveness may be eroded by technology in various ways through the alienation it can contribute to is something I agree with. It's true that technology has disconnected many people from the sources of the food and water that sustain them.
So it's a bit different even than that. Rather, it's not the pretty common trope of using modern technology which causes alienation, but not being able to be "really" apart of the core members who actually created and fully understand the technology. That can be said on two levels:
1) Those who understand a very specialized field of technology really well (like someone on R&D for X chemicals, circuit board design, machine code, materials science, electronic engineering, etc. Not everyone gets to be a part of this.. only a select few and their entrepreneurial/financial backers. Everyone else just uses the final products passively, or labors in some auxilliary fields tangential to the true inventors and creators.
OR
2) Even the specialized experts only know their technology well and thus can't know ALL the technology that is used, and so even they are passive users who can never really know that which creates the technology they rely on.
it is an obfuscation.. Others were alluding to a more fundamental estrangement from existence, but this one is interesting because there are degrees where at least a few people get a bit closer to some of the core technology that "sustains" our (modern) existence.. and since we only live out modern existences in 90% of the world (I'll argue even third world countries), that is indeed what matters.
The engineers at places like IBM, Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Intel, Dow Chemicals, General Electric, Texas Instruments, Canon, and so on.
Agent SmithOctober 06, 2022 at 03:04#7456100 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Good exegesis of our predicament: specialization (in technology) is a vulnerability, an Achilles' heel. Technologies are interdependent and if only one group of specialists is eliminated, civilization will collapse.
Good exegesis of our predicament: specialization (in technology) is a vulnerability, an Achilles' heel. Technologies are interdependent and if only one group of specialists is eliminated, civilization will collapse.
This may be..but I am looking at it from a core and auxiliary, where the core needs the auxiliary in a secondary sense (to sell, market, account for, service, etc. the stuff), the auxiliary needs the core people absolutely in a primary sense for the technology itself.
Agent SmithOctober 06, 2022 at 03:48#7456170 likes
This may be..but I am looking at it from a core and auxiliary, where the core needs the auxiliary in a secondary sense (to sell, market, account for, service, etc. the stuff), the auxiliary needs the core people absolutely in a primary sense for the technology itself.
Yup, we're looking at the whole chain from raw material to finished product - each link is a potential point of failure.
Are you asking whether I understood what you were saying or whether I think what you said is plausible?
I'd agree that it seems plausible to think that eliminating one class of specialists would, depending on the importance of the specialist field in question to the economy, have a more or less disruptive effect.
Agent SmithOctober 06, 2022 at 04:33#7456270 likes
Well, not all machines were created equal - some are more essential than others. This would mean losing our capability to produce one may not be as disruptive as that for another, but for sure our lives would be impoverished if we lose the knowhow to build any machine, small or big.
Agent SmithOctober 06, 2022 at 04:46#7456280 likes
Im particularly talking about the aspect of human existence where we cannot understand the technology that we use and replicate it. If anything we can know and/or replicate a very very small portion of it. Rather, much larger forces are in charge of much bigger processes like mining and manufacturing, physics, chemistry, materials, engineering, and electronics and we just passively use them. This just leads to the fact that everything is set for us. We are disconnected from that which sustains us.
You are saying, in essence, that we are disconnected from our bodies? Because the human body uses much more chemical, biological processes than what we understand or know about. Yet we use them mindlessly. Which just leads to the fact that everything (or most things) in our bodies are set for us. We have no control over them.
We are disconnected from what sustains us, and we are disconnected from what the sustenance sustains-- we are disconnected from our very own selves.
schopenhauer1October 06, 2022 at 09:58#7457190 likes
But in the case of technology, it is human made, so paradoxically..it sustains us, some are involved in specialists aspects of it, but most are not and are only involved in a secondary way far removed from its creation or any real understanding of the processes and principles involved.
We are estranged, but not everyone.
god must be atheistOctober 06, 2022 at 10:02#7457200 likes
The technology that runs our lives is increasingly growing beyond the understanding of a single individual, with the disconnect increasing year by year.
A disconnect is of itself not a problem. As long as one can turn the lights on, potholes are filled in in the roads, the buses run on time and the citizen's life is angst-free, and where each citizen plays their part in the smooth running of the public services, then such a disconnect is not to be feared. As long as technology works to the benefit of the individual, the individual may pragmatically accept the benefits of a technology they may not understand. I don't need to know details of the crankcase to know that if I turn the key the car moves where I want it to move.
But as soon as the citizen begins to suffer at the hands of a technology that they are disconnected from, and are unable to either control or mitigate, then the situation becomes dire, and it is then we have become cogs in a blind machine with no real agency. A disconnect becomes problematic when technology no longer works for the benefit of the individual, and the individual is powerless to alter or control the technology they are suffering under. Typically, the increasing use of gaslighting being used by those who control the information that we depend on for our knowledge of a world that exists on the other side of our computer and phone screens.
Information technology, the electronic screen between us and the world, is turning us into Truman Burbanks. A world where information technology controls every aspect of our lives, where we live in a false reality, as an actor on a stage populated by other actors. We play a role, directed by unknown forces behind the images we see on the screens. We are perceiving a world that has already been interpreted by a media more concerned with advertising profits and its own financial benefits than the well-being of its consumers.
Information technology is leading us to a dystopian future where we are unknowingly trapped inside a simulated and virtual realist, a Matrix, where the individual is more a source of energy for the machine than a free person with independent hopes, desires and wishes.
Information technology, with its databases creating a synthetic world populated by all of us as electronic images is creating a world where we can all be be surveilled and regimented. As in Orwell's 1984, subjected to historical negationism and propaganda, facilitated by servants of the controllers in an omnipresent government, repressing and controlling the allowed behaviour of people in society.
Information technology works to minimise the power of the individual in order to gain more control. Individual European nation states are subsumed into a supranational political and economic European Union. Small countries of 5 million people intimately knowing their political leaders are bound into organisations run and controlled by unelected bureaucrats, responsible to a distant Commission rather than the population they are intended to serve. Where their oath of allegiance of the bureaucrats is to an amorphous group rather than their home country, where the individual becomes powerless and unrepresented amongst 400 million others, where the political leaders of the member countries are decided by the diktat of central bureaucrats and economists.
Alienation is not a new phenomenon. The masses have always been alienated. In the past it was powerlessness in the face of the forces of Mother Nature. Today, it is the increasing powerlessness in the face of the Big Brother computer algorithm.
schopenhauer1October 06, 2022 at 16:17#7458380 likes
A disconnect is of itself not a problem. As long as one can turn the lights on, potholes are filled in in the roads, the buses run on time and the citizen's life is angst-free, and where each citizen plays their part in the smooth running of the public services, then such a disconnect is not to be feared.
I am not necessarily looking at it from a pragmatic/effect.. I realize that we can carry on pretty well not knowing how much of any technology works. Rather, I see the position of R&D in sciences/technologies/programming/manufacturing/mining/electric/electronic/engineering in general the whole system of symbiosis of all of them in STEM fields as being at the core of the understanding of the (modern) tools we use. They are usually placed in larger industries, though small and medium startups sometimes get in there too. Either way, it is what these people get to be a part of and the others passively just use, that I am referring to. Not everyone can be a part of this, but passively use and service the tools that the science/engineering/R&D get to invent/create/understand/are an integral part of..
You can argue that everyone has their place for the system to work, but this is not quite what I am getting at. The other laboring jobs are all in service to the tools that these people get to be a part of. There is a natural hierarchy going on.. where most people are cut off from the factors of industry/knowledge that they use.. but there are a small number of people who are at this position/level to understand.
To make an analogy (hear me out).. It's like the cave. The scientists/R&D/engineers at these strategic companies (many times used from previous governmental research) are sort of sitting with the forms, and we simply glean at it from a "use" side of it. And no, buying a book of "How stuff works" doesn't solve this disconnect of gnosis of the forms/tools/understanding as it is enacted in real life.
And oddly, at the same time, "knowing" the forms can be oh so tedious. My point with the post with all the images of the ways of the tedious complexities. We need to "mine" minutia.. It's like if the forms instead of being beautiful Platonic understanding, is just really a mining of complexities. It creates jobs, but it creates tedious monotony, minutia, etc.. Once you get to the forms, you realize it's just more tedium, all the way down to a sub-atomic level of understanding.
It's like if the forms instead of being beautiful Platonic understanding, is just really a mining of complexities.
Do you mean something like the following ?
The graduate engineer was given the task of designing a bridge. The engineer went away and came back three weeks later with 100 sheets of computer printout, having laboriously checked each line and ensured that each piece of data was consistent with all other pieces of data, that there were no arithmetic errors and each part built up logically into a whole.
The senior engineer in charge, just approaching retirement, tore off a scrap of paper, took out their pencil, and after an hour, told the graduate engineer that their design was correct.
The graduate engineer had mined the complexities logically joining each part together to create a whole. The senior engineer started by looking at the whole, excluded that which was secondary, and only concentrated on that which was essential.
The graduate engineer lived in the cave looking at shadows. The senior engineer lived outside the cave looking at the beautiful Forms.
Pessimism is one of the consequences of not knowing what is important and not knowing what can be excluded, of knowing what doesn't need to be known. Optimism is one of the consequences of knowing what is important and knowing what can be excluded, of not knowing what doesn't need to be known.
universenessOctober 07, 2022 at 10:21#7461460 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1
I think you could sing this song to yourself every day as the main anthem to your world view.
Sing it loud, be proud of who you are! Sing it proud!
schopenhauer1October 07, 2022 at 13:03#7461840 likes
Reply to RussellA
Not quite but cool imagery.
Rather the graduate student got to do what was primary/essential/Forms (technology creation) and everything from the transportation, marketers, finance, tradesman servicing it are secondary, and not a actually getting to participate in the technology creation (essential/primary/the actual technology creation itself).
There are hopefully some who straight away understand the pessimism in this. Id like to engage with them. There will be others who are confused as to its connection with pessimism. Id like to engage with them as well.
If you actually are feeling sadness, hopelessness, or whatever it is that pessimism brings you due to the fact that the complexities that sustain us are too difficult for your to decipher, then you need some sort of counseling. Do you just seek the kinship from those who share your peculiar form of suffering or do you want some advice for how you can emerge from your pessimism?
It's just not clear why you're telling me that you're sad. Maybe it makes you happy to tell me you're sad, or maybe your despondence has grown so great you had the need to share. I really don't know what to do with the OP other than to tell you that you're letting something that isn't any big deal be a big deal, so figure out a way to deal with. I don't know, maybe telling us here of your sadness is helpful to you and we're part of your therapy.
schopenhauer1October 07, 2022 at 13:36#7461940 likes
Reply to Hanover
So you are in the confused camp? So it is pessimistic in that unless you are of the elite who have these positions, you simply are a passive user of the technology.. The very thing used to maintain your lifestyle.
As far as pessimism in general, I do think there is some therapy to be had.. But I don't see that as "a-philosophical". Stoicism, Buddhism, and a whole host of philosophical systems are a kind of therapy. Philosophy itself can be seen as therapy of a self-aware creature thrown into a world where there are no certainties or (seemingly) inherent reasons for anything at all.
In fact, I see an interesting dichotomy between human-centered philosophical interests (ethics, aesthetics, values, etc.) and logic/math. It is the same thing.. The logic/math/science of the universe exist, but why should we care? Once you answer that, you get to human-centered reasons, so they are intertwined.
I already made the (human-centered) reason that technology/scientific understanding sustains us (our very physical existence in a modern social setting). Now I provide what this means when played out.. The elite who are involved in technology creation and the others that are not.
So it is pessimistic in that unless you are of the elite who have these positions, you simply are a passive user of the technology.
I'm not following why having survival mechanisms that go beyond my understanding entail pessimism. I also don't know of anyone so elite that they fully comprehend every aspect of reality so much so that they understand why they continue to live and breathe.
schopenhauer1October 07, 2022 at 13:40#7461990 likes
The optimist invents the airplane the pessimist the parachute.
Both ways of thinking are necessary.
Cool observation, but still not quite what I'm getting at. Both the airplane and parachute creator are involved in the technology. The ones just using it are not.
schopenhauer1October 07, 2022 at 13:44#7462010 likes
Besides consumer and laborer, how close do you get to the understanding and actual resources that create the technology? Who has more agency and less agency? Hint, it isn't just the ones with the most money. Holding the money and spending it, isn't quite it. You have to have access to the finance but also the technology itself.. to some understanding and to groups of those who have understanding. To the mining, the manufacturing, the resources, the formulas, the engineering principles, etc.
You have to mine minutia.. It's minutia all the way down... to the sub-atomic level. It's so very tedious.. Don't let the romantics full you. In that, apokrisis is right, but in so replacing the tedium of the scientific formulas, he replaces it with the principle of triadic meta-formulas.
I'll look into that. But 100% agree about the gatekeeping. I am even more terrified of the malaise of minutia that comes out of the science.. These people can accept and deal with enormous amounts of minutia. The tedium of the practical and necessary. But yet "Life is good".
The paradox is that we are alienated from that which sustains us, but if we are not alienated we simply become mired in the minutia of 100110101, materials, equations, and the like..
One major con is giving a romantic vision to science and technology. The Edisons/Teslas, Einsteins/Heidenbergs, etc. Monger the minutia is more the gist of science of the daily.. Your computer screen, your processor, your electronics, your plastics.. :yawn:
You become a 01001100101 to make 0010100110.. So alienation or minutia mongerer? It all doesn't lead anywhere good.
But at the same time, there is an "innovative" / inventive element that is there for a very small amount of time. The "breakthroughs" of a few that get pulled apart and mongered to become more minutia.
So it's a bit different even than that. Rather, it's not the pretty common trope of using modern technology which causes alienation, but not being able to be "really" apart of the core members who actually created and fully understand the technology. That can be said on two levels:
1) Those who understand a very specialized field of technology really well (like someone on R&D for X chemicals, circuit board design, machine code, materials science, electronic engineering, etc. Not everyone gets to be a part of this.. only a select few and their entrepreneurial/financial backers. Everyone else just uses the final products passively, or labors in some auxilliary fields tangential to the true inventors and creators.
OR
2) Even the specialized experts only know their technology well and thus can't know ALL the technology that is used, and so even they are passive users who can never really know that which creates the technology they rely on.
it is an obfuscation.. Others were alluding to a more fundamental estrangement from existence, but this one is interesting because there are degrees where at least a few people get a bit closer to some of the core technology that "sustains" our (modern) existence.. and since we only live out modern existences in 90% of the world (I'll argue even third world countries), that is indeed what matters.
The engineers at places like IBM, Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Intel, Dow Chemicals, General Electric, Texas Instruments, Canon, and so on.
It's about being excluded.. In the cave.. But it's also about even once you find the Forms (technological understanding) you realize it's just tedium all the way down. Perhaps it's hard to explain.. That's why I am fleshing this out and seeing how others can contribute perhaps. A dialectic.
Because you are simply a passive user who does not get to be involved in that which you use for various utility.
That has very little to do with technology, but is just part of being part of a complex world with all sorts of specialized roles. Even if I were able to eat only what I killed, cleaned, and cooked, I still would have to accept I had nothing to do with creating the animal I was eating. On a simpler note, I woke up this morning when the sun came through my window, but I had nothing to do with the sun shining. That doesn't cause me great pessimism.
The awe one feels at the complexity of the world usually yields inspiration as opposed to the despair it yields in you.
schopenhauer1October 07, 2022 at 14:56#7462100 likes
Reply to Hanover
Youve seemed to ignore other posts I wrote about natural vs human processes so Ill invite you to read some of those if you want.
It's kind of in there briefly but basically whereas natural processes are not in our control, human-made processes are the outcome of other people's decisions. Where natural processes could not have been different in this universe, human decisions can. Right now it is the case that some get to create technology and others simply support or use it.
It's kind of in there briefly but basically whereas natural processes are not in our control, human-made processes are the outcome of other people's decisions. Where natural processes could not have been different in this universe, human decisions can. Right now it is the case that some get to create technology and others simply support or use it.
There's obviously a difference between a human created control on my behavior and a non-human one, but why does this difference matter in terms of the pessimism it should bring me?
Why am I sadder that I must rely upon a gun that I can't create in order to kill my food as opposed to the sadness I feel because I lack the physical ability to kill my food due to my physical limitations?
schopenhauer1October 08, 2022 at 13:39#7465470 likes
Reply to Hanover
Because it becomes a hierarchy where you become a secondary character in your own life. You just support those who matter to the creation of the tools.
Clearly a human understood and can create those things. But that was not you. Youre just a supporting cast. Youre ignorant and far removed of the very tools you use.
Agent SmithOctober 08, 2022 at 14:03#7465500 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 What if we are tools? We seem bewitched by telos, even killing ourselves when we can't find one. We're sentient tools/machines!!! :cool:
Srap TasmanerOctober 08, 2022 at 23:14#7466390 likes
Because it becomes a hierarchy where you become a secondary character in your own life. You just support those who matter to the creation of the tools.
So Hank Aaron was a bit player in the story of the guy who made his bat?
I think you need something more there.
schopenhauer1October 08, 2022 at 23:34#7466420 likes
Reply to Srap Tasmaner
Different. You are a bit player to the guy(s) who figured out principles of harnessing and distributing electricity.
You can say that baseball isn't baseball without the people who invented the official "bat". It's not even the bat producer.
The consumers allow the producers to keep producing, but I am saying that is secondary to the people who invented the stuff and/or can reproduce the stuff and improve it.
Srap TasmanerOctober 08, 2022 at 23:40#7466440 likes
The internet is a behemoth of complex technology.. It started with Arpanet, and the technology behind that.. TCP/IP... But also relates to purified silicon (doped with boron, phosphorus, and other elements), the ability to conduct electricity directionally, voltage, current, copper alloy ionic structures.. magnetism, chemical reactions, logic gates, and the rest.. It's immense. You are but a spec in this technology (made by human efforts) but yet you have almost no real agency in its production.. Then multiply all the technology involved in that complex process exponentially through the years with hundreds of thousands more things that are involved in modern electrical and electronic technologies. There are protocols and standards, etc. etc.. It's all set out from by some other nebulous groups of peoples in corporations and agencies involved in their development.
So it's not just that we are a spec in the universe. We are a spec in our own forms of sustenance to keep our daily lives.
Srap TasmanerOctober 09, 2022 at 02:24#7466710 likes
No, no I'm not. Neither are you, though evidently you think you are. I am a human being, not a network device, and I'm not part of the internet, but a user of the internet.
There are two possibilities here, I believe, and you needn't tell me which one applies if you don't want to:
(1) You think you are part of the internet.
(2) You feel you are part of the internet.
We may be able to talk about (1). I am not qualified to address (2).
Agent SmithOctober 09, 2022 at 05:03#7466990 likes
A cog in the great machine we call the universe! Work, work, work, die! We're replaceable parts; momma nature doesn't care about us because she can always create another human being just like/better than us. Si?
schopenhauer1October 09, 2022 at 09:54#7467320 likes
Reply to Srap Tasmaner
You are a part I meant as a consumer of the technology. Not sure how you took that literally.
schopenhauer1October 09, 2022 at 09:55#7467330 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
I meant more we are a passive consumer of technology rather than its creator. You can support it, buy it, service it. But you probably didnt design or invent it. Nor can you really understand all the technology that went into it. Hence my example of the internet and all its innumerable parts.
Srap TasmanerOctober 09, 2022 at 13:55#7467500 likes
You are a part I meant as a consumer of the technology. Not sure how you took that literally.
Because if you thought of yourself as, or felt yourself to be, a depersonalized part of a great machine, then your position would make sense. It's still not clear why I should feel bad that I am consumer of the internet, anymore than Hank Aaron should have felt bad before playing a game he didn't invent using a bat he didn't make.
The idea seems to be that anything that I don't have complete control over has complete control over me. I should feel bad because I am not a god.
The idea seems to be that anything that I don't have complete control over has complete control over me. I should feel bad because I am not a god.
Right, and then he draws a meaningless distinction between technological control and natural control, where I am supposed to feel powerless because I rely upon the internet but not upon my lungs.
Where others feel awe at the complexity of the universe and inspiration at human ingenuity, he feels powerlessness.
Sounds like a psychological predisposition more than a philosophical problem.
schopenhauer1October 09, 2022 at 16:09#7467640 likes
Reply to Srap TasmanerReply to Hanover
Well, it is about control to some extent. There are those who understand and create the technology, and those that can only use it. There are those who set the protocols and standards of the technology, and those who haplessly must review the literature already set in place by the first group and to some degree work backwards to figure out what they (the big dogs) did if they need to fix it.
https://blog.robertelder.org/how-to-make-a-cpu/
schopenhauer1October 09, 2022 at 16:21#7467670 likes
Sorry, this just looks like gibberish to me. That's not how technology evolves, not how engineering works, this whole image you have of some cabal of the powerful imposing shit on the helpless plebs, that's just what you say about everything and has almost nothing to do with the evolution of the Internet, for example.
schopenhauer1October 09, 2022 at 16:35#7467700 likes
Reply to Srap Tasmaner
I'm not saying it's "imposing shit on the helpless plebs". That's just what it becomes. It's not necessarily designed that way, that is simply the nature of the hierarchy of technology of those who create it and use it.
A cog in the great machine we call the universe! Work, work, work, die! We're replaceable parts; momma nature doesn't care about us because she can always create another human being just like/better than us. Si?
I'd like to go back to this because I think I got lost in my own message. Yes, there is some aspect of what I call "minutia-mongering" going on. That is to say, as technology increases exponentially, the amount of minutia the human needs to know to produce the technology increases, thus making us very much a cog-like entity of minutia-miners. We mine minutia (and we have to "mind" minutia).
This actually ties in to an earlier thread here about what the monolith was in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. What it can mean is that the tools have made humans estranged from their workings (HAL goes off the deep end and barely a programmer knows how/why) AND we have become changed to mintia-mongering bores.. (look at the soulless Discovery ship, with Dave and Frank just sitting idly, checking stats, running in place, staring, not saying much.. HAL has more personality than they do!). Minutia is all they are minding because they are mining minutia!
Agent SmithOctober 09, 2022 at 16:43#7467730 likes
I meant more we are a passive consumer of technology rather than its creator. You can support it, buy it, service it. But you probably didnt design or invent it. Nor can you really understand all the technology that went into it. Hence my example of the internet and all its innumerable parts.
I get what you mean! We're, in a sense, being led by our noses!
You cannot resign from life and move on (inter-wordly affairs).
Oh, but you can. So says Epictetus:
Remember that the door is open. Dont be more cowardly than children, but just as they say, when the game is no longer fun for them, I wont play any more, you too, when things seem that way to you, say, I wont play any more, and leave, but if you remain, dont complain. (Discourses I.24.20)
Real Gone CatOctober 11, 2022 at 15:48#7473600 likes
In the immortal words of the Boss :
Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Words, words, words! Yes, from 'wordly' affairs we may, might, should, would resign. How many times have I told a tedious pontificator on National Public Radio or the BBC to SHUT UP! and turned the radio off?
As for the world and its affairs, I am not quite done.
The only real important distinction to be made between people is by economic class - haves and have-nots; most everything else is derived from this, I think. Of course, those who have the capital will invest in technology that supports their continued ownership of capital - and sometimes they will even oppose technological progress that threatens this ownership. According to Ellul, this is one of the reasons why capitalism will disappear; the goal of capitalism is not the same as the goal of technical efficiency - it's not efficient enough.
Really though, nobody understands the entirety of a complex modern machine (including social machines like governments). They may understand how to use it, or understand a single component by itself (which is useless by itself), or the may have a vague high-level understanding of how all the components work together, but no single person can possibly understand a machine in its entirety, let alone all of the machines that are now used in our lives; nor can the average person have any real say on anything either.
Gone are the days where tool-making went alongside tool-using, with every step of the process being understood by everyone. Now we have experts, specialization, technological giantism, etc.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 01:00#7475390 likes
Really though, nobody understands the entirety of a complex modern machine (including social machines like governments). They may understand how to use it, or understand a single component by itself (which is useless by itself), or the may have a vague high-level understanding of how all the components work together, but no single person can possibly understand a machine in its entirety, let alone all of the machines that are now used in our lives; nor can the average person have any real say on anything either.
Gone are the days where tool-making went alongside tool-using, with every step of the process being understood by everyone. Now we have experts, specialization, technological giantism, etc.
Wasn't Edison's lab the model for the modern groups of engineers/technicians who create the patented technology? Also the Fords and early chemical manufacturers. The knowledge was specialized, but these groups are brought together and then the worker simply fabricates and fixes it. The consumer consumes it.
It all leads back to forces much greater than us that are the backdrop of our throwness. Those who get to put together these groups of creators and manufacturers being more embedded in the vast ocean for which we consume and are bandied about as laborers upon the waves of.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 01:03#7475420 likes
I just wanted to add that I think this title would look great on the NYT best seller list: Series in Pessimism, by Schopenhaur1.
But you can exit life. Just don't let the hospital get a hold of your half dead body, they'll resuscitate it.
You might not be far off. I believe Schopenhauer's best selling books were his essays and aphorisms that are found under the title Studies in Pessimism.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 01:04#7475430 likes
Resigning and moving on is not really resigning though is it as youve merely transformed or exchanged your game for another (easier/harder)
Euthanasia says otherwise regarding your second point.
But that's the point. Intra-worldly, you exchange games. The treadmill continues or you die. There is no reprieve from the treadmill.. There is no time out.. A Platonic land of rest. Once you are thrown into the world, you must keep treading along.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 01:05#7475440 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 But you aren't thrown into the world. A part of the world coalesced. And that life that you were grew, that is did what life does. It's as if you are something other than your body and got put in a body. But you are a body and bodies are life and participate, given their nature, in life. And one can de-coalesce if one chooses. But that body wants life as shown by it's growing and multiplying and seeking food and experience. Yes, later it may no longer want it and then would need to take measures to de-coalesce, but there is no someone to get thrown in and the moment that someone exists, like all life it strives for life, an engaged participant. There's no you trapped in that thing yearning for life that doesn't want life, though humans, later can change their minds.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 12:52#7476380 likes
Really? If humans live in society and people dont like the workings of society, isnt that rejecting life? All the people who reject society refute that idea we strive for life. We are existential beings because we are self-aware. We could do other than instinct. So I fully disagree with this. The problem is, once a life is started, that person MUST go through the gauntlet or die. Since there is no alternative, starting a life on behalf of someone else is problematic. Human life becomes problematic because of its lack of options outside the premises of life. We humans can IMAGINE better scenarios or games, but we KNOW we can only play this one.
CiceronianusOctober 12, 2022 at 14:59#7476560 likes
Really? If humans live in society and people dont like the workings of society, isnt that rejecting life?
Well, that would be rejecting society not necessarily life. But my point doesn't hinge on that. The way you framed the issue was as if someone was thrown into life. But really they only ever existed as life. And when they begin that life (as a fertilized egg, in the womb, on the way out, however you think of the beginning) they are life that wants life, that will eat and will grow. Later, yes, some humans anyway may decide they don't like life and then they have the option to end it.Quoting schopenhauer1
e could do other than instinct. So I fully disagree with this.
Sure, we can. But there is no creature that wants to who is thrown into life.Quoting schopenhauer1
The problem is, once a life is started, that person MUST go through the gauntlet or die.
Yes.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 15:28#7476630 likes
Request denied. Imagine having the possibility for no choice though. I mean I could have complied :wink:. Not in the case of life. Comply or die. And you or I can move on to something else (infra-worldly affairs). Not so in the life treadmill game. Youre on it and if you want off, you are out.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 15:33#7476650 likes
No, a parent wanted a life. A decision was had based on a reason. We are a species with reasons. I had a whole thread on this which poster @Banno and @Ciceronianus didnt seem to get the import of.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 15:35#7476670 likes
Later, yes, some humans anyway may decide they don't like life and then they have the option to end it.
Thats also the point. There is no better version of the game of life (inter-worldly affairs) and so all you can do is kill yourself if you dont like it(or die from a mishap from playing the game itself but thats still affirming the game).
That doesn't contradict what I said. I didn't said a child chose a life. But that matter that was made after the choice of the parents wanted life, it strove for life. You cannot birth something that does not strive for life or it will miscarry. There is no bringing into life something that doesn't want life.
Thats also the point. There is no better version of the game of life (inter-worldly affairs) and so all you can do is kill yourself if you dont like it(or die from a mishap from playing the game itself but thats still affirming the game).
I'm not arguing that one can change the game of life.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 15:38#7476710 likes
Thats more social conditioning. Babies dont decide things yet. We tend to get hungry and fear scary stimuli. But to equate that with a reason for embracing lifes game is a naturalistic fallacy.
Thats more social conditioning. Babies dont decide things yet.
I am talking about an organism doing what it can to live, both on a cellular level and to whatever extent it can as it can move. There is no incarnating a not wanting life organism.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 15:40#7476730 likes
I'm not arguing that one can change the game of life.
Thats good because thats exactly my point. You start a treadmill that the person can by its nature cannot be ended without simply death. There is no platonic heavenly better way except what we can imagine and cannot attain.
I am talking about an organism doing what it can to live, both on a cellular level and to whatever extent it can as it can move. There is no incarnating a not wanting life organism.
Thats great but doesnt quite capture human like (I.e a self-aware being that has reasons).
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 15:41#7476760 likes
Thats great but doesnt quite capture human like (I.e a self-aware being that has reasons).
I didn't say it did. I responded, I think pretty clearly, to this idea of a parent throwing someone into life. A someone who may or may not want life. I think that model is confused.
I didn't say it did. I responded, I think pretty clearly, to this idea of a parent throwing someone into life. A someone who may or may not want life. I think that model is confused.
You are using throw as some literal term. It just means starting someone elses life on the treadmill. Equivocating the fact that babies cant reason/have reasons/arent self aware yet withlife striving and THUS some other implication about life (that we want it?) is confused and again, a naturalistic fallacy. Our reasons dont have to confirm with any instinctual mechanism.
Not really, but I am taking it as a transitive verb. I mean, even as a metaphor it means transferring something somewhere. But that is not what happens. Any life was only ever life.
The problem with it as a metaphor (and certainly literally) is that it is as if a parent is putting some neutral essence into life. But no, this does not happen. Any life they create immediately desires life, the organism does, and strives to live. You can only create something living that immediately strives to continue living.
It is not some neutral or negatively aimed at life. It is life that wants to live more.
It seems like you are presenting this as putting someone in a situation it may or may not want. But no, parents can only make life.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 17:25#7477070 likes
Any life they create immediately desires life, the organism does, and strives to live. You can only create something living that immediately strives to continue living.
My previous post still remains my reply. Quoting Bylaw
It is not some neutral or negatively aimed at life. It is life that wants to live more.
And this is explicitly the naturalistic fallacy as stated in last post
It seems like you are presenting this as putting someone in a situation it may or may not want. But no, parents can only make life.
Life that leads to a person with self-awareness and reasons. The parent chose to do it, and the adult functioning person is the one who deals with it (run on the treadmill or die).
CiceronianusOctober 12, 2022 at 19:41#7477680 likes
But that's the case with games, as well. When you resign (e.g., in chess) the game is over--you're out. You may play chess again, but in that case you play a different game, you don't play, again, the game you chose to end by resigning.
schopenhauer1October 12, 2022 at 20:16#7477850 likes
It is not some neutral or negatively aimed at life. It is life that wants to live more. Bylaw
And this is explicitly the naturalistic fallacy as stated in last post
That is absurd. First of all, I am not a moral realist. I don't think morals exist. I was not mounting a moral argument. I was reacting to an implicit moral argument on your part with a description of what I think is a factual issue. The fetus and babies will seek out more life.
I have not argued that having babies is good. I don't think that even makes sense.
You are misapplying the concept of natural fallacy.
Agent SmithOctober 13, 2022 at 07:40#7479440 likes
We havta ponder all the negative aspects of life; it's a necessity if we're into selling life tickets (making babies). Explore all angles, every which way life sucks. To not do this is bad for business. @schopenhauer1' Series in Pessimism threads are crucial therfore.
schopenhauer1October 13, 2022 at 14:10#7480280 likes
I was reacting to an implicit moral argument on your part with a description of what I think is a factual issue. The fetus and babies will seek out more life.
Then this isn't arguing anything contra my moral argument. It is simply a description that fetuses develop and become babies.
I don't understand. You're not forced to play chess for fear that (lest) you'll kill yourself?
Um, so like the OP is stating.. In a game like chess.. You can play it and if you want to resign, you can move on. You can't do that with the "game of life". Simple, but tragic. You can't get off the treadmill and move to another "game of life" with different premises. You start someone on the treadmill, the only way out is death. It's a game where someone starts you on it, and you can't move on to another game. The only option as a way out of the game is death.
CiceronianusOctober 13, 2022 at 19:44#7481380 likes
You can play it and if you want to resign, you can move on. You can't do that with the "game of life". Simple, but tragic.
Yes, if you kill yourself, you die. If you play chess and resign (unless you resign by dying), you don't die. That's because, despite what was maintained by Bobby Fischer, chess isn't life. But what is tragic about that? Death would be an end to suffering. Continuing to live would mean continuing to suffer. If you resign from a game, you continue to suffer. If you "resign" from life, you don't.
schopenhauer1October 13, 2022 at 19:46#7481390 likes
But what is tragic about that? Death would be an end to suffering. Continuing to live would mean continuing to suffer. If you resign from a game, you continue to suffer. If you "resign" from life, you don't.
It's morally wrong to put someone in a situation where you either "play this game or kill yourself". That is a tragic thing. Yes, it is indeed the case, but what a case to defend! Seems pretty obviously tragic to me and wrong from the standpoint of starting for someone else.
Life and chess are incomparable. The fact that one can move on from a game like chess is another reason why it is a false analogy.
Yes, thats the point. We cannot move on from this setup and rules. We cannot resign and move to a different version. If you rather the treadmill analogy think of that. A treadmill can end. This survival etc game cant lest death. Its a treadmill that one cannot step off of without dire consequences.
Agent SmithOctober 14, 2022 at 09:39#7483000 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Evolution is too slow and is luck-driven. We know that now. Machines have gone where no man has gone before (rovers on Mars). We seem to, for some unfathomable reason, forget that machines are always 1[sup]st[/sup] and if not it's a tie for 1[sup]st[/sup] place. The machine kalpa (eon) has begun! We work for 'em mackineeks (Gungan term for machines, re Star Wars) now, oui? I'm over the moon! :cool:
Down The Rabbit HoleOctober 14, 2022 at 13:38#7483400 likes
Then this isn't arguing anything contra my moral argument. It is simply a description that fetuses develop and become babies.
I was arguing that your throwing someone into life (take that literally or metaphorically) as if they are victims or as if they have not consented is confused. As I said, you cannot create life that does not seek more life and to thrive. That does not match your model. You have an 'is' model that you base your 'ought' on. Since I am not a moral realist, I am not making a moral argument. I am critiquing the is part of your postion.
schopenhauer1October 14, 2022 at 22:11#7484060 likes
Since I am not a moral realist, I am not making a moral argument. I am critiquing the is part of your postion.
I believe a refuted your argument in my last post so Im not sure theres much to say.
schopenhauer1October 15, 2022 at 19:20#7486500 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
So it occurs to me as I wrote something on another thread that one of the pessimistic outcomes of the behemoth technology that is our modern world is that we can't democratically participate in its production. This has less to do with distribution of resources than it does about the understanding of technology. It is just a fact that some people will more readily understand complex mathematical concepts and scientific formulas more than others. There is no "democracy of understanding". We cannot all participate in being physicists, chemists, and engineers. We can't all participate in the creation and design of useful patents. The majority can only be passive recipients. They can only be fixers, sellers, transporters, administrators, and of course users of the technology made by the creators.
schopenhauer1October 15, 2022 at 20:07#7486840 likes
Agent SmithOctober 15, 2022 at 20:12#7486870 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 You speak the truth! For instance a computer engineer must know machine language (1s and 0s), but here I am, typing on a virtual keyboard on my phone, utterly ignorant of the mechanics of displays and touch screens and so on. It does make one wonder about who's running the show, who's calling the shots, who's in charge, if you catch me drift.
Technology seems to transform our lives drastically and one way it does that is by making us so dependent on it that a rollback would be catastrophic to civilization as we know it. We're, to that extent, invalids.
schopenhauer1October 15, 2022 at 20:14#7486880 likes
Technology seems to transform our lives drastically and one way it does that is by making us so dependent on it that a rollback would be catastrophic to civilization as we know it. We're, to that extent, on invalids.
Yes, and not just that but hapless users/consumers.. Not co-creators in. Which again, goes back to your first point.
Agent SmithOctober 15, 2022 at 20:20#7486920 likes
[quote=Albert Camus]There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.[/quote] Reply to schopenhauer1 And as I have asked you on other threads: So What? :eyes:
There is joy in affirming the struggle to live for its own sake; not enough joy to compensate for our suffering, no doubt, but enough joy well, enough for most of us and most other living beings with which to create and recreate and, yes, (selfishly? atavistically?) procreate. There are no "pessimists" or "optimists" in foxholes who, under fire, can afford the luxury of such poses? there's only the quick and the dead. "Pessimism", after all, is just disillusioned "optimism"; thus, in spite of it all, I'm a bluesman and absurdist (A. Murray et al).
schopenhauer1October 16, 2022 at 00:40#7487750 likes
What now? We wait until we die, persuade others not to reproduce, and thats it. Do I have that right?
I'm more diagnosing right now rather than a prognosis. But yes, certainly antinatalism would be an appropriate response. Can society be ordered differently? Probably not. Another pessimistic point.
Agent SmithOctober 16, 2022 at 05:15#7488120 likes
The pessimism-optimism life span paradox
1. Pessimists live longer (they don't walk into traps as easily as optimists) [and procreate more @schopenhauer1]
2. Optimists live longer (their happy disposition means a healthy mind and body).
3. Pessimists die early (their negative attitude affects their health).
4. Optimists die early (they walk into traps).
WTF? :chin:
[quote=SYR]I don't want to dieee! :cry:[/quote]
I like sushiOctober 16, 2022 at 08:01#7488430 likes
I find conflict a key attribute of a healthy and optimistic outlook.
My fundamental outlook for over a decade now has been an amalgam of pessimism and optimism I hope for everything and expect nothing!
A complete pessimist cannot fight a good fight, cannot face the impossible nor believe they can escape the cage they find themselves in. It does not matter how hard we argue that the cage is all we have and any sense of escape is futile we still hope, and sometimes what was once impossible becomes common then eventually mundane. Life is full of such mundane miracles. The pessimist actively ignores that the seemingly impossible had been overcome again and again.
Nihilism is nihilism. Its foundation is based on an impossibility. It is almost like people are discomforted by comfort so need to breed hell into their lives usually this happens when we cower from life and belittle it. I have been there. I think it is a necessary struggle for humans to go through.
A struggle is only bad if you avoid it, ignore it and deny it all at once.
Reply to schopenhauer1 Well, self-congratulatory posts always add to a discussion. Here, I'll give it a go: So, there is no refutation of my critique of your orginal argument, so there is no more to say.
schopenhauer1October 16, 2022 at 09:56#7488620 likes
Reply to Bylaw
I quite clearly did. Not self congratulatory. If you want to readdress it, go ahead. But Im
Not repeating my argument as it still stands.
NickolasgasparOctober 17, 2022 at 10:34#7491470 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Pessimism is an evaluation term on our expectations of an outcome. One can be a pessimist either due to a psychological predisposition or experience and knowledge.
Any well informed optimist can be a pessimist and vice versa but when credible information can't change the way we view a situation then we are dealing with a psychological condition.
schopenhauer1October 17, 2022 at 17:24#7492210 likes
So this is exactly what philosophical pessimism isnt. Rather, philosophical pessimism is an evaluation of the state of animal/human existence and not about expected outcomes. What you imply is common day usage of pessimism. Hes a pessimist about how the economy will turn out is not the same as He believes the world is inherently negative in value due to X, Y, Z.
NickolasgasparOctober 17, 2022 at 18:33#7492250 likes
Sure. Philosophical pessimism tries to evaluate existence through our attempt to project our values and meaning on nature. So in my opinion this request returns back to our psychological condition.
schopenhauer1October 17, 2022 at 19:19#7492300 likes
So in my opinion this request returns back to our psychological condition.
You can be a non-depressive antinatalist. You are confusing a cause with the evaluation. We may project meaning, but we cannot help but being a we. You cant take that meaning out of the equation.
'To exist sucks' mostly because even though you ought not to exist as Cioran points out: it's always too late not to exist. So 'embrace the suck' if you have the courage and the wit to do so; otherwise, you can always 'unfuck yourself' with either a pharmaceutical or surgical lobotomy. :eyes:
NickolasgasparOctober 17, 2022 at 19:38#7492340 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Not really. I am just pointing out that evaluation and meaning are subjective when we address nature. Things just are in Nature without inherent values. Its an agents that introduces such concepts and attempts to evaluate the conditions.
i.e your phrase " the world is inherently negative" can only have a meaning compared to the preferences of an observer, right?
schopenhauer1October 17, 2022 at 19:47#7492360 likes
philosophical pessimism is an evaluation of the state of animal/human existence
Its about human/animal condition.
NickolasgasparOctober 17, 2022 at 20:21#7492390 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Actually human condition is where my argument stands. A quick search of this term provides the following definition "The human condition is all of the characteristics and key events of human life, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, morality, conflict, and death".
So philosophical pessimism observes our human and our world's condition from a broader scope based on a more objective evaluation?
How can this be possible without our subjective criteria and preferences? What defines something as inherently negative for example...?
schopenhauer1October 17, 2022 at 20:24#7492410 likes
What defines something as inherently negative for example...?
For Schopenhauer for example, suffering is a constant lack we are always overcoming but never reaching. Human existence cant help but be this and this is inherent, not just contingent to it.
schopenhauer1October 18, 2022 at 16:03#7494960 likes
Just to add if we are defining everything as a game then does this term actually mean anything?
I think a lot of people get caught in the ideas of Wittgenstein and start believing everything is game just because he termed the phrase language game he did use the term Language in a very narrow sense so it is worth taking that into account.
Note: I have previously used the theme of life being a game before but that was rather loose.
I like sushiOctober 19, 2022 at 12:30#7497330 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 We reach it in death. It is not exactly like every waking hour of our lives is hellish or even close to being so.
Human beings are human beings because we are alive. We cannot help existing. Why would we want to? I certainly have no major qualms with existence but it is certainly puzzling that I exist and attach meaning to things in my life.
Suffering is a term too easily thrown around by you I find. Why would any sane person avoid every single ounce of suffering in life? Do to so would mean you are a walking talking zombie person shuffling through life like you are already dead. This is actually something quite common to many humans but the vast majority get over it.
Would you call Schopenhauer much of a narcissist? It just seems to me that such obsession with negative thoughts often stem from a kind of narcissism as the fury/rage/disappointment is directed at the world, or life itself, rather than simply taking the world on as mere happenstance within which we are not particularly significant nor possessing any right to demand/expect reality to be other than it is.
I like sushiOctober 19, 2022 at 12:31#7497340 likes
Everyone gets angry at life though at some point. Then we usually grow up albeit slowly and with instances of regression! :D
schopenhauer1October 19, 2022 at 17:01#7497680 likes
Everyone gets angry at life though at some point. Then we usually grow up albeit slowly and with instances of regression! :D
Dumb trope. Thats not how it necessarily goes. I can commit suicide or accept that I cant change things. I want to be in neither position. But I cant. Just saying suck it up buttercup is saying nothing but the default with the added dont complain. But that is simply restating the status quo and telling people to not question the situation itself because YOU particularly dont want to hear it. Then dont worry, go somewhere else. Carry on and read nothing that challenges the status quo.
schopenhauer1October 19, 2022 at 17:05#7497700 likes
Do to so would mean you are a walking talking zombie person shuffling through life like you are already dead. This is actually something quite common to many humans but the vast majority get over it.
Much of life we are zombies repeating same behaviors over and over. You can fast forward most of peoples day and nothing of meaningful experiences or significance would be lost.
I like sushiOctober 19, 2022 at 17:20#7497740 likes
I am failing to see the point pf any of this. You simply state the obvious over and over like it is something we should care about whilst simultaneously insinuating we should not care about it.
It does not make sense.
Pessimism is necessary in life. Suffering is necessary in life. That is not exactly anything anyone did not know is it? Even if it is so what?
I like sushiOctober 19, 2022 at 17:21#7497750 likes
Carry on and read nothing that challenges the status quo.
You literally said we cannot challenge the status quo which we cannot. We live, we suffer and we die. Why is this pessimistic though? It is just the fact of existing.
schopenhauer1October 19, 2022 at 17:51#7497800 likes
However, it isn't a particular war that a pessimist would care about but the seemingly pervasive aspect of conflict and war in human society, governments, and history. It seems like a feature or an irradicable bug.
I wrote a previous thread about technology, for example. In that one, I described the pervasive and inescapable nature of the fact that not all humans can truly participate in creating the technology that sustains them.
I wrote in another thread about the inability to move to another form of living. This is a pervasive and inescapable feature of being born. We cannot really change the set of choices and harms presented to us.
I now know what you really are. You're not a pessimist. You are a cynic. Know the difference. I think you have disdain, not despair, of things humans. Which give me hope -- pessimists annoy me. But cynics bring to life a different flavor of humanity. They're a funny lot, but truthful. Which is what's important. They tell it like it is.
'To exist sucks' mostly because even though you ought not to exist as Cioran points out: it's always too late not to exist. So 'embrace the suck' if you have the courage and the wit to do so; otherwise, you can always 'unfuck yourself' with either a pharmaceutical or surgical lobotomy. :eyes:
:rofl:
Et lux in tenebris lucet.
I like sushiOctober 20, 2022 at 05:10#7499380 likes
I like sushiOctober 20, 2022 at 05:12#7499390 likes
@schopenhauer1 I would be interested to learn about other schools of pessimism if you can give an account of some of them rather than sticking to the one in the OP.
I feel showing the distinctions between different views in this area would help in the understanding of a particular pessimism.
Agent SmithOctober 20, 2022 at 05:15#7499410 likes
I now know what you really are. You're not a pessimist. You are a cynic. Know the difference. I think you have disdain, not despair, of things humans. Which give me hope -- pessimists annoy me. But cynics bring to life a different flavor of humanity. They're a funny lot, but truthful. Which is what's important. They tell it like it is.
Fair enough. I think it important to point out these pervasive negatives that we cannot escape. It's like being taken advantage of but not knowing it, but trying to wake people up to the fact that they are being taken advantage of. Perhaps they don't want you to wake them up to this fact. Perhaps they liked their ignorance. It's always the same theme.. Plato telling those in the cave. The people in the cave telling him to leave them the fuck alone, and probably adds.. "You raving lunatic".
schopenhauer1October 20, 2022 at 14:35#7500700 likes
I would be interested to learn about other schools of pessimism if you can give an account of some of them rather than sticking to the one in the OP.
I feel showing the distinctions between different views in this area would help in the understanding of a particular pessimism.
I think it is so loosely defined, that there aren't really "schools" of pessimists, but just individual pessimists with similar themes. However, I can sum up some basic differences:
Metaphysical Pessimists (Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Mainlander, etc):
These thinkers thought there was an inherent source of suffering. For Schopenhauer it was Will. Will represents a striving-for-nothing. Will's playground is the illusion of individuation. This individuation creates the appearance of separate objects. These objects are objectifications and individuations of the Will, but are not primary ("less real") than the unified Will. Animals, and especially humans, suffer due to a profound sense of metaphysical "lack". Satisfaction is temporary because we are go from pursuits of survival and entertainment to boredom and back. Satisfaction can only truly happen by transcending one's nature of willing. According to him, this requires denying the Will and becoming an ascetic along the lines of a Jainist or something of that nature. The ultimate fate would be to starve oneself to death peacefully. He didn't expect anyone except a few to live up to that kind of lifestyle. He did think there were other things that can invoke will-lessness. He thought compassion and art brought us temporarily into a state of will-lessness. It goes on obviously. He has four really large books on the matter in The World as Will and Representation.
I'll just paste from the Wikipedia article on Mainlander:
Working in the metaphysical framework of Schopenhauer, Mainländer sees the "will" as the innermost core of being, the ontological arche. However, he deviates from Schopenhauer in important respects. With Schopenhauer the will is singular, unified and beyond time and space. Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism leads him to conclude that we only have access to a certain aspect of the thing-in-itself by introspective observation of our own bodies. What we observe as will is all there is to observe, nothing more. There are no hidden aspects. Furthermore, via introspection we can only observe our individual will. This also leads Mainländer to the philosophical position of pluralism.[2]:?202? The goals he set for himself and for his system are reminiscent of ancient Greek philosophy: what is the relation between the undivided existence of the "One" and the everchanging world of becoming that we experience.
Additionally, Mainländer accentuates on the idea of salvation for all of creation. This is yet another respect in which he differentiates his philosophy from that of Schopenhauer. With Schopenhauer, the silencing of the will is a rare event. The artistic genius can achieve this state temporarily, while only a few saints have achieved total cessation throughout history. For Mainländer, the entirety of the cosmos is slowly but surely moving towards the silencing of the will to live and to (as he calls it) "redemption".
Mainländer theorized that an initial singularity dispersed and expanded into the known universe. This dispersion from a singular unity to a multitude of things offered a smooth transition between monism and pluralism. Mainländer thought that with the regression of time, all kinds of pluralism and multiplicity would revert to monism and he believed that, with his philosophy, he had managed to explain this transition from oneness to multiplicity and becoming.[16]
Death of God
Main article: God is dead
Despite his scientific means of explanation, Mainländer was not afraid to philosophize in allegorical terms. Formulating his own "myth of creation", Mainländer equated this initial singularity with God.
Mainländer reinterprets Schopenhauer's metaphysics in two important aspects. Primarily, in Mainländer's system there is no "singular will". The basic unity has broken apart into individual wills and each subject in existence possesses an individual will of his own. Because of this, Mainländer can claim that once an "individual will" is silenced and dies, it achieves absolute nothingness and not the relative nothingness we find in Schopenhauer. By recognizing death as salvation and by giving nothingness an absolute quality, Mainländer's system manages to offer "wider" means for redemption. Secondarily, Mainländer reinterprets the Schopenhauerian will-to-live as an underlying will-to-die, i.e. the will-to-live is the means towards the will-to-die.[17]
From the Wiki article on Hartmann:
The essential feature of the morality built upon the basis of Von Hartmann's philosophy is the realization that all is one and that, while every attempt to gain happiness is illusory, yet before deliverance is possible, all forms of the illusion must appear and be tried to the utmost. Even he who recognizes the vanity of life best serves the highest aims by giving himself up to the illusion, and living as eagerly as if he thought life good. It is only through the constant attempt to gain happiness that people can learn the desirability of nothingness; and when this knowledge has become universal, or at least general, deliverance will come and the world will cease. No better proof of the rational nature of the universe is needed than that afforded by the different ways in which men have hoped to find happiness and so have been led unconsciously to work for the final goal. The first of these is the hope of good in the present, the confidence in the pleasures of this world, such as was felt by the Greeks. This is followed by the Christian transference of happiness to another and better life, to which in turn succeeds the illusion that looks for happiness in progress, and dreams of a future made worth while by the achievements of science. All alike are empty promises, and known as such in the final stage, which sees all human desires as equally vain and the only good in the peace of Nirvana.[9]
Existential Pessimists (E.M. Cioran, Nietzsche, Camus, etc.)
These people tend to not focus on metaphysics but purely the phenomenological human.
E.M Cioran for example, wrote in essays and aphorisms. One of his main themes was the idea of inertia (that is my take anyway). It's the idea that there is our situation is grim, but there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. Here are some quotes:
[i]My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.
[/i]
Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.
To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.
Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.
Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.
When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, "What's your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act." And they do calm down.
Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.
There was a time when time did not yet exist. ... The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.
Not one moment when I have not been conscious of being outside Paradise.
Just read any of his quotes here:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran
Again, there is not so much a coherent movement as much as similarity in themes. 19th century Germany might be the most prominent time/place of this philosophy. Schopenhauer was the progenitor for much of the ideas that came after. Even if not directly, movements like existentialism were influenced from him.
For more reading go here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_pessimism
or read these books:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1677700.Pessimism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28192377-weltschmerz?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=CASfH7rSIL&rank=1
From Goodreads on Weltschmerz:
Weltschmerz is a study of the pessimism that dominated German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Pessimism was essentially the theory that life is not worth living. This theory was introduced into German philosophy by Schopenhauer, whose philosophy became very fashionable in the 1860s. Frederick C. Beiser examines the intense and long controversy that arose from Schopenhauer's pessimism, which changed the agenda of philosophy in Germany away from the logic of the sciences and toward an examination of the value of life. He examines the major defenders of pessimism (Philipp Mainlander, Eduard von Hartmann and Julius Bahnsen) and its chief critics, especially Eugen Duhring and the neo-Kantians. The pessimism dispute of the second half of the century has been largely ignored in secondary literature and this book is a first attempt since the 1880s to re-examine it and to analyze the important philosophical issues raised by it. The dispute concerned the most
fundamental philosophical issue of them all: whether life is worth living.
Agent SmithOctober 22, 2022 at 02:41#7504970 likes
I believe we can resign from life, but mind you, not in the way we think.
I like sushiOctober 23, 2022 at 01:50#7506810 likes
I work 20 hrs a week currently - cut down from 24 hrs.
My job is something I enjoy 80% of the time.
I do not get sucked into consumption for the sake of consumption - do not use a mobile (have one but it stays as home). I buy new clothes every 4 or 5 years, and the only possessions I have of value to me are my books and iPad. I refuse to wear clothes that have any symbol or writing on (dislike them for some reason).
People may judge, and do, and I do not care too much. I am my own judge and jury for the most part (obviously I am a social creature so others have some sway over my choices and thoughts).
Basically, the OP is a relative point of view. I have felt the general shadow of the OP in life but I simply refused to accept it and told my parents from a fairly young age that I would rather live and die on the streets than get stuck in a job I hated.
Sloth is about avoidance not lazing around. If someone chooses to sit around all day picking their nose that is their choice. I feel sad for them. Some of the most slothful people I have met are very industrious they are simply doing something easy to distract from what their passions are.
Your only usefulness to broader society is your ability to both produce and consume. If we do not value these things (in the modern context at least), the system collapses.
The operative phrase there is "in the modern context", by which I take it you mean western industrial capitalist society. I do realize that most of the world has followed suit, whether they wanted to or not.
A couple of things about this kind of society: it's anxious, alienated and terminally ill. The very conceptual foundation of capitalism is anti-human and anti-life. Since it runs on debt, it has to keep growing to survive and that means it has to consume everything and then die. But it's incapable and unwilling to look forward at long-term consequences. If we look back a few thousand year, so is the basis of "civilization" as we have learned to call urbanized, stratified social organization, fundamentally anti-life and anti-human. As we have domesticated and enfeebled dogs by breeding the wolf out of them, we have domesticated humans by browbeating, bribing and flim-flamming the zest for life out of them...
No, not quite. There is spark still left. Is there any hope for it to thrive? It depends, I think, on how soon the present system collapses; whether there is something and someone left for a new departure.
Since I like to imagine so, I suppose I'm not a real pessimist... yet.
Imagine as well that there is a sensible world, exactly like this one.
At what stage of its development? Are there animals or just plants? If animals already exist, and they have to compete for survival, they will evolve into sentience, very likely through stages of behaviour that are inimical to other life forms.
So, they have two desires: a desire to leave the sensible world to operate in its own manner, but also a desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world.
Then, in order to get their wish, as omnipotent entities generally do, they would have to introduce a sensible life form that fits seamlessly into the sensible world.
If there are only plants and perhaps vegetarian insects, they could introduce a well designed sentient life form. It should be small enough to make a meal out of one strawberry and sleep in the hollow of a tree. It should have a long life-span and reproduce infrequently. It should be able to fly and its wings should be solar-powered and water-resistant. The body should be covered in fur just warm enough to keep it comfortable. It should be sociable as to disposition but self-sufficient as to capability.
And you are not omniscient, but you know that this sensible world is an incredibly dangerous place, full of all manner of dangers and just about every conceivable harm.
That's not my definition of a sensible world. Why would I want to leave it that way? Quoting Bartricks
I mean, if the omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to introduce sentient life into the sensible world if they are not going to change the sensible world, then your inability to change the sensible world should also mean that you ought not to introduce sentient life into it. Agree?
Not really. What would be the point of omniscience and omnipotence if you refuse yourself permission to change a world that doesn't satisfy you?
Imagine that Mary has two offers of marriage - one from John and one from Tony. So, she can pledge lifelong fidelity to John and she can pledge lifelong fidelity to Tony. And she can do both. That is, nothing stops her promising to be faithful to John exclusively and promising to be faithful to Tony exlusively.
Clearly it would be wrong for her to do both. If she pledges lifelong fidelity to John, then she ought not to pledge lifelong fidelity to Tony too, and vice versa. One or the other, not both.
So far so good. Now imagine someone else - Jennifer. Jennifer is already married to Ralph. So she is now unable to change the fact she has pledged lifelong fidelity to Ralph. Does her inability to change the fact she has promised lifelong fidelity to Ralph mean that it is now morally permissible for her to pledge lifelong fidelity to someone else? No, obviously not. It'd be as wrong for Jennifer to do that as it would be for Mary to pledge lifelong fidelity to both John and Tony.
Similarly then, the omnipotent person has the ability to satisfy both of her desires - her desire for the world to keep operating in the way that it is, and her desire to create life and make it live in the sensible world. But it would be wrong for her to satisfy both desires. One or the other. Not both. That is, either keep the sensible world operating as it does, but do not introduce life into it. Or introduce life into it, but change its operations so that it doesn't harm people to live in it.
We, by contrast, do not have those two options, for we are powerless to change how the sensible world operates. We are not, however, powerless to refrain from introducing life into it. Thus, we should refrain from introducing new life into it. If it was wrong for the omnipotent person to introduce life into it without changing it, then our inability to change it implies that it is wrong for us to introduce life into it as well.
I like sushiOctober 23, 2022 at 05:40#7506950 likes
Reply to Vera Mont Capitalism, like democracy, is a variated term. I do not see capitalism as the root of all social problems myself. It is more or less, in my eyes, a repercussion of other social attitudes and changes due to the modern world.
Communications have changed everything, and are still changing everything.
I like sushiOctober 23, 2022 at 05:44#7506960 likes
Reply to Bartricks Everything would be nothing. There would be no meaning, sense nor care.
Basically, it would be as everything is now the only difference being we of limited capacities can appreciate something we term difference through what is likely ignorance clouded with an idea we term knowledge.
I like sushiOctober 23, 2022 at 05:51#7506980 likes
Reply to Bartricks I obviously disagree because of the above. The assumption that some higher being has anything like our sense of morality is nonsense. If that is woven into the hypothetical then I do not see how it can fit just like a hypothetical such as this:
Imagine all apples are oranges. If you were an apple are you an orange or an apple being an orange?
It is irrelevant nonsense. Contradictory and therefore closed off fro rational thought and sensible investigation.
Your hypothetical may work if you reduce the knowledge and abilities of the entity in the OP as such a being having SOME form of limitations.
Reply to I like sushi I have no idea how anything you are saying connects with anything I have said.
Again then: the omnipotent person wants to keep the sensible world operating as it does. The omnipotent person also wants to create new life. It is wrong for them to satisfy both desires. If they satisfy desire A - the desire to keep the sensible world operating as it does - then they ought not to satisfy their other desire, B - the desire to create new life. One or the other, not both.
With this, note, a proponent of the problem of evil - that is, someone who thinks the problem of evil demonstrates God's non existence - must agree. For if they think the omnipotent person can satisfy both desires and be doing nothing wrong in doing so, then they do not think there is a problem of evil.
All proponents of the problem of evil must therefore agree that the omnipotent person would be immoral if they satisfied both desires. One or the other. Not both.
Now, unlike the omnipotent person, we are unable to change how the sensible world operates. But what that implies is that we ought to frustrate any desire we may have to procreate.
Again: if the omnipotent person elects not to change how the sensible world operates, then they ought to frustrate their desire to procreate. Similarly then, if we are unable to change how the sensible world operates, we ought to frustrate our desire to procreate.
Morally what ought they to do? Should they frustrate their desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world? Or should they frustrate their desire to leave the sensible world alone and instead alter it so that it does not pose the risks to the welfare of the innocent life they plan on introducing into it? Or should they satisfy both desires?
I think if there was an omnipotent omniscient person that wished to protect their project - life, or sentient beings. I would imagine that they would act in the best practice of any parent - non interference until such a time that their creation unknowingly puts themselves in the gravest of mortal danger.
Then its wise for their parent - this omniscient being to step in/ intervene and provide some of that knowledge to help guide his /her creation away from their own demise.
In this way the benevolent omniscient being maintains as much free will as is possible for their sentient creations so they can explore and be curious and make their own decisions, all the while protecting them from total self annihilation whenever they choose to ignore their omniscient parent entirely to the point of pure delusion and self harm. For example like inventing nuclear weapons.
universenessOctober 23, 2022 at 08:24#7507050 likes
If you guys would take the time to understand his arguments instead of getting triggered, you would realize that many of his arguments make a lot of sense. Even if they are pretty intense.
That's not me protecting Barricks btw, I think he is arrogant and on an unexplainable, bizarre crusade to trigger as many TPF posters as possible with *surprisingly well-thought-out arguments.
* as compared to the vast majority of people who post on philosophy of religion, or on this site at all
universenessOctober 23, 2022 at 12:45#7507420 likes
Morally what ought they to do? Should they frustrate their desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world? Or should they frustrate their desire to leave the sensible world alone and instead alter it so that it does not pose the risks to the welfare of the innocent life they plan on introducing into it? Or should they satisfy both desires?
Simple. Create a dude, ask him what he thinks about it. After all, that's the subject of the matter. I know people who love life and writhe at the idea of it ending or not existing. I know people who can't stand it and swear this is Hell who want to die. We all do. If it's good, go for more. If not, back to the drawing board. Nothing to lose sleep over.
Some people love a good life or death challenge. Others prefer peace and the stability that comes with predictability. You can't make everyone happy all the time so you know what they say, "one man's morality..."
Bartricks basically leverages the problem of evil into a syllogism demonstrating that since God would not suffer innocents to live in a dangerous world, we must not be innocent.
The only avenues of attack were to claim that God is unjust - humans don't get what they deserve - or that innocence can indeed be ascertained via reason. I have argued for at least the first.
I'm pretty certain 180 simultaneously craps his pants and has an aneurysm every time Bartricks posts an OP.
universenessOctober 23, 2022 at 13:27#7507540 likes
So, firstly, you accept the premise that 'evil' is a problem, 'outside' of the concept that it is a purely human concept and has no existence outside of sentient life. Evil is a labelled projection or manifestation of what most humans may judge certain human behaviours be categorised as. Killing for no reason or a reason which is not justified enough, is evil, killing in self-defence is not. Only other humans, given judicial authority, can judge on an incident-by-incident basis.
Secondly you accept the premise that god must exist based on a BS argument that if it did, it would not suffer innocents to live in a dangerous world.
Why is the premise that if god exists then it is the source and origin of ALL EVIL any less 'feasible?' and therefore god would allow innocents to suffer, as they do, so an existent god is fully responsible for all evil. Many theists turn atheist because they think if god exists then it allows evil. This is in fact more akin to the term 'the problem of evil.'
If you consider this 'syllogism' to have any value, then I do think you are easily impressed because it is based on two premises which have not been DEMONSTRATED as true.
Innocence, like evil is another human concept and again is purely based on human judgement on a case-by-case basis, often further informed by the outcome of previous cases or precedent/legal principle.
I'm pretty certain 180 simultaneously craps his pants and has an aneurysm every time Bartricks posts an OP.
Imo, @180proof has a far more impressive knowledge of philosophy than bar tricks and is quite capable of defending his own positions.
I personally thought bartricks was female not male but perhaps I am wrong.
Real Gone CatOctober 23, 2022 at 16:04#7507750 likes
A being cannot be both omniscient and omnipotent. Being omnipotent means having free will to choose one's action at all times. Being omniscient means knowing what every future choice will be. Can't have both.
Well, unless you allow for a universe that bifurcates (multi-furcates?) at each choice. So, omnipotence OR omniscience OR the multiverse (if both).
I do not see capitalism as the root of all social problems myself.
Nor do I. It is merely the most recent dysfunction of civilization. (Organized/state religion and monarchy were two of the previous manifestations.) The last and fatal one, IMO, because it compels the afflicted society to propagate it - much as a virus replicates itself by taking over the reproductive function of the cell it's killing - and the only end-point is the death of the host. No vaccine is coming from outer space.
Similarly then, the omnipotent person has the ability to satisfy both of her desires - her desire for the world to keep operating in the way that it is, and her desire to create life and make it live in the sensible world. But it would be wrong for her to satisfy both desires. One or the other. Not both.
By what authority do you hold and omniscient, omnipotent being to the moral standard imposed by society on ordinary mortals? You attribute superpowers to a character on whom you then place arbitrary limitations. You posit 'a sensible world' without defining 'sensible'.
Why set up an insoluble conundrum?
I can thumb my nose at God without the complications.
Morality is built around the needs and desire of a society, this is a one person society so he/she/it can do whatever he/she/it wants to do and it would always be morally acceptable.
And if he/she/it does like the results, he/she/it can redo or undo the problems he/she/it caused.
Your hypothetical may work if you reduce the knowledge and abilities of the entity in the OP as such a being having SOME form of limitations.
If by "omniscient" we mean a person that knows correctly how they are connected fundamentally to the rest of existence (the universe) then they are omnipotent through said existence (the universe). They are not omnipotent in human form as they cannot do inhuman things (humans are in one way defined by what they can and cannot physically achieve).
As an object their total power would not be available to them, however they could point to the universe saying "look.. I am it and it is me" through some core relationship (energy perhaps) and say "there is my absolute power" (the universe). However I am just a partiality of said power, here as an object (human).
In that sense knowing that the "whole" is ambivalent (both creative and destruction, both chaos and order). The omniscient person (knowing of all relationships between things) can thus also be ambivalent (not care) in reflection of the whole, or they can be malevolent or benevolent.
So what defines the difference between an omniscient person being benevolent or malevolent? It is in their choice to either keep their omniscience to themselves (the truth) or spread it far and wide to empower others to be able discern ignorance from truth.
In essence a good god wants others to know they are god also and serves them in telling so. (selflessness).
A bad god wants people to think of only themselves as God and everyone else should be subordinates to them. (selfishness).
In that way the truth can be kept to do evil or spread to do good.
Again then: the omnipotent person wants to keep the sensible world operating as it does. The omnipotent person also wants to create new life. It is wrong for them to satisfy both desires.
This the crux of the matter. You have not demonstrated that a new life cannot fit into an imaginary world as it operates. You have not demonstrated how the conflicting desires - if indeed they are in conflict - of a deity becomes a moral issue.
By what authority do you hold and omniscient, omnipotent being to the moral standard imposed by society on ordinary mortals? You attribute superpowers to a character on whom you then place arbitrary limitations. You posit 'a sensible world' without defining 'sensible'.
Why set up an insoluble conundrum?
I can thumb my nose at God without the complications.
Again, nothing you're saying has anything to do with anything I have said.
The omnipotent, omniscient person desires to leave the world to run in its own way.
They also desire to introduce life into the world.
Now, as any proponent of the problem of evil will agree, it would be quite wrong of them to satisfy both desires. That is, it would be quite wrong of them to introduce life into the world and then just let the world do its own thing.
If you think they'd be doing nothing wrong in satisfying both desires, then you simply do not think the problem of evil arises. But I am taking it for granted that it would be immoral, other things being equal, for an omnipotent, omniscient person to satisfy both desires.
Morally it would be fine for them to just leave the world to its own devices and frustrate their desire to introduce life into the world. Nothing wrong in doing that.
And most would accept that it would be morally permissible for them to radically alter the world so that it was a safe place into which to introduce life and to monitor the world's operations to make sure no one comes to any horrendous harms (thereby frustrating their desire to leave the world to run in its own way).
If that is correct, then my point is that our inability to change the world and make sure it does not visit horrendous harms on anyone we bring here implies that we ought to frustrate any desire we have to procreate.
That is, if the omnipotent, omniscient person decides to indulge their desire to let the world run in its own way, then the omnipotent, omniscient person ought to frustrate their desire to procreate. We are unable to affect how the world runs. Therefore we ought to frustrate our desire to procreate.
Morally it would be fine for them to just leave the world to its own devices and frustrate their desire to introduce life into the world. Nothing wrong in doing that.
But if they don't introduce life (conscious/sentient beings) into the world what capacity would such an inanimate world have for it would not even be aware that it exists. A world without an observer would be devoid of both meaning and its consequence: "good" and "evil" (concepts held by sentient things).
The person is powerful and knowledgeable enough to introduce a robust form of life such as tardigrades with big brains that are invulnerable to the environment.
Morality is built around the needs and desire of a society,
No it isn't.
But anyway, that's an absurd 'metaethical' claim, whereas my question is a normative one. Rookie mistake.
Me: "which way to the city centre?"
You: "A city centre is a collection of trees"
But if they don't introduce life (conscious/sentient beings) into the world what capacity would such an inanimate world have for it would not even be aware that it exists. A word without an observer would be devoid of both meaning and its consequence: "good" and "evil" (concepts held by sentient things).
I don't really see your point. There's an omnipotent, omniscient person. There's a sensible world. They - the omnipotent, omniscient person - like the world, They enjoy watching how things unfold in it. There's nothing wrong in that. There's nothing wrong, for instance, in enjoying how the flames of a fire dance about. But if you also enjoy seeing a person dance about, it would be wrong to throw a person into the fire and watch them dance about in it. Watch the dance of the flames, or watch the dance of a human, but don't combine them.
But if they don't introduce life (conscious/sentient beings) into the world what capacity would such an inanimate world have for it would not even be aware that it exists. A word without an observer would be devoid of both meaning and its consequence: "good" and "evil" (concepts held by sentient things).
I don't really see your point. There's an omnipotent, omniscient person. There's a sensible world. They - the omnipotent, omniscient person - like the world, They enjoy watching how things unfold in it. There's nothing wrong in that. There's nothing wrong, for instance, in enjoying how the flames of a fire dance about. But if you also enjoy seeing a person dance about, it would be wrong to throw a person into the fire and watch them dance about in it. Watch the dance of the flames, or watch the dance of a human, but don't combine them.
That is, if the omnipotent, omniscient person decides to indulge their desire to let the world run in its own way, then the omnipotent, omniscient person ought to frustrate their desire to procreate. We are unable to affect how the world runs. Therefore we ought to frustrate our desire to procreate.
This anti-natalism "appears" logical. But it does not consider free will. If an omnipotent omniscient presence/entity were to abstain from allowing things to run in its own way then they must remain as only "potential to be" rather than "being/existence".
To exist is to be at odds with all other existents that themselves wish to exist. As they are in constant power struggle. For example in order for a Virus to exist it is in conflict with the immune systems of its potential hosts.
Therefore if one is to exist it must be subject to both creative and destructive forces. As you cannot have one without the other. If one wishes not to exist then it is removed from competition to do so.
It is true that for free will to exist an omniscient omnipotent person could not exist for any significant amount of time. They could merely exist briefly. If they are the "truth" (because of their superior knowledge and thus power/potency) then the truth is an unstable state in a changing/free will governed system.
In essence if the truth of things were to come out, it would be gravitated towards and dissected and dissolved and thus vanish almost as quickly as it appeared. In order to preserve free will. So if there is a god (an omniscient omnipotent being, a pure unarguable logic), they would likely not wish to be known, for if they did free will would dissolve and thus they must be destroyed to bring back choice.
A being cannot be both omniscient and omnipotent. Being omnipotent means having free will to choose one's action at all times. Being omniscient means knowing what every future choice will be. Can't have both.
I think that's false, but it wouldn't matter much if it were true, given the point I am making. Just imagine that we have an omnipotent and very knowledgeable person on our hands. The same applies.
Reply to Benj96 I genuinely do not know what you are talking about. You state that I have ignored free will. I do not know what you mean. I haven't mentioned free will. Why would I? I have also not mentioned granary loaves. There are all manner of things I have not mentioned. If you think free will is relevant, explain clearly how.
Do you understand the scenario I have described? There's an omnipotent omniscient person. Call them Tony. And there is a sensible world.
Tony does not want to interfere with the operations of the sensible world.
Tony wants to create new life and put it into that sensible world.
It is wrong for Tony to do both of those things. Yes? (If your answer to that question is 'no' then you don't think there's a problem of evil and my case is not addressed to you).
I don't really see your point. There's an omnipotent, omniscient person. There's a sensible world. They - the omnipotent, omniscient person - like the world, They enjoy watching how things unfold in it. There's nothing wrong in that.
To an omniscient, omnipotent person would their own existence be compatible with a "sensible" world ?
If they "know all" and have "all power" then they're totalitarian. Nothing logical can occur outside of their omniscience. There is thus no choice for any of their subjects as their (the subjects) choice is already made knowingly and powerfully for them. In this case they are mere extensions of the omniscient/omnipotent being and not their own "Agents". They cannot logically revolt.
What sensibility is there in being the only thing that exists and the only controller. In that case you exist alone. A "sensible" world is one where mistakes can be made, experiences can be learned from, agents can be free to decide for themselves what they believe.
Nor do I. It is merely the most recent dysfunction of civilization. (Organized/state religion and monarchy were two of the previous manifestations.) The last and fatal one, IMO, because it compels the afflicted society to propagate it - much as a virus replicates itself by taking over the reproductive function of the cell it's killing - and the only end-point is the death of the host. No vaccine is coming from outer space.
I see the problem rather that there is a system that always has to be in place when someone is born. It is a system that gets entrenched and thus we become habituated beings. X hours for employer. X hours for self is our current system. Perhaps it cannot be any other way if we are to have this kind of system. Afterall, technology came about through this system. Is technology and this way of being necessarily linked (it cannot be any other way), or is it contingently linked? I don't see how it can be contingently linked and went a different way really. Engineers think of stuff, funded by financial backers. Distributors and laborers market, distribute, sell, support, fix, all the rest of it. Little communes only exist in the wider system, so that's out as a "real" alternative. You are laborer. That is your value. If you deviate, you are a free rider (or you better be either independently wealthy or a one-off genius). This is how it is and will be and will continue with each new generation. All the change is window dressing.
What I'm saying is an omniscient omnipotent being cannot create a world of "oppositions/opposites". Nothing can oppose that which knows all and has all capability (potency). In order to have freedom/free will, in order to have multiple conscious agents with their own agency and decisions to make, an omniscient omnipotent being cannot be present.
If such a creator exists then their absence/ unavailability to humanity is the only true reason people have any free will. People are illogical and make decisions based on that imperfect/flawed logic. If an ultimate logic were to be presented, individual flawed logic would be overwhelmed and destroyed and total autocratic control would be assumed.
What I'm saying is an omniscient omnipotent being cannot create a world of "oppositions/opposites".
Again, I don't know what you're talking about. Yes they can. But what's the relevance? You're not really listening, are you? You're just saying stuff. It's a puzzle to me why you're saying what you're saying. It doesn't address anything I am saying. "Would you like sugar in your coffee?" "Without sugar there can be no free will. That is what you're overlooking". "Er, I just want to know if you want sugar in your coffee. Do you?" "I can't want something without also not wanting it. And free will is what sugar lacks. Though sugar provides free will, it does not itself have it. Coffee, on the other hand, is flawed by its own internal logic. Does the coffee view itself as sugar?" And so on.
Let's make it easier. If you like watching fires and if you like watching people dance, is it ok to throw a person in a fire and watch them dance and watch the flames?
Tony wants to create new life and put it into that sensible world.
If Tony wants to create new life and put it into a sensible world, he is creating something insensible (living beings with irrational/imperfect thought) and putting them into a sensible world (something logical/rational)
To the living beings (which are illogical/flawed - as all beings are) they would naturally project insensibility onto a sensible world through their insensible perception. They would likely have disputes and argue with one another as to what the sensible world really was - again because of their insensible/flawed understanding.
Does this explain where I coming from? Or should I elaborate? If both the living things were sensible and the environment - that which they were added to, then all would be sensible, agreed upon and therefore not argued. There would be no possible difference in opinion and therefore no free will.
Another example: Susan wants to invite James over for dinner. Susan also wants to cook a particular dish - an incredibly hot curry - that James dislikes.
Well, she should choose which of those desires to satisfy. If she invites James over, she should cook him something he'll like, not something he'll dislike.
Now imagine that you also want to invite James over for dinner, but the only ingredients you have in your cupboard are those that make an incredibly hot curry and nothing else. Well, you shouldn't invite him over then.
You're not really listening, are you? You're just saying stuff. It's a puzzle to me why you're saying what you're saying
I'm trying. I think you're likely an articulate and intelligent person. I respect your views and am attempting to offer views I think may be useful. I like to listen, try to digest the information and come up with a responsible and reasonable response to furher the discourse.
I have provided a new example, this time involving regular folk. Again then:
Susan wants to invite James over for dinner. Susan also wants to cook a particular dish - an incredibly hot curry - that James dislikes. She does not have to cook that dish - she has other things available, including things James really likes.
Well, she should choose which of those desires to satisfy. If she invites James over, she should cook him something he'll like, not something he'll dislike. Or, if she really wants to cook the hot curry, then she should do that and not invite James over.
Now imagine that you also want to invite James over for dinner, but the only ingredients you have in your cupboard are those that make an incredibly hot curry and nothing else. Well, you shouldn't invite him over then. Yes?
Another example: Susan wants to invite James over for dinner. Susan also wants to cook a particular dish - an incredibly hot curry - that James dislikes.
Well, she should choose which of those desires to satisfy. If she invites James over, she should cook him something he'll like, not something he'll dislike.
Now imagine that you also want to invite James over for dinner, but the only ingredients you have in your cupboard are those that make an incredibly hot curry and nothing else. Well, you shouldn't invite him over then.
Yes agreed. Nobody with sensible intentions wishes James to suffer an insufferably hot curry. So either cook something he will like, don't invite him or get takeout..
This is obvious. What relevance does it have to our previous discourse? Please explain
It is a system that gets entrenched and thus we become habituated beings.
Except for the times when a system stops working and is overthrown from within, or suffers a major collapse and disintegrates or is overwhelmed by an outside force. People born into the period of upheaval have nothing to become habituated to and are free to experiment, until they empower a new elite who then impose their own system.
Afterall, technology came about through this system.
Not quite. Technology begins with bone tools, stone weapons, fire and dugout canoes. It is a process of human invention on which each succeeding civilization builds.
Is technology and this way of being necessarily linked (it cannot be any other way), or is it contingently linked?
Serially and temporarily. Every system takes advantage of whatever technology exists when it assumes power and adds to the body of innovations according to its own requirements. The bronze age produced a lot of war equipment and personal decoration. Agricultural expansion periods improve on farm implement. Exploring/trading systems speed up methods of transportation; industrial periods expand the use of motive power and manufactury. The monetary age creates technologies for instant transfer of funds and information. None of it is necessary to human survival; it's driven by the needs of the prevailing system.
Engineers think of stuff, funded by financial backers.
The engineering mind tinkers whether it is funded by financial backers or not, just as the artistic mind creates art, music and poetry, whether it sells or not, the adventuresome mind explores and makes maps; the healing mind devises ways to mitigate pain. All of these activities were taking place in primitive cultures that knew nothing of money and lending.
Little communes only exist in the wider system, so that's out as a "real" alternative.
Until the system breaks down. The Greatest Depression, collapse of the web, storms rip apart the electric grid and wipe out the commercial crops, migrants battle locals; cities starve in the cold...
and the Mennonites and Seventh-Day Adventists, Okushiri and Harga survive. Then they build whatever those small populations want to.
I am a parasite, a surplus old person, sucking up a pension and contributing only unpopular novels. I can do that, because the relatively benign political regime under which I live has not yet unravelled. It's in the process of unravelling, but might, with a bit of luck, outlast me...
... Or Putin drops a few nukes and all bets for a future civilization are off.
Reply to Benj96 Susan is the omnipotent, omniscient person. The desire to have James over for dinner is the desire to introduce new life into the sensible world. The incredibly hot curry that Susan wants to cook is the omnipotent, omniscient person's desire to leave the world to operate in its own way.
You are you. Susan has the ability to cook James anything. You don't. You only have the ability to cook the hot curry. Well, if it was wrong for Susan to invite James over and cook him the hot curry, then it is wrong for you to invite James over given you can only cook him hot curry.
So, it is wrong for you to procreate. It would be wrong for the omnipotent, omniscient person to procreate if, that is, she is not going to adjust the world. You can't adjust the world. So you ought not to procreate.
Reply to Benj96 And one can go the other way around if one likes. That is, let's assume that it is morally fine to procreate. Well, then that means there is no problem of evil for God.
For let's imagine that you only have the ingredients to make spaghetti bolognaise. However, this is a meal that, though far from James's favourite, is nevertheless one that he enjoys well enough. Is it okay for you to invite him over for dinner given that you can only serve him spaghetti bolognaise? Yes.
Now imagine that Susan also wants to invite James over and that she wants to cook spaghetti bolognaise. Unlike you, she has a larder full of food and could cook James the dish he most likes. But she just wants to cook spaghetti bolognaise. Is it okay for her to invite James over given that she is going to cook spaghetti bolognaise? Yes, surely. If it was okay for you to invite James over and serve him spaghetti bolognaise, then it is okay for her to do the same.
Thus, if it is morally okay for us to procreate - so, okay for us to invite (well, force) guests to eat spaghetti bolognaise - then it is morally okay for an omnipotent, omniscient person to procreate as well. She could change the world and make it a much safer place for its inhabitants. But then she could cook James his favourite dish. But she is not obliged to do so and does no wrong - does no injustice to James - if she serves him spaghetti bolognaise.
And so, in this way we can see that either there is a problem of evil - in which case it is wrong for us to procreate - or it is morally okay for us to procreate and there is no problem of evil.
Reply to 180 Proof Oh do stop trying to derail this thread. Pure Bartricks baiting. You have nothing philosophical to contribute and you're not being at all funny either. My cat just brought in a half-dead bird. I had to take it outside and stamp it to death. That's about how funny you are. So, again, engage with the argument, or go away. I've got a bird to nurse back to health.
That's a valid opinion. Why drag worlds and omnipotence into it?
Because most agree that there is a problem of evil for God. If I can show how those who think such things are committed to having to agree that this implies it is wrong for us to procreate, then that's philosophically interesting.
I mark lots of essays. And a common mistake - by far the most common - is not to address the question but simply to blurt all that one knows about the subject instead.
That's what is happening here.
So, do you agree that if Susan wants to invite James over, but also wants to cook a meal James dislikes, then she ought to satisfy one or other of her desires, not both. That is, she should not invite James over and cook him the meal he dislikes (but that she wants to cook)?
And if you agree - and surely you will - do you also agree that if you only have the ability to cook James a meal he dislikes, then you shouldn't invite him over to dinner?
So explain to me, how is morality formed. I will even give you a basic definition of the word morality.
"Concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct"
If society does not decide what is good or bad for its population, where does it come from?
You should know I suppose, as they say "takes one to know one".
One of the worst rookie mistakes is having to give several different examples so that others can get an idea of what you are blathering about and then insinuating that they are the ones that are lacking in brains.
You asked a question, I explained why the question is irrelevant. If you cannot see the pointlessness of your own question, I cannot help you to understand.
o explain to me, how is morality formed. I will even give you a basic definition of the word morality.
"Concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct"
If society does not decide what is good or bad for its population, where does it come from?
Focus! This thread is not about metaethics.
Here's how our exchange is going:
Me "which way to the centre of town?"
You: "the centre of a town is the centre of a clump of trees
Me: "er, no it isn't. But anyway, my question is about the centre of town's location, not its composition"
You: "If the centre of a town is not a clump of trees, then what is it? Where does it come from? And what is composition? Explain what a composition is"
You should know I suppose, as they say "takes one to know one".
No it doesn't. I am not a rookie. Yet I can tell a rookie. See? I know that the object to my left is a loaf of bread. Does that mean I am a loaf of bread?
Focussing then: if you want to cook a very hot curry tonight, but you also want to invite James over - someone who really dislikes hot curry - then do you agree that you ought to thwart one of your desires? That is, you ought either to cook the very hot curry, but not inflict it on James, or you ought to invite James over but cook him something else?
Reply to Bartricks I gave your OP all the due consideration it warrants; you must've missed it
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/750919
Reply to 180 Proof That's question begging. The OP contains a highly original argument for antinatalism (or conversely, a highly original way of dealing with the problem of evil). May I suggest you reply with an emoticon. Perhaps a yawning one.
You know what would really rile me? A refutation.
Do you agree that the omnipotent, omniscient person ought to frustrate one of their desires? That is, do you agree that they ought either to frustrate their desire not to interfere with how the sensible world operates, or they ought to frustrate their desire to invest it with sentient life?
They obviously should not introduce sentient life into the world. And if they do, then they should help the suffering and those that need help. It is easy.
Reply to Cobra Do you agree that we ought not do so either, then?
That is, if the omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to invest the sensible world with life if, that is, they are not going to change how it operates, then we ought not either, given we are unable to change how it operates?
Focussing then: if you want to cook a very hot curry tonight, but you also want to invite James over - someone who really dislikes hot curry - then do you agree that you ought to thwart one of your desires? That is, you ought either to cook the very hot curry, but not inflict it on James, or you ought to invite James over but cook him something else?
I have no opinion about the futility of you trying to prove a pointless, no correct answer question. It makes no difference to an "omnipotent, omniscient person" because those same qualities give him/her/it the ability to do both things at the same time or or fail to be an "omnipotent, omniscient person". This is just another "rock to heavy to lift" theory and comes to the same end. But only a rookie would not be able to see that.
All I did was answer your question about the morality of your "introduce life or not question". I don't give a hoot about the rest of the claptrap.
Do you agree that we ought not do so either, then?
It's literally in your own post. That is the first question you asked is basically: "Should he introduce sentient life if he has the power to do so or not?"
Obviously he should not. What do you mean by "ought to do neither"? How do you not do nothing when you are doing nothing? LOL.
It's literally in your own post. That is the first question you asked is basically: "Should he introduce sentient life if he has the power to do so or not?"
Obviously he should not. What do you mean by "ought to do neither"? How do you not do nothing when you are doing nothing? LOL.
Er, what? I am arguing that we ought not procreate. And I am showing how that is implied by the fact that an omnipotent, omniscient person who does not want to change how the world is operating ought to thwart their desire to invest the world with life. You understand that, right?
You agree that hte omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to invest the world with life. So, do you also agree that we ought not procreate too, then? That's a perfectly reasonable question to ask someone on a philosophy thread who is otherwise making comments that seem a little random.
So, do you also agree that we ought not procreate too, then?
Who cares? Humans are GOING TO PROCREATE because that's what humans do. Who cares if we "should or shouldn't". This is completely unrelated to your original OP that asks:
Should some all-powerful non-human reptilian with all the power and knowledge in the world put SENTIENT life on the planet, and the answer is no, and if it DOES because of the crazy comparison you're making with humans because "THIS IS WHAT HUMANS DO" .. then it should help the suffering and those that need help.
Maybe I could offer another tip. Try looking at other societies and their histories before making sweeping, generalized statements about how society came to be.
Satisfaction can only truly happen by transcending one's nature of willing. According to him [Schopenhauer], this requires denying the Will and becoming an ascetic along the lines of a Jainist or something of that nature. The ultimate fate would be to starve oneself to death peacefully.
At the behest of the likes of Nagel and Rawls, I'll mention here the Archimedian point which argues that there is indeed a rational observer whose standpoint can provide an objective account of what's happening in the world.
Example? Schopenhauer himself. He was making an observation as a rational individual, using the archimedian point, while denying the will. Is this an oversight on his part?
That he was able to make a declaration, such as the reality of suffering, is a testament to his own will.
It is a confused mess. Your are trying to build an argument about man doing something because a god would do it (or not do it). Not going to work.
And do not tell me that I would not pass a philosophy course with that answer. I don't need to pass anymore course than those I passed long ago. :rofl: :cool:
I think we need to add English to the courses you'd fail.
I actually give those courses, it pays reasonably well where I live.
If you need help presenting your ideas here on the forum, you can PM me. But I do not help people do their assignments, there is a special section for that.
schopenhauer1October 24, 2022 at 00:45#7509940 likes
Maybe I could offer another tip. Try looking at other societies and their histories before making sweeping, generalized statements about how society came to be.
They are all subsumed. Look at my text in parenthesis closely.
schopenhauer1October 24, 2022 at 00:45#7509950 likes
You have to do it. If not, free riding SOB, born into wealth, or they want you to kill yourself so you aren't a hardship on those that do work. Pessimism.
schopenhauer1October 24, 2022 at 00:47#7509960 likes
The engineering mind tinkers whether it is funded by financial backers or not,
Ford, Edison, Tesla, it was all with money. And the list goes on and on.. In fact, some technology absolutely needed government backing first.. usually from wartime.. then university money, then private sector.
schopenhauer1October 24, 2022 at 00:50#7509970 likes
Reply to Sir2u How well does it pay? A chicken a week? Two? Two chickens, three curse-liftings, a bag of shells and a hat that looks like a teacosey made out of a heavy tappestry?
Look, I think my OP is pretty clear. If it is wrong for an omnipotent person to subject people to life in this sensible world unless they are going to change it, then our inability to change it implies that it is wrong for us to procreate as well. It's a delightfully simple argument.
schopenhauer1October 24, 2022 at 01:08#7510040 likes
Therefore if one is to exist it must be subject to both creative and destructive forces. As you cannot have one without the other. If one wishes not to exist then it is removed from competition to do so.
How is this alone not reason to not willingly produce more beings into that situation? The inevitability of X suffering, doesn't mean that one thus has to willingly allow to continue X suffering because X suffering already exists in some form or another. Lions kill, therefore humans can kill for example is a really simplistic form of this argument. It is the naturalistic fallacy of course.
How well does it pay? A chicken a week? Two? Two chickens, three curse-liftings, a bag of shells and a hat that looks like a teacosey made out of a heavy tappestry?
Maybe a change in career is needed but don't try comedy, you would fail at that as well.
If it is wrong for an omnipotent person to subject people to life in this sensible world unless they are going to change it, then our inability to change it implies that it is wrong for us to procreate as well. It's a delightfully simple argument.
And there you go right back to what I have already explained. If there is only one of these "omnipotent persons" how could something be judged as right or wrong. He/she/it is the judge and jury as well as the witnesses and victims.
Because most agree that there is a problem of evil for God. If I can show how those who think such things are committed to having to agree that this implies it is wrong for us to procreate, then that's philosophically interesting.
Not nearly as interesting as you seem to think. If you wanted to indict God for some wrongdoing - and god know he's guilty of lots! - then go directly there and stop involving Susan and Mary and whoever in irrelevant no-applicable examples. If you are going to indict a god, you should specify which god and read the charges plainly.
All this palaver about an omnipotent entity having created a world - which is supposed to be 'sensible' according to no stated criteria - and then hanging himself unnecessarily on the horns of a moral dilemma no god would entertain for a minute... It simply doesn't work.
I don't know who these "most" are who agree that this is a reasonable way to address the problem of evil, or morality, or procreation. But of course the perennial problem of evil reflects on all the gods humans have ever invented. You simply invented another, even less credible one, stuffed with straw to joust against.
Asking what's moral or immoral for a god to do, according to our own concept of what's right in dating and mating has little relevance to what we ought to do under the auspices of holy matrimony and having been instructed by a quite popular God to go forth and multiply, which "most" of us have been doing with every encouragement from the earthly representatives of our various gods. Incidentally, I doubt any of those people found the world 'sensible' when they entered it or considered it their prerogative to decide its fate.
... a common mistake is not to address the question .....
There were several unrelated questions in the OP. I addressed one:
Morally what ought they to do?
But you didn't like the answer, so you marked it 'irrelevant' and told me, as you do pretty much everybody, "You missed the point." The point, I assume, being "It's wrong to have kids!" You could have stated it clearly at the outset.
(I know --- all of that is irrelevant and has nothing to do with what you were saying. Carry on!)
I'm not sure Tesla, Ford and Edison all come from the same mold, but you're still restricted to 20th century capitalist (the capitalistest nation on Earth) America. And ignoring all the other people and all the other inventions. That's okay, but having a narrow view doesn't mean the world has to conform.
In fact, some technology absolutely needed government backing first.. usually from wartime.. then university money, then private sector.
Some technology, yes. And most of the guys who made useful things in their garage or basement were subsumed by that same capitalist machine, yes; and many were robbed of the fruit of their labour. Yet that still doesn't stop the next genius tinkering, painting, composing, solving equations, dreaming up theories, pouring the content of one test-tube into another, growing a new hybrid - unnoticed, unpaid and unappreciated - just because it is their passion. Humans are curious and creative by nature.
god must be atheistOctober 24, 2022 at 02:10#7510170 likes
Imagine as well that there is a sensible world, exactly like this one.
And imagine that this omnipotent omniscient person really likes the sensible world, and likes how it operates and does not want to interfere with its operations, with one exception: they want to introduce life into it.
Bartricks, my friend, you are moving your own goal posts, very conisistently to your style, but this time you are fucking your own self.
If the world is exactly like ours, then it ihas sentient beings; if it does not have sentient beings, then it's not exactly like ours.
You shot yourself in the foot right in two of the first few paragraphs.
god must be atheistOctober 24, 2022 at 02:17#7510180 likes
You show here very clearly that you haven't the slightest clue what morality entails. It is a social construct. There is no morality without society. So what society does a single god live in? Outside of his or her own company how many other gods is this god responsible for survival?
Yikes!! Your questions make exactly as much sense as your other participatory remarks on this board.
god must be atheistOctober 24, 2022 at 02:50#7510220 likes
Mine is not an original idea, but I developed it on my own without reading about it... some I expect will find it outrageous.
Soiciety is a living, evolving creature, which is multi-cellular, and its cells are people.
Much like a multi-cellular biological organism, its cells will differentiate to perform their functions better.
And some funcitons will be coveted because they provide power, pleasure and variety; other functions will be shunned, but some will be forced into doing it, because they are dirty, dangerious and unrewarding.
A street-sweeper or a janitor or a mortician (funeral home employee) will perform societal functions comparable to cells that line the stomach walls and the rectum.
Some CEOs, movie stars and politicians will perform societal funcitons comparable to brain cells, and to cells that promote and conduct the process of an orgasm.
Societies are not as well-organzied into differning funcitonality of their parts as biological units. Yet some permanent differentiation can be observed. They predicate the functions of a unit (humans acting as cells). A low-IQ low-self-confidence, not very attractive person is not very likely to become a mainly pleasure-receiving unit. His or her progeny, ditto.
Naturally, or unnaturally, unless you ask 180 Proof who does not beleive that there is anything unnatural in the real world, according to this writer's impression based on the posts of 180 Proof, this process will be aborted very soon with the advent of an AI population explosion.
By "this process" in the prevous paragraph I meant the evolution of societies as viable stand-alone units created by humans organized similarly to how cells are organized in a human body.
Naturally or unnaturally, my description above is a skeletal picture of the process... there are much intricacies and nuances that my post did not delve into.
Incorrect. The problem of evil is taken to be the most powerful objection to theism. So if it implies that procreation is wrong, that's extremely significant, for very few think antinatalism is true.
If the world is exactly like ours, then it ihas sentient beings; if it does not have sentient beings, then it's not exactly like ours.
No, I said imagine a sensible world exactly like this one. Minds are not sensible objects.
Anyway, as you'd know if you were able to recognize what is and isn't relevant, it makes no difference to my case for if necessary I could simply ask one to imagine a sensible world devoid of life (if, that is, minds turn out to be sensible things in a guise). The important point is that if the omnipotent, omniscient person is not going to make any changes to the sensible world, then she ought to refrain from investing it with life. And so if we ourselves are unable to make changes to how the sensible world operates, we too should refrain from creating new life.
So, do try and focus on what is and isn't relevant to the case.
The curry case might be easier for you, although one imagines that you might start asking questions about the precise ingredients of the curry or insisting that curry is a social construct.
If Jennifer wants to invite James over for dinner, but also wants to cook a hot curry (a dish James dislikes), then Jennifer ought to do one or the other, not both - yes? (Again, note that my question is not about curries. So, insisting that curries are not possible, or that no one called Jennifer is capable of cooking a curry, or that no one dislikes curries - these are all irrelevant, as well as obviously false).
The answer is obvious: yes. She ought either to invite James over and cook something other than a hot curry, or she ought to cook a hot curry but not invite James over to eat it.
Now imagine that you want to invite James over for dinner, but you are incapable of cooking anything other than a very hot curry. (Do not say 'but that is not possible - I am capable of cooking other things'....that would miss the point once more.....resist the temptation). Well, clearly you ought not to invite James over.
Maybe a change in career is needed but don't try comedy, you would fail at that as well.
Brilliant. I am good at comedy. Here is joke. Why chicken cross road? Tell me! You not know? I tell you. It is because road cross chicken's father and chicken must avenge father. And road's children will avenge road by crossing chicken's children and chicken's children will cross road's children.
And there you go right back to what I have already explained. If there is only one of these "omnipotent persons" how could something be judged as right or wrong. He/she/it is the judge and jury as well as the witnesses and victims.
You answered your own question. The omnipotent person is the source of morality. It's like asking 'how can a person make themselves a cup of tea?' They make themselves a cup of tea. Nothing stops the maker and consumer of tea from being one and the same person. Likewise, for morality to exist there needs to be some moral directives - and thus there needs to be a director - and there needs to be someone who is the object of these directives. Well, there can be one person who can occupy both roles, just as the consumer and maker of tea can be one and the same.
Just focus on Jennifer and the curry. If it is wrong for Jennifer to invite James over if she plans on cooking curry - a dish he dislikes - then if all you can offer James is curry, you ought not to invite James over for dinner either, yes?
A parent ought want the best for their child. It follows that one ought improve the way things are. It does not follow that one ought not have kids.
You know what Banno I think you're right. Perhaps I'm being too generous. The only place an anti-natalist view has validity is well... A permanent Hell - a place where any new child would be certain to exclusively suffer/come to harm.
However this disregards as you quite correctly pointed out the existence and role of a parent. We have the parental power, the paternal/maternal instincts available to us to protect our children. To protect the vulnerable in general as those who are vulnerable/powerless are innocent - by that I mean they neither know of their own inherent power nor then can they practice it. Children must be educated first. They therefore cannot choose a side and are subject to being preyed upon or being protected.
The shepard leads the sheep, they don't slaughter them because the sheep might come to harm if they exist. It's a clear contradiction. The shepard knows who and what the big bad wolf is, and how to fend it off. Both within themselves (their own potential to be the wolf) plus those beyond themselves - external threats.
The three little pigs knew they had the strongest defence against the wolf when they cooperated, when they recognised the strong/wisest of them from the weakest and most vulnerable and gravitated towards the protection offered by the strong/wise.
Its ironic that we tell this story to our children and yet forget that the underlying message is always applicable throughout life, even as adults - such as when being challenged by anti-natalist idealogies in philosophy and society. A classic example is the cold, empathiless sentiment that "the poor shouldn't exist because they are useless and cannot help themselves. Dead weight to society". What person in their right mind would wish such sentiments on others and call themselves just?
Existing trumps not existing because it offers more, you can always choose to die but you cannot choose to be born. As a living thing you have two options - continue to struggle for a better life, or give up and succumb to oblivion, as a dead thing you have no such options.
Therefore not existing is impotent in the face of life with hope (someone who is not themselves severely depressed, severely full of negativity and lack of love for life, suicidal).
Suicide is the moment when the conscious mind has lost the very last shred of hope it had, and thus mind becomes incompatible with the body and they annihilate one another.
How is this alone not reason to not willingly produce more beings into that situation? The inevitability of X suffering, doesn't mean that one thus has to willingly allow to continue X suffering because X suffering already exists in some form or another. Lions kill, therefore humans can kill for example is a really simplistic form of this argument. It is the naturalistic fallacy of course.
I was simply outlining the dynamic, the game, not suggesting we shouldn't exist or reproduce. One exists to use their intelligence and ability to adapt and fend off adversaries (a hostile environment) and improve their living standards and those of their community.
Is this not the basis for evolution and natural selection?
Genes/collections of genes that are protective and co-operative with one another are shared/reproduced through natural selection amongst the gene pool because they allow the collective to gain the upper hand and prolong survival.
Genes/collections of genes that are selfish and detrimental on the other hand (viruses) go about via infection, trying to parasitise the rest to create more of themselves instead.
People do the same thing. Some would have you believe you are always in debt to them and ought to serve them and relinquish your resources, usually through manipulating you into a sustained feeling of guilt or shame. They make you feel ill/unwell.
Others teach you to be your own person, know yourself, to have self esteem and confidence and the ability to argue rationally and justly enough to thwart the agenda of the selfish. These people confer immunity through wisdom and intelligence.
Reply to Benj96 Cheers. I had, in my incipient senility, supposed that the comment you made had been made by @180 Proof, and had to check back on the context. But I more or less concur with your summation of the arguments from the more miserable folk hereabouts, although I would phrase it in terms of being given the opportunity of fulfilling one's capabilities more than just hope.
given the opportunity of fulfilling one's capabilities
Ever the quote if managers giving more work to their subordinates. You can quit a job but not life itself though, lest death. Cold comfort. Paternalistic thinking. Another persons suffering started for them and heres why Im so justified. But Im not.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 10:34#7510910 likes
The problem of evil is a problem for theists. Use it as anecdotal evidence for the non-existence of the omnis and gods then the problem of evil becomes a problem of behaviour when sentients interrelate.
It has no connection to the issue of reproduction, which is an evolved natural means to combat the threat of extinction. We should all have pity for the anti-life people, just be thankful that such is not part of your daily life.
Anti-natalism has as much chance of becoming the accepted way forward as the square wheel!
Damn your own parents for YOUR existence and you damn all natural events, as it was those events that are the historical source of all life in the universe.
It's illogical to crave nothingness for everyone, because your own awareness frightens you.
Imo, we need to see living creatures who are anti-living as just scared wretches who are not coping very well.
Reply to Bartricks Hey B - it's been a while so welcome back. I have two questions
- In the past you have included omnibenevolent as one of the properties your imaginary person could have. I'm curious why this was not included in this particular thought experiment.
- Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in in the past your omniscient omnipotent person was not constrained by LNC. Is that the case for this particular conversation?
Ever the quote if managers giving more work to their subordinates.
Thats a rather pessimistic view. Not all managers are bad ones. Is it not exactly that "given the opportunity to fulfill one's capabilities" that itself begets a good manager? As far as I know managers/leaders etc are needed. And a good one surely empowers and extends that privilege to those they manage to self actualize their own set of personal capabilities. Good management is about recognising talent in the pool of employees and rewarding/promoting them accordingly.. If not even to hand the torch over happily if they are even better management material.
Reply to EricH I did not include omnibenevolence simply because the question was about how this person ought to behave. But I could have included it, it just would have meant rephrasing things. The important point is that, as proponents of the problem of evil must agree, such a person ought not satisfy both their desire not to alter the operations of the sensible world and their desire to introduce life into it. And once that is conceded, it should also be conceded that our inability to change how the sensible world operates now implies we ought not to introduce new life into it either (as my dinner invite cases show).
And yes, an omnipotent person is not bound by the lnc as she makes it true. But that's irrelevant for two reasons. First, the lnc is nevertheless true and I am assuming it to be here. Second, even though she has the ability to make it false, we do not. And my whole point is that if we are unable to do something that, were God not to do it would make procreation wrong for her, then it is wrong for us too.
Good management is about recognising talent in the pool of employees and rewarding/promoting them accordingly.. If not even to hand the torch over happily if they are even better management material.
A manager would say that yes. But this is the kind of manipulation slogan a manager might use to justify their subordinates to do more work.
The pessimistic fact is we have to do any of this and we are self aware of this. We can think of other ways but we are entrenched in a managerial system whereby it gets perpetuated. Group think reinforces it. We arent very creative except within our self defined ways.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 20:32#7512240 likes
The problem of evil implies the immorality of procreation. See op for details.
No, it doesn't, and the OP is drivel and illogical. There is no such existent, as a living omni and there are no gods, and evil is not a self-sustaining force. Don't try to infect others with your own struggle with religion. If you want a god to comfort you when you are scared, then accept that any omni god must be the source of evil, as such a first cause is the ultimate solipsist, as it claims nothing really exists, except it, and its existence is only by its own will. Procreation is not evil, it's a natural imperative against extinction, that can be controlled through reason or indeed, legislation, if overpopulation is proving problematic.
The universe is a big place and overpopulation will not be a problem, once our species colonises outside of this nest planet. We are relative newcomers in the Universe. Perhaps if you study the cosmic calendar, you will be less concerned. Try to face your primal fears and you will find life and living has a lot of joyous times available to you and you can leave a legacy that adds to the fantastic achievements that the human race has already left to you.
Reply to universeness There's an argument in the OP. It shows how the problem of evil implies antinatalism.
Now, you are psychologically incapable of accepting that as you are convinced already that I am wrong and you are right. So there is really no point in you continuing to contribute to this thread, is there? Unless you plan on engaging with the OP, go away.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 20:44#7512300 likes
There is an illogical argument in the OP that does not in any way show that the problem of evil implies antinatalism. That's just your morose opinion, nothing more. I can just as easily claim that you are psychologically incapable of accepting that you are positing illogical nonsense.
I am certainly asserting that you are utterly wrong, yes, just as you are asserting you are correct.
Those are the normal ingredients of 'argument.'
I continue to explain why you are being so illogical to try to help you face the primal fears that seem to make you so morose. I also wish to prevent you from infecting anyone else with your misguided logic and your negative viewpoints. You go away!
Reply to universeness You are just saying things. You are not providing evidence that the argument is 'illogical'. You are just saying it is. Which is what you would say about any argument I made about anything, yes? So you are a troll. And unfunny. So go away. You are adding nothing.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 21:08#7512420 likes
Procreation is essential as there are no gods and no omnis. We are not yet individually immortal, and we demonstrate no ability to be omni anything. To continue the story of the universe, lifeforms which can demonstrate awareness of self, must reproduce.
The only alternative, is indeed, a lifeless meaningless universe. The universe has already demonstrated that life is part of its evolution, therefore, we should get on with living life not as a curse but as part of the natural development of a universe.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 21:15#7512440 likes
Well, I am typing things, sure, what do you think you are doing?
Your evidence begins by positing entities that do not exist, that is illogical.
Who is this omnipotent, omniscient you posit? They exist only in your head?
If this is not evidence enough that you are being illogical, then you need professional help with your mental state. A troll is another mythical beast and the idea that I am trolling you is just you, experiencing panic. I have little interest in your ability to appreciate my humour. You go away and stop trying to downgrade the lives of others. You will fail!
Reply to universeness Isolate a claim I made in the OP and say why it is false. If you can't do that - if you can't actually address anything I have said, but can only blurt things - then have the decency to go away.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 21:22#7512490 likes
And imagine that this omnipotent omniscient person really likes the sensible world,
BY definition, an omni cannot have 'desires,' it's illogical to suggest it can.
Desire is about need, how can an omni need? This is illogical and contradictory.
You fall miserably at the first fence. But you already know that don't you.
That's a blurt. That's not an argument. It's just you saying something.
Note too that the proponent of the problem of evil thinks that what is impossible is God existing and this sensible world (with us in it) existing (and even then, that's only those who are running the logical problem of evil). They do not think that it is impossible for an omnipotent, omniscient person to exist, for if they thought that then they would not need to raise the problem of evil as God's non-existence would be established already.
There is nothing impossible about such a person and if you think otherwise you owe an argument and, more importantly, those I am addressing will agree with me, not you (note, I am not addressing you, as you are too confused to be worth addressing - I am addressing those who run the problem of evil against God).
Try again. Try arguing something. Note: if you think something, that isn't evidence it is true. Eat that piece of humble pie and let it digest for a bit. Then try again.
Or, alternatively, throw your arms up, say illogical and perhaps bollocks and word salad a bit, and then go away. I would recommend that last one.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 21:27#7512510 likes
If you are unable to change the world, then you ought to frustrate your desire to introduce new sentient life into it. Yes?
No, you can change the world, many historical people have and your desire to pass on your legacy to your children to continue your work is valid. Do you need me to name some people from history that have 'changed the world?' Like the unknown creature who first used fire to cook meat or used tree trunks to roll a big boulder over a distance to turn it into a standing stone?
No, you can change the world, many historical people have and your desire to pass on your legacy to your children to continue your work is valid.
You lack the ability to change how the sensible world operates. For instance, you lack the ability to prevent the horrendous evils that are occurring daily. You're not God.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 21:29#7512530 likes
So, identify this omnipotent/omniscient, get it to reveal itself and demonstrate its ability. Can you do that or is it you that's just typing BS.
Make an argument.
And did you understand the point about the problem of evil? Did you understand that if you can show that it is impossible for an omnipotent omniscient person to exist, then you don't need to run the problem of evil? Did that make sense to you? I need to know what I am dealing with here. Are you someone who can't understand that a proponent of the problem of evil thinks God 'can' exist - or at least, tacitly they are acknowledging this - they just think their existence is incompatible with the world as it is.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 21:31#7512550 likes
You lack the ability to change how the sensible world operates. For instance, you lack the ability to prevent the horrendous evils that are occurring daily. You're not God.
No one is, god doesn't exist. I can change how the world operates through scientific breakthrough that can indeed prevent many horrendous evils. Are you still afraid of smallpox for example?
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 21:32#7512560 likes
No one is, god doesn't exist. I can change how the world operates through scientific breakthrough that can indeed prevent many horrendous evils. Are you still afraid of smallpox for example?
Try and stick to the topic. Do you have the ability to prevent all of the horrendous evils that are occurring in the world? Yes or no?
Reply to universeness Start another thread in which, in your OP, you just make some random assertions (lots of the threads here are like that).
Then anyone who wants to discuss your random assertions can do so.
But this is my thread and I made an argument. If you are not interested in engaging with that argument, or can't even recognize that it is one, then you need to go away. That is what decency demands
Decency demands that I help ensure your BS gets revealed as such.
I am quite willing to not engage with you directly as you are currently lost in your own fallacious miasma. I hope more and more members at TPF will also choose not to engage with you.
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 21:39#7512650 likes
Ever the quote if managers giving more work to their subordinates. You can quit a job but not life itself though, lest death. Cold comfort. Paternalistic thinking. Another persons suffering started for them and heres why Im so justified. But Im not.
What?
universenessOctober 24, 2022 at 22:09#7512780 likes
Are you someone who can't understand that a proponent of the problem of evil thinks God 'can' exist
Bart Ehrman for example, cites the problem of evil as the reason he no longer believes that god exists.
But sure, anybody can still believe any BS no matter how illogical it is.
Reply to universeness Oh dear oh dear. You're really not very good at this at all, are you?
Ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people or do not introduce people into it.
You can't (and by hypothesis, the god won't) ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people.
Therefore, do not introduce people into it.
That's called 'an argument' and the argument in question is called a 'disjunctive syllogism'. Do you see?
Brilliant. I am good at comedy. Here is joke. Why chicken cross road? Tell me! You not know? I tell you. It is because road cross chicken's father and chicken must avenge father. And road's children will avenge road by crossing chicken's children and chicken's children will cross road's children.
If you read that with a Pakistani accent, it really is very funny.
You answered your own question. The omnipotent person is the source of morality. It's like asking 'how can a person make themselves a cup of tea?' They make themselves a cup of tea. Nothing stops the maker and consumer of tea from being one and the same person. Likewise, for morality to exist there needs to be some moral directives - and thus there needs to be a director - and there needs to be someone who is the object of these directives. Well, there can be one person who can occupy both roles, just as the consumer and maker of tea can be one and the same.
That is what I said at the beginning and you said I was confused, that it had nothing to do with the topic. make up your mind.
Just focus on Jennifer and the curry. If it is wrong for Jennifer to invite James over if she plans on cooking curry - a dish he dislikes - then if all you can offer James is curry, you ought not to invite James over for dinner either, yes?
OK, so if James wants to get a leg over he has to eat the fucking curry and just suck up the dislike. If not he can get on his bike.
If Jennifer wants to get a leg over then she should cook him a nice meal and suck up her desire for curry.
So if neither of them is prepared to give a little to get a quickie then there will be no babies born and the world will be a happier place without their dumb genes in it.
Makes no difference to the rest of the world how these dumb tinder twits fix their problem and has nothing to do with morality as it is just a personal problem.
And stop trying to come up with more stupid examples that do not help understand your theory.
You lack the ability to change how the sensible world operates. For instance, you lack the ability to prevent the horrendous evils that are occurring daily. You're not God.
Evil: Noun
Morally objectionable behavior
That which causes harm, destruction or misfortune
The quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice
Evil: Adjective
Morally bad or wrong
Having the nature of vice
Having or exerting a malignant influence
Why does a god need to be involved? All of the definitions above are about human behavior, characteristics or qualities.
Being about humans means that we are in some way able to influence the behavior being classified as evil, therefore we can prevent evil. The fact that it is not done in no way impedes the ability to do so.
Ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people or do not introduce people into it.
You can't (and by hypothesis, the god won't) ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people.
Therefore, do not introduce people into it.
That's called 'an argument' and the argument in question is called a 'disjunctive syllogism'. Do you see?
Err, no.
disjunctive syllogism: A logical argument of the form that if there are only two possibilities, and one of them is ruled out, then the other must take place.
Which are the possibilities and which one are you ruling out?
Or should I use your own words, "Oh dear oh dear. You're really not very good at this at all, are you?"
That is what I said at the beginning and you said I was confused, that it had nothing to do with the topic. make up your mind.
It is irrelevant to the argument. I never said it wasn't. You are clearly reasoning that if you say something irrelevant enough times - and I lower myself to respond to the irrelevant point in question (for I find stupid reasoning almost intolerable and believe I am doing you a favour in pointing it out to you) - then I am acknowledging its relevance. That is itself, of course, an example of incredibly poor reasoning.
What I was hoping to achieve by this - and it really was just a hope, for I don't believe for a moment that it will actually happen - was that you might then realize how unbelievably bad at thinking you are and either slink away in shame or re-read the OP with an eye to understanding it.
OK, so if James wants to get a leg over he has to eat the fucking curry and just suck up the dislike. If not he can get on his bike.
If Jennifer wants to get a leg over then she should cook him a nice meal and suck up her desire for curry.
What? What you have just said reminded me of something Peter Singer once said. I think it was Peter Singer, anyway. That when he started out as a philosopher he sincerely believed that anyone possessed of reason could, if they put enough effort in, understand anything. But then after trying to teach people he gradually came to the conclusion that some people are just stupid and there's really no helping them.
I live in hope though. So, read the OP and try and make sense of my argument. I have done all I can to make it clear to you. It is now down to you. Then - and only then - should you start trying to criticize it.
Evil: Noun
Morally objectionable behavior
That which causes harm, destruction or misfortune
The quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice
Evil: Adjective
Morally bad or wrong
Having the nature of vice
Having or exerting a malignant influence
Err, no.
disjunctive syllogism: A logical argument of the form that if there are only two possibilities, and one of them is ruled out, then the other must take place.
You didn't know what a disjunctive syllogism was until I mentioned it, yes? You looked it up and then wrote down a line you found on the internet and passed it off as your own. And now you think that you know more about this style of argument than I do and that I didn't engage in it in the OP. Most peculiar.
And failed miserable for everyone, no one understands your ideas, that is why your are getting upset and not answering anyone's questions. You don't have any answers.
You didn't know what a disjunctive syllogism was until I mentioned it, yes? You looked it up and then wrote down a line you found on the internet and passed it off as your own.
No I copy pasted the definition from a reliable source so that you can see how wrong you are. Why do so many people think that they are the only ones that know anything?
The number of coherent arguments you have made still stands at 0, as demonstrated by the number of people that have told you this against the number of people that have agreed with you.
Calling people beginners and using other demeaning ways to try and invalidate their thoughts is not the way to win arguments. Presenting researched, worthwhile topics to discuss works better.
So to conclude my participation on this thread I would like to offer you some advice. Get your big head out of your arse and try to be nice.
And failed miserable for everyone, no one understands your ideas, that is why your are getting upset and not answering anyone's questions. You don't have any answers.
I am not responsible for the fact that most people here can't follow an argument or can't tell what is or isn't relevant.
No I copy pasted the definition from a reliable source so that you can see how wrong you are. Why do so many people think that they are the only ones that know anything?
No, you did what I said you did. You passed off a line on the internet as a line from you. That's called plagiarism. And you don't know what a disjunctive syllogism is. You hadn't heard of them before today. Yet you still think you know more about how to argue well than I do, don't you?
Now, when you read my extremely helpful example of Jennifer and the curry and James, you probably though that it was about curry (or the beginning of a romantic novel about how Jennifer and James eventually get together after a rocky start). When in fact it was just illustrating a pattern of reasoning. But in order to be able to tell that it was illustrating a pattern of reasoning, you'd need to have the intellectual power to abstract that pattern from the example and notice its presence in my original reasoning about the omnipotent, omniscient person. What dawned on Peter Singer - as it has also dawned on me - is that vast swathes of the population are simply unable to do this. Just as there are sounds some of us can't hear, there are mental operations that some can't perform.
Here's the example again. Try and understand what it's illustrating and try not to get hung up on the picturesque details.
Jennifer wants to invite James over for dinner. She also wants to cook a particular dish -a hot curry that James dislikes.
She should thwart one of those desires. That is, she should either invite James over for dinner and cook him something else (thus thwarting her desire to cook the curry). Or she would indulge her desire to cook the curry, but thwart her desire to invite James over.
Now. if you also want to invite James over for dinner, but you are only capable of cooking that very hot curry, then you ought not to invite James over for dinner.
So, either invite James to dinner or cook a curry, but not both
Cook a curry
Therefore, do not invite James to dinner
In Jennifer's case cooking a curry is simply something she wants to do, but does not have to - for she has the ability to cook other things. Still, if she decides to cook the curry, she ought not invite James to dinner. In your case you lack the ability to do anything other than cook a curry. But it still follows that you ought not invite James to dinner.
Now, when it comes to God, God ought either to alter the world so that it does not subject people living in it to horrendous evils, or she ought not to create new life.
That is something a proponent of the problem of evil agrees with. THey must do, for if they thought God could satisfy both desires, they wouldn't think there was a problem of evil.
If, then, God decides not to alter the world so that it does not subject any living in it to horrendous evils, then God ought not to invest the world with life.
We are unable to alter the world so that it does not subject any living in it to horrendous evils. Therefore we ought not to invest it with life either.
Ever the quote if managers giving more work to their subordinates. You can quit a job but not life itself though, lest death. Cold comfort. Paternalistic thinking. Another persons suffering started for them and heres why Im so justified. But Im not.
I had surmised that you were drunk when you wrote this. Sad that I seem to have been mistaken.
With "capabilities" I had Nussbaum and Sen in mind. So you are farting in quite the wrong direction.
You are better company for Bart than I had perhaps supposed. Have a nice day.
schopenhauer1October 25, 2022 at 02:08#7513320 likes
You are better company for Bart than I had perhaps supposed. Have a nice day.
To be fair, I didn't read what you were replying to, but that got my spidey-sense going with the phrase "capabilities.."
schopenhauer1October 25, 2022 at 02:11#7513330 likes
Reply to Banno
But looking at it, just more of the same from you.. A small sentence that has little weight behind it except that you "don't like bad ole antinatalism".
And by little weight I mean, there is no explanation.. just indignity as argument.
Reply to schopenhauer1 Hmm. Do you take comfort in your new bedfellow? Having Bart's support ought be enough to have one reconsider one's position, I would have thought. There's nothing in the OP worthy of consideration, unlike some of your posts, to which I have occasionally replied. It's apparent that you have actually read, perhaps studied, some philosophy, unlike Bart.
I simply do not share in your conviction that life is unpleasant. I'm content that I am here. From that foundation your arguments for antinatalism gain no traction, and your arguments that one ought feel that life is not worthwhile are superfluous.
Amongst my first replies to you was a recommendation that you engage with the broken and the bent, the elderly, disabled, and ill. One might expect them to side with you, but I've found them cheerful enough. Something to do with outlook, I suppose. And with a strong eye on improvement, undermining the OP.
schopenhauer1October 25, 2022 at 03:14#7513470 likes
It's apparent that you have actually read, perhaps studied, some philosophy, unlike Bart.
Many of Bart's ultra-ad homs and trolling are really not much worse than things you and others tend to do and say to taunt others rather than engage with them. Granted he can get very unnecessarily pernicious, it's just an exaggerated clown mirror of the tendency of many other posters on here that also argue unproductively. If he is doing anything, it is simply being an exaggerated jester of the bad faith arguing others tend to do.
As to his philosophy, I usually also don't get the theistic approach he often takes, so I don't comment on it much because it's not what I would argue.
I simply do not share in your conviction that life is unpleasant. I'm content that I am here. From that foundation your arguments for antinatalism gain no traction, and your arguments that one ought feel that life is not worthwhile are superfluous.
But even if we were to drop all other arguments, what does that say that a system must steamroll the individual? Is your basis simply, majority is always right? But also, part of the debate is what counts as negative/not right/unjust.
Amongst my first replies to you was a recommendation that you engage with the broken and the bent, the elderly, disabled, and ill. One might expect them to side with you, but I've found them cheerful enough. Something to do with outlook, I suppose. And with a strong eye on improvement, undermining the OP.
I don't put stock in archetypes such as "broken, bent, elderly, disabled, and ill". Rather, I try to see what are the pervasive harms that are necessary for being at all, and consider the pervasive contingent harms that are also pernicious. It is deciding what these are that a good Pessimist explores. Deciding what counts as an negative, is also in question.
In this case, I was questioning the idea that one needs to develop capacities in the first place. Why is it our job to bring others to comply with this agenda of capacity building in the first place? It's as if you are implying that this is some necessary thing. Rather, no that is not how this works. Rather, people are born, and must comply in a fashion that isn't too disturbing. Otherwise, the habitual response from those who have been thus enculturated (perhaps yourself) will respond that "you should just die so the herd is not disturbed".
When you are born into a society, from the minute you are born, you are going to be judged as to how useful you will be to the society you are born into. In a modern context, you will be judged by how much valuable labor you can provide. Your only usefulness to broader society is your ability to both produce and consume. If we do not value these things (in the modern context at least), the system collapses.
If you don't value work, you are considered lazy. Lazy people are of no use to society. You are free riding, according to the elders and other workers. If you are not lazy, you must be one-off genius. You have to produce something of value.
"You better be lazing around re-thinking the next engineering marvel or physics theory! Otherwise, hopefully you get what you deserve by living in poverty or offing yourself" is the mentality.
If everyone didn't work hard or think of intricate minutia of physics/engineering problems, we would live in poverty and ghettos. We would be living in ignorance and privation, no motivation to "produce" and simply be passive consumers..
On the other hand, if we don't consume, the producers can't produce. Crime begets a whole business of keeping crime at bay. Pain keeps people needing to alleviate it. Our wants and needs need solutions.
All of this.. being useful items for society, and its opposite.. being passive ignorant lazing types, is bad. None of it is good. It is using people for their labor and consumption. Yet not doing so collapses the system. Being that it is a conundrum that is pernicious, intractable and pervasive to human life (as we know it)- heap it on the pile of evidence for the pessimism of life.
Here's a hint to know when youre hitting on bedrock pessimistic points.. If it is intractable negative aspects that are so pervasive we say, "That's just the way it is. And there is no other way", you've hit upon something.
Many of Bart's ultra-ad homs and trolling are really not much worse than things you and others tend to do and say to taunt others rather than engage with them.
Perhaps, but the quality of his arguments is quite low.
For the rest, I'm content, and hence content not to address your proposals. Pessimism is an outlook, after all, and hence chosen. I choose otherwise.
There's nothing in the OP worthy of consideration, unlike some of your posts, to which I have occasionally replied.
Yes there is. I've shown how those who think there's a problem of evil should accept that it is wrong to procreate. That's extraordinarily interesting. An actual philosopher would recognize that.
I simply do not share in your conviction that life is unpleasant. I'm content that I am here. From that foundation your arguments for antinatalism gain no traction, and your arguments that one ought feel that life is not worthwhile are superfluous.
Like many, you ignorantly assume that the only argument for antinatalism is one that assumes life is unpleasant. Presumably that's because it's the only one you understand. Therefore, it must be the only one that is ever offered! Or perhaps it is becasue it is the only one you can say anything to challenge.
Therefore it is the only one!
There are lots of arguments for antinatalism, as you'd know if you had studied the area. Which you haven't.
The argument that I gave in the OP, for instance, does not assume that life is miserable. As anyone who has taken the time to read and understand it would know.
Reply to Bartricks Meh. You set up a false dilemma in the fifth paragraph. But I know from previous discussions that there is little point in explaining this to you.
That's not an answer to the question. I understand you're scared. The nasty reasoning man has come to town, so now the squiggle squoggle salesman better pack up his cart and run away.
I'll answer for you.
Banno: yes fartypants.
Right. Now a proponent of the problem of evil must accept this moral principle:
Either adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it, or do not introduce innocent life into the world
If they think that principle is false, a problem of evil does not arise. Thus, they must affirm it.
So, this premise is true (or at least a proponent of the problem of evil must accept it anyway):
1. Either adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it, or do not introduce innocent life into the world
Now, none of us can adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it, can we. So we're not going to. Thus we must accept that this premise is true:
2. We are not going to adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it.
And from that it follows that we ought not to introduce innocent life into it. That's antinatalism.
Reply to Banno Show your working. Identify the false premise above and explain its falsity. Christ. You know you would have shown your working if you could.
Which one is false - 1 or 2? Come along.
universenessOctober 25, 2022 at 08:46#7513870 likes
a desire to leave the sensible world to operate in its own manner, but also a desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world.
P = 'a desire to leave the (sensible :roll: ) world to operate in its own manner,' IS FALSE, as an omniscient would have no desires and no omnipotent exists
Q = 'a desire to introduce sentient life into the world,' IS FALSE, as an omnipotent would have no desires and no omnipotent exists.
So, your gameplay is to conflate your disjointed and dysfunctional musings with the rules of propositional logic and your attempt is irrational and laughable.
Ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people or do not introduce people into it.
You can't (and by hypothesis, the god won't) ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people.
Therefore, do not introduce people into it.
That's called 'an argument' and the argument in question is called a 'disjunctive syllogism'. Do you see?
No, reproduction will continue, as a natural imperative for the human species and we will continue to combat suffering so we can further assist people like you, when you again get scared due to your awareness of self.
You don't have any arguments, you merely live in fear, you choose to live life as a curse. I pity you.
universenessOctober 25, 2022 at 08:59#7513890 likes
Ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people or do not introduce people into it.
You can't (and by hypothesis, the god won't) ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people.
Therefore, do not introduce people into it.
Now, none of us can adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it, can we. So we're not going to. Thus we must accept that this premise is true:
Have you figured out why your reasoning is wrong yet?
It is actually quite simple. The world cannot visit evil on people, I cannot even try to imagine a tree or a rock acting in an evil manner, and animals act on instinct so they cannot be classified as evil.
Only other people can visit evil on other people, AND there is a way to stop that from happening without eliminating the entire population.
And the fact that your god wont change the beings he wants to introduce into the world just proves what assholes gods are.
Bye.
schopenhauer1October 25, 2022 at 13:04#7514180 likes
For the rest, I'm content, and hence content not to address your proposals. Pessimism is an outlook, after all, and hence chosen. I choose otherwise.
That's fine. Germans living under Nazi Germany felt more content in the 30s. Colonizers killing aborigines in Australia felt more content. Southern US Jim Crow society felt content (for those it benefited). So that doesn't do much philosophically for pointing structural problems. Pessimists simply point out what these structural problems are and explain why they are indeed structural problems and not simply a matter of contented feelings of an individual at a point in time.
Morally what ought they to do? Should they frustrate their desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world? Or should they frustrate their desire to leave the sensible world alone and instead alter it so that it does not pose the risks to the welfare of the innocent life they plan on introducing into it? Or should they satisfy both desires?
I take it to be obvious that they should not satisfy both desires. So, that means that they should either adjust the world so as to make it a safer place, or they should refrain from introducing sentient life into it
So if She is not bound by LNC, then She can satisfy both desires. Since we frail/fallible human beings are bound by LNC we cannot fathom/understand how this is possible - we simply have to accept it.
I'm a big fan of B's rambling posts - albeit not in a way he appreciates. So I'm not defending his OP. But in this particular narrow case it looks to me your critique is misplaced.
If you were to set up a standard truth table of the 4 permutations then of course you are correct, but here B is also asserting that P or Q = True. I.e. it is an axiom.
Of course, as the OP clearly states, all of this is imaginary:
B is also asserting that P or Q = True. I.e. it is an axiom.
Of course, as the OP clearly states, all of this is imaginary:
Imagine there is an omnipotent, omniscient person.
Bartricks
It seems to me that you agree that bar tricks is positing the musings of his imagination and trying to pass them off as valid proposals by conflating them with propositional logic.
I would think that it's his burden to clearly state what he intends with P or Q. If he intended P or Q = True, then that's what he should have typed, which would be equivalent to the 'exclusive or.' I think this should be written as P ? Q not P or Q.
Anyway, it matters not, as
1. P or Q
2. Not P
3. Therefore Q
cannot be applied to completely illogical posits such as non-existent Omnis having human style desires.
Bar tricks is all smoke and mirrors, but he is quite capable of further damaging those people who are already depressives but lack the ability to see through his BS. I am just trying to help redress that balance.
It seems to me that you agree that bar tricks is positing the musings of his imagination and trying to pass them off as valid proposals by conflating them with propositional logic.
but he is quite capable of further damaging those people who are already depressives but lack the ability to see through his BS.
I wouldn't be overly concerned about this - just my 2 cents . . . :smirk:
EDIT EDIT:
Now that I'm thinking about it some more, B is not even asserting POR Q, it seems that he is asserting (sort of) P OR ~P
where P is "leave world as it is & do not introduce sentient beings" and ~P is "change world so it is safe & introduce sentient life". Yeah, yeah P is actually two propositions, but I think you get the basic idea.
schopenhauer1October 25, 2022 at 21:51#7515660 likes
Not a good reply. You don't know me, nor what I do in order to improve things.
I mentioned nothing about you improving things so youre hurt over your own red herring reaction. What I said was against the idea that a person being contented means there arent structural problems with life.
What I said was against the idea that a person being contented means there arent structural problems with life.
And we can work to remove them. That's unless one is a pessimist.
universenessOctober 25, 2022 at 22:26#7515770 likes
Reply to EricH
You are trying to 'patch' the inaccuracies in the sophistry employed by bar tricks when you would do better to pull back the curtain and expose his sophistry.
Agree- but sometimes it's fun to embed oneself in his imaginary world and see where it goes.
I am glad you can garnish entertainment from antinatalism and antinatalists but I personally see them as a more destructive and pernicious group than you do. For example, they exist as a particularly nasty organised group in America. Footage from this group has already been posted on TPF and I don't take such organised nasty groups, lightly.
but he is quite capable of further damaging those people who are already depressives but lack the ability to see through his BS.
universeness
I wouldn't be overly concerned about this - just my 2 cents . . . :smirk:
Easy for you to type but I think you are wrong and that there is a very real and very valid concern involved.
universenessOctober 25, 2022 at 22:28#7515780 likes
HILARIOUS :rofl:. You are one of the smuggiest passive aggressiviest posters on here. You know it too. You cannot be that un-selfaware.. Or you are being super ironic. Either way, pot calling kettle black.
And we can work to remove them. That's unless one is a pessimist.
But that is precisely what a Pessimist does.. He sees the intractable, pervasive, necessary harms that are structural. Even contingent harms that are consistently pervasive can look quite necessary as to structural. But though you're being tongue-in-cheek with your use of pessimism here, how your using it here is precisely what a philosophical pessimist is not. A philosophical pessimist does not just think things can't get better, but rather that the fact that there are structural negatives in the first place is something to explore, and to explore what those are and reveal them. The "optimist" in this regard is not just someone who "sees the glass full" but is someone who is overlooking what is structurally the case. Perhaps just to make their case about this and that project (like discussing analytic philosophy and logic on a philosophy forum) being important.
So if She is not bound by LNC, then She can satisfy both desires. Since we frail/fallible human beings are bound by LNC we cannot fathom/understand how this is possible - we simply have to accept it.
Yes, but that's irrelevant to the case I am making. For I am not trying to shed light on what an omnipotent person is capable of doing. Rather, I am trying to shed light on the morality of procreation. I am simply using the example of God and the problem of evil to do that, for there we find much more agreement than we do on the issue of antinatalism.
When it comes to the problem of evil, there is widespread - though not universal - agreement that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person would not invest a world like this one with innocent life.
Those who think that is not true can simply ignore the rest of what I say. The majority - certainly the majority of contemporary philosophers - will agree that it is true.
These folk will agree to the truth of this claim:
Either ensure that the sensible world does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents living in it, or do not introduce innocent life into it.
For if that claim is not true, then there is no problem of evil. And they think there is.
God has the ability to do the former, but we do not. But that's irrelevant. For all it means is that we must accept that we cannot ensure that the sensible world does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents living in it. Thus, what follows is that we ought not to introduce innocent life into it.
Pointing out that God can do all manner of things that we cannot - including, if she so wishes, making the LNC untrue - misses the point. The LNC is actually true and we gain insight into moral matters by employing our reason. It is what is actually moral - not what could be - that I am interested in.
And it would seem that this is a sound argument, or at least that a proponent of the problem of evil seems bound to accept it is.
1. Either ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that you plan on making live in it, or do not make innocent persons live in it. (P or Q)
2. We cannot ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that we plan on making live in it. (Not P)
3. therefore, do not make innocent persons live in it. (Therefore, Q)
Reply to schopenhauer1 I think supercilious is more accurate than smug. But, as you say, the pot speaks to the kettle. That you've been unable to advance your position without vindictive reinforces my point.
schopenhauer1October 26, 2022 at 01:14#7516020 likes
That you've been unable to advance your position without vindictive reinforces my point.
Isn't that the name of your game? I mean you can retreat into what I predicted you would.. "That you are posing as ironic" all you want. Smug is smug. You can say Socrates was smug then.. but wooohee.. then you are comparing yourself to Socrates.. and maybe he was indeed a smuggy.
1. Either ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that you plan on making live in it, or do not make innocent persons live in it. (P or Q)
2. We cannot ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that we plan on making live in it. (Not P)
3. therefore, do not make innocent persons live in it. (Therefore, Q)
Now, you have had long enough to read up on disjunctive syllogisms and research how they can fail such that you can then wearily tell me that the one above fails in one of those ways and then refuse to clarify in the hope that others will charitably assume that you do know, even though you and I know that you don't.
So, come along. Say where the argument goes wrong. You are sure it does go wrong, for no better reason than that I have made it. Yes? If Bartricks makes an argument, that argument is rubbish. So, now try and explain why it is rubbish. Do so without quoting yourself as if your pronouncements constitute pieces of evidence. And do so without any squiggling and squoggling.
I mean, if the omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to introduce sentient life into the sensible world if they are not going to change the sensible world, then your inability to change the sensible world should also mean that you ought not to introduce sentient life into it.
In other words, if She cannot satisfy both desires, then neither should you. But as you have stated, since She is omnipotent She can do both.
Reply to EricH That's irrelevant. All that is relevant here is whether this principle is true:
1. Either ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that you plan on making live in it, or do not make innocent persons live in it. (P or Q)
Which it is. Or at least, proponents of the problem of evil must accept it is.
To challenge me you would need to argue that a proponent of the problem of evil can reject that principle. It's not about what abilities God has. Nor is it about what I can deny or affirm. It's about what a proponent of the problem of evil can do. Can they deny that principle? No, not and be consistent.
Perhaps someone might object that in order for this principle - Either ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that you plan on making live in it, or do not make innocent persons live in it - to apply to a person, the person in question must have the ability to fulfil either of the disjuncts. That is, it only applies to you if you have the ability to alter the world in the required manner, and the ability to invest it with life.
But that seems false. At most one only needs the ability to fulfil one of the disjuncts. For instance, that is all that 'ought implies can' requires. So long as one can fulfil one of the disjuncts, one is able to comply with the directive.
And imagine a god who is unable to prevent herself from introducing new life into the world, but who does the ability to ensure that the world will not visit any horrendous evils on that new life. Well, clearly she ought to exercise that ability. That is, her inability to fulfil one of the disjuncts does not mean the principle does not apply to her. Likewise then, the fact we can't fulfil one of the disjuncts does not mean the principle does not apply to us.
That's irrelevant. All that is relevant here is whether this principle is true:
1. Either ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that you plan on making live in it, or do not make innocent persons live in it. (P or Q)
Which it is. Or at least, proponents of the problem of evil must accept it is.
Hilariously illogical.
These kind of [s]brainf[/s] thought constructs tell something about when actually the "me-myself-and-I" attitude is mixed with over protected lives we live now. The idea of our world now being so cruel... as if it wasn't more cruel before.
Reply to Bartricks
Well, it looks like we're stuck here :angry: :grimace: For clarity's sake I am re-posting your OP:
I[i]magine there is an omnipotent, omniscient person.
Imagine as well that there is a sensible world, exactly like this one.
And imagine that this omnipotent omniscient person really likes the sensible world, and likes how it operates and does not want to interfere with its operations, with one exception: they want to introduce life into it.
So, they have two desires: a desire to leave the sensible world to operate in its own manner, but also a desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world.
Morally what ought they to do? Should they frustrate their desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world? Or should they frustrate their desire to leave the sensible world alone and instead alter it so that it does not pose the risks to the welfare of the innocent life they plan on introducing into it? Or should they satisfy both desires?
I take it to be obvious that they should not satisfy both desires. So, that means that they should either adjust the world so as to make it a safer place, or they should refrain from introducing sentient life into it.
Now turn your attention to yourself. You are not omnipotent, but you do have the power to introduce new sentient life into this sensible world. And you are not omniscient, but you know that this sensible world is an incredibly dangerous place, full of all manner of dangers and just about every conceivable harm.
If the omnipotent, omniscient person wants to keep the world as it is, then they ought to frustrate their desire it invest it with sentient life.
If you are unable to change the world, then you ought to frustrate your desire to introduce new sentient life into it. Yes?
I mean, if the omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to introduce sentient life into the sensible world if they are not going to change the sensible world, then your inability to change the sensible world should also mean that you ought not to introduce sentient life into it. Agree?[/i]
- - - - - - - -
Now you say this (I boldfaced the most pertinent part): Quoting Bartricks
For I am not trying to shed light on what an omnipotent person is capable of doing. Rather, I am trying to shed light on the morality of procreation. I am simply using the example of God and the problem of evil to do that,
And here is the point I am trying to convey: If you are using your omnipotent, omniscient person (OO-P) as an example/template to possibly emulate - as the OP clearly states - then your discussion of the properties & behavior of the OO-P is subject to debate - since that is the foundation on which you construct your Ps & Qs. And it is this foundation that doesn't make any sense to me. Just for example (and again from the OP):
So, that means that they [God] should either adjust the world so as to make it a safer place, or they should refrain from introducing sentient life into it.
But as you have clearly stated, the sensible world is neither of these things. So clearly, since the OO-P has done neither of these things, then clearly the OO-P is fine with introducing sentient beings into a sensible world filled with pain & evil. And since the OO-P is fine with this, then (following your reasoning) so should we frail human beings be.
And this is begging the whole LNC thing I mentioned a while back.
So again, your OP has set the basis for this discussion, and I'm sticking with it.
But there is one other alternative. Perhaps the OO-P is not essential to your P & Qs (as you seem to be saying). Then perhaps (ironically at this point) you might open up a new discussion and leave out the OO-P - so the discussion can be focused on your Ps & Qs.
Well, it looks like we're stuck here :angry: :grimace: For clarity's sake I am re-posting your OP
Yes, another fantastically prejudicial judgement by Mickie/Xtrix. This argument:
1. Either ensure that the sensible world does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents you plan on making live in it, or do not make any innocents live in it (P or Q)
2.We are not going to ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that we plan on making live in it. (Not P)
3.Therefore, we ought not to make any innocents live in it. (Therefore Q)
Is a 'life sucks' argument, apparently. Which means all discussion of the problem of evil should also be moved to this thread too.
If you are using your omnipotent, omniscient person (OO-P) as an example/template to possibly emulate - as the OP clearly states - then your discussion of the properties & behavior of the OO-P is subject to debate - since that is the foundation on which you construct your Ps & Qs.
What I was trying to do is show how a proponent of the problem of evil is committed to affirming the truth of a disjunctive moral principle.
1. Either ensure that the sensible world does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents you plan on making live in it, or do not make any innocents live in it (P or Q)
The omnipotent, omniscient person is dispensable insofar as it is the truth of that principle - if true it be - that gets one to the antinatalist conclusion. But as I was trying to show how those who run the problem of evil are, on pain of inconsistency, committed to affirming it - or seem to be, anyway - that was why I mentioned such a creature.
One could argue the other way - that is, one could take the moral permissibility of procreation as one's starting point and argue that it implies that there is no problem of evil.
To go back to my dinner invite examples. Jane wants to invite James over for dinner, but she only has ingredients for spaghetti bolognaise in her cupboard. But that's fine - there's nothing impermissible about inviting someone over for dinner if you're going to serve them spaghetti bolognaise (provided there's enough of it). For James does not dislike it and it's a meal of the kind a guest is entitled to expect.
But then surely it is fine for Marjorie - who is capable of cooking all manner of things for James, but just wants to cook spaghetti bolognaise - to invite James over and serve him spaghetti bolognaise too? SHe will not be doing James an injustice if she does that. She could serve him something better. But he's not entitled to anything better and so he is being done no wrong by Marjorie if she serves him spaghetti bolognaise.
That applies now to God. If it is morally permissible for us to procreate, despite the fact we'll thereby be subjecting an innocent to the risk of suffering horrendous evils - so, if we do no wrong to that person - then it is also morally permissible for God to subject innocents to life in this world despite the risk of them suffering horrendous evils. God is like Marjorie and creating life is like serving spaghetti bolognaise to a guest.
As is now obvious, this is clearly a life-sucks argument through and through and definitely belongs here.
Existential HopeOctober 28, 2022 at 02:12#7521060 likes
Reply to Agent Smith Behind the resignation lies an approbation. The only pertinent point is whether it is always good for all individuals at all points of existence. I am not convinced that it is. For some, Shiva pervades the universe (or is synonymous with it!), which is, as wise people would know, true (satya) and beautiful (in its highest form). Many perspectives are out therea hint that a broader approach is necessary when it comes to judging the value of existence.
What I was trying to do is show how a proponent of the problem of evil is committed to affirming the truth of a disjunctive moral principle.
I'm not following you here. By "proponent" do you mean a believer in God - and how they attempt to resolve the discrepancy between an omnibenevolent god and the existence of evil? Or are you referring to a non-believer and how they use the discrepancy to dispute/refute the existence of God?
BTW - I acknowledge that this is a dramatically simplified description of a highly complex set of philosophical/religious beliefs/opinions.
I'm guessing that you're referring to believers - but perhaps I'm missing something?
Reply to EricH By a proponent of the problem of evil I mean someone who thinks that the evils of the world imply God's non-existence. So, they are those who argue that God does not exist on the basis of the evils of the world.
I am not one of those. I think God exists. I think there is no problem of evil.
But most philosophers think there is a problem of evil. They think the evils of the world provide us with good evidence (most would say decisive) that God does not exist.
Those philosophers ought to be antinatalists. That is what I am arguing.
That's not why I am an antinatalist. I am an antinatalist for a whole host of reasons.
My point, though, is that an argument - the problem of evil - that the vast majority of philosophers think is a very powerful one against God, implies the truth of antinatalism.
So, 'if' the problem of evil provides good evidence that God does not exist, then there is good evidence that it is wrong for us to procreate.
If P, then Q.
However, it does not follow that if Q then P.
So, although I am an antinatalist, this does not commit me to thinking that the problem of evil provides good evidence that God does not exist.
I think the problem of evil fails. But most think it succeeds. They are inconsistent if they are not also antinatalists.
It is entirely consistent to be an antinatalist and to believe the problem of evil fails to show God's non existence. For there is nothing inconsistent in being a theist antinatalist.
It is entirely consistent to think procreation is morally permissible and that there is no problem of evil. False. But consistent.
It is inconsistent, however, to think that there is a problem of evil and that it is morally ok for us to procreate.
The absurdity of the procreator proponent of the problem of evil's position is becoming increasingly apparent to me.
Jane wants to invite James over for dinner. She doesn't have to. She just wants to. But all she has in her cupboard is some spaghetti and a smashed jar of ragu. So all she is capable of serving James is spaghetti with sauce that has bits of glass in it. And she has no pudding to offer.
Well, I'd have thought it was obvious that she ought to refrain from inviting James over, given all she can serve him is a meal of glassy ragu and spaghetti. A guest deserves better - much better - than that.
But let's imagine that you think - bizarrely - that no, it is absolutely fine for Jane to invite James over and serve him glassy spaghetti and sauce.
Well, Marjorie wants to invite James over for dinner too. She doesn't have to either. SHe just wants to. But she has lots of things in her cupboard, including a smashed glass of ragu and some spaghetti. And she wants to serve James that. However, she is going to give him a great pudding.
Now, aren't you mega-bizarre if you think that it would be wrong for Marjorie needlessly to subject James to an evening of glassy spaghetti and sauce followed by a nice pudding, but not at all wrong for Jane needlessly to subject James to an evening of glassy spaghetti and sauce?
I think so. Yet that is analogous to the view of the person who thinks it would have been wrong for God needlessly to make innocent persons live in this world with all its evils, yet not wrong for them to do so.
God could have gotten rid of the evils - just as Marjorie could have served James something other than spaghetti and glassy ragu. But he is, it is supposed, going to provide a great pudding (an afterlife in heaven).
You, however, could only have served spaghetti and glassy ragu, for that is all you had. You didn't have to invite James to dinner, of course. And you can offer no pudding. If God did wrong, you did worse! I mean, whose invite would James prefer to receive?
Reply to Bartricks The bigger issue that looms on James' mind is not what's for dinner, but are they going to make babies after? Few people will let the problems of the world make an argument against getting laid.
My position on antinatalism is that I agree with it as being the epitome of a philosophical idea: where thought becomes greater than the life that gives it existence. People are unlike other creatures in that we can appreciate our suffering. Animals in nature accept their lot. Our nature to think, or to like thinking, can lead us to favor heady ideals over material existence. However, most people are not philosophical. Thoughts can occur to any of us, but only in an insignificant number will thinking interfere with basic functions like eating (animals), procreating, and working. Nevertheless, as I said, I agree with philosophy at its apex. This is where thought becomes greater than the material world. Mind there is not at a subservient level to matter as in science, but transcends actuality to create nothing. This is the spirit that I favor in antinatalism.
schopenhauer1October 31, 2022 at 11:32#7528160 likes
Mind there is not at a subservient level to matter as in science, but transcends actuality to create nothing. This is the spirit that I favor in antinatalism.
Existence before essence is the case for humans in many ways that human pretend isnt. Bad faith. :up:.
Thoughts can occur to any of us, but only in an insignificant number will thinking interfere with basic functions like eating (animals), procreating, and working.
The desire for sexual pleasure doesnt seem the same as procreation, as we have divorced the two. Therefore, I consider procreation not a basic instinct. It is simply a culturally reinforced preference to want to reproduce. It could be out of any number of things including ones as banal as boredom, fear of missing out and a host of other complex socially derived, non instinctual reasons that have no discernible basis in an instinctual drive to procreate.
Reply to Bartricks Before continuing I just wanted to say that I'm glad that we have had an invective free conversation. I believe very strongly (that whenever possible) it is ideas that should be criticized, not people. I hope that we can continue in that vein.
Yet that is analogous to the view of the person who thinks it would have been wrong for God needlessly to make innocent persons live in this world with all its evils, yet not wrong for them to do so.
I think I finally understand what you're getting at - and here is where we disagree. I am not seeing any connection between being a PPE and your Ps & Qs. Being a PPE does not imply that one should have any opinion on how God should act, let alone that it is wrong of God.
To illustrate, let's take a specific hypothetical example. Let's say there's a person - call him Mr. X - who is an atheist and Mr. X thinks that the problem of evil is proof that She does not exist and that "God" is an imaginary character in various religious books. So what is Mr. X's opinion of AN? Is there any connection between Mr. Xs atheism and AN?
Not that I'm seeing.
Mr. X could be an AN - maybe he feels that there are too many people on the planet and we need to reduce the human population to keep a sustainable civilization.
Or maybe Mr. X is anti-AN. Mr. X loves children (he has 2 kids) and he is confident that humanity will eventually solve these problems.
Or maybe Mr. X has no opinion at all. He's a nihilist and thinks humanity is doomed no matter what happens.
Etc, etc.
- - - - - - - - - - -
As far as Jane inviting James over? Why does she have to serve the glassy sauce? She could serve the spaghetti plain - maybe with a bit of olive oil, a dash of salt, and some parmigiana cheese. Yum. Oh, her cupboard is empty? She can go out to the store and buy some. Oh, she's broke? She could call James and say "Hey James, I'm so sorry, all I have is plain spaghetti but I'd still like you to come over". Or she could call up James and say "Hey lover boy, would mind picking up a jar of ragu on your way over?"
As far as Jane inviting James over? Why does she have to serve the glassy sauce? She could serve the spaghetti plain - maybe with a bit of olive oil, a dash of salt, and some parmigiana cheese. Yum. Oh, her cupboard is empty? She can go out to the store and buy some. Oh, she's broke? She could call James and say "Hey James, I'm so sorry, all I have is plain spaghetti but I'd still like you to come over". Or she could call up James and say "Hey lover boy, would mind picking up a jar of ragu on your way over?"
Please don't give him any more ideas about how to adapted his theories, they are weird enough already.
Before continuing I just wanted to say that I'm glad that we have had an invective free conversation. I believe very strongly (that whenever possible) it is ideas that should be criticized, not people. I hope that we can continue in that vein
Oh, I very much doubt it, vicar. For you just criticized me there, didn't you? Tut tut.
I think I finally understand what you're getting at - and here is where we disagree. I am not seeing any connection between being a PPE and your Ps & Qs. Being a PPE does not imply that one should have any opinion on how God should act, let alone that it is wrong of God.
Yes it does. How doesn't it? A proponent of the problem of evil believes that it would be wrong for God to invest a world such as this one with innocent life. They point to the evils of the world and conclude that God would have prevented those. That's the basis upon which they believe God does not exist. They believe that God would either have altered how the sensible world operates so that it doesn't visit any horrendous evils on the innocents he puts in it, or he would not have put innocent persons into it.
So what is Mr. X's opinion of AN? Is there any connection between Mr. Xs atheism and AN?
Yes, clearly. Mr X believes this principle is true:
1. Either alter how the sensible world operates so that it does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents you plan on introducing into it, or do not introduce innocents into it. (Either p or q)
And this premise is clearly true:
2. We cannot alter how the sensible world operates so that it does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents we plan on introducing into it (not P)
3. Therefore, do not introduce innocents into it (antinatalism) (therefore, q)
As far as Jane inviting James over? Why does she have to serve the glassy sauce? She could serve the spaghetti plain - maybe with a bit of olive oil, a dash of salt, and some parmigiana cheese. Yum. Oh, her cupboard is empty? She can go out to the store and buy some. Oh, she's broke? She could call James and say "Hey James, I'm so sorry, all I have is plain spaghetti but I'd still like you to come over". Or she could call up James and say "Hey lover boy, would mind picking up a jar of ragu on your way over?"
You don't seem to understand the example.
schopenhauer1November 01, 2022 at 11:55#7530360 likes
We cannot alter how the sensible world operates so that it does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents we plan on introducing into it (not P)
Does it have to be even as far as horrendous evil? Id think any non-individualized version of a persons utopia would do. If its a god, youd think this could at least be in consideration of one of the avenues he could have chosen for his creation.
Another thing to consider is, the parent is only thinking about their child, not all children , like a god presumably would. The parents think their child will live a good enough life and find something like 95% of it just peachy and fine. This is why some of my recent AN arguments revolve around the notion of aggressive paternalism. You shouldnt assume for another that this lifes set of limited choices is what another would want. You shouldnt assume others would want to deal with this lifes known, foreseeable harms (foreseeable from the parents experiences and predictions), and you shouldnt assume to expose others to harms that are extreme that you may not even have expected but are known that it could happen. All these assumptions on behalf of others amounts to an aggressively paternalistic mindset and actions.
Reply to schopenhauer1 As my argument here is directed at proponents of the problem of evil, it would depend on whether milder evils are considered by them to be incompatible with God.
It is generally thought that the quality and quantity of the harms that befall people here are such that God, if he existed, would surely prevent.
Antinatalists, such as myself, are persuaded by a variety of arguments.
The argument I am making here is not directed at antinatalists, for we are already persuaded by other arguments. This argument is directed at those who think the problem of evil provides good evidence that God does not exist. That's most philosophers. But most philosophers are not antinatalists. This argument shows them that they should be.
schopenhauer1November 01, 2022 at 14:47#7530740 likes
Reply to Bartricks
Fair enough. I simply liken it to a game players are forced to play lest they kill themselves. Seems like such a bargain is prime facie unfair.
Your argument is that if problem of evil is unfair, then so are the billions of instances of procreations humans enact everyday bringing humans into what can be an evil world (and in my view always is).
I understand your example. I was trying to use some gentle humor to illustrate that your analogy lacks a certain rigor. But your example is irrelevant to the larger point I'm trying to get across.
Let me try once more to recap what I think you're saying (and what I'm trying to communicate). I'll do this in a conversation between you & Mr. X:
1. [Bartricks]: Imagine there's an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient entity. 2. [Mr. X]: That doesn't make any sense. An omnibenevolent entity would not allow evil & suffering to exist. Until you can resolve this inconsistency I have no reason to believe in such an entity. I might have other good reasons as well, but this is a sufficient reason in of itself. 3. [Bartricks]: Clearly your pointing out this inconsistency in my imaginary entity logically requires that you must have a certain moral position. 4. [Mr. X]: Huh? You're not making any sense. All I'm doing is simply pointing out that you are contradicting yourself back in #1. Why should your errors in basic logic have anything to do with how I live my life? I live by my own morality that has nothing to do with your imaginary entity.
They believe that God would either have altered how the sensible world operates so that it doesn't visit any horrendous evils on the innocents he puts in it, or he would not have put innocent persons into it.
Mr. X does not believe this - he is simply pointing out the inconsistency in the definition of God.. Mr. X is an atheist and he does not incorporate any definition of any imaginary entity or entities into his beliefs.
schopenhauer1November 01, 2022 at 15:41#7530940 likes
Mr. X does not believe this principal. Mr. X is an atheist and he does not incorporate any definition of any imaginary entity or entities into his beliefs.
I dont get Bartricks using god as some thought experiment. I think a good analogy is rather a game that I think is good enough that I force other people to play it. I gaslight them and say, well now that I forced you into this game, if you dont like ir, you cant escape to a better game with different setup and initial conditions you can only play in the confines of this game. You can only imagine a different game but you cant play it. However, if you are ungrateful for being exposed to this game, you can always kill yourself! If this sounds outrageously unfair as a game analogy, it really is not much different than procreation.
The problem is people will defend by appeals to majority practice and tradition which justifies only itself and not morality which in almost every other situation outside of procreation wed consider unethical. This becomes special pleading due to long held cultural pressures and preferences.
And you don't seem to understand what a proponent of the problem of evil believes either.
My argument is addressed to those who believe that the evils of the world constitute evidence that God does not exist.
It is not addressed to those fools who think the concept of God does not make sense.
So, step one: try and focus on the relevant parties. I am addressing procreator (or natalist - by which I mean those who believe procreation is typically permissible) proponents of the problem of evil
If you think God can't exist, then you're not someone I am addressing.
I am addressing procreator proponents of the problem of evil.
Now, in order to help those who find it difficulty to follow a line of argument focus on the relevant issue - totally and utterly pointless in a context like this, I know - in my original example I asked you to imagine an omnipotent, omniscient person. Not God. Just an omnipotent omniscient person., Now, I know a little voice is saying 'ooo, but that ain't makking no sense'. Shut that voice up and focus.
And what did I then do? I then asked you to notice that a proponent of the problem of evil thinks a person like that morally ought not to invest a world like this with sentient life unless he was going to alter how it operates.
So, a 'good' omnipotent, omniscient person would either alter how the world operates so as to eliminate the risk of horrendous evils, or they would not invest the world with innocent life.
Forget whether you agree. This is to do with what a proponent of the problem of evil will agree to. And they'll have to agree to what I just said otherwise there is no problem of evil.
And that principle - either ensure the world will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents you make live in it, or do not make innocents live in it - has this form 'Either p or q'
And we are not able to ensure that the world will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents we make live in it.
That means 'not p' is true for us.
From which it follows. as a matter of basic logic, that q. That is, that we ought not to invest the world with innocent life.
1. Either p or q
2. Not p
3. Therefore q
is a deductively valid argument
Jesus!
Now, because that argument is deductively valid, anyone who wishes to deny its conclusion must deny a premise.
The second is clearly undeniable.
So it all hangs on the first.
And note, the question here is not whether you agree with 1, but whether a proponent of the problem of evil agrees with it.
if you think they do not have to agree with it, then explain how such a person could argue that the evils of the world imply God's non existence without appeal to that principle.
Reply to EricH When it came to my dinner invite examples, I wouldn't be surprised if you thought that the thing to focus on is how nice pasta and ragu is.
Shall we go through it again?
No one has to invite James to dinner. No wrong is done if James is not invited to dinner (don't question that. Don't say 'but what if James is really hungry' or something tediously stupid like that. That'd be thicker than a thick thing on thick day. So don't.)
Jane wants to invite James to dinner. But she only has ingredients for meal X. Pssst, it doesn't matter what the meal is. Don't ask about the meal. Don't ask why she only has those ingredients and didn't work harder and acquire more ingredients. That's irrelevant.
Now, given that Jane can only serve James meal x if she invites him for dinner, is it morally ok for her to invite James to dinner?
Depends what x is. A dinner guest is entitled to a meal of a certain quantity and quality.
Let's imagine it is morally ok for her to invite James to dinner.
Well, if it is ok for her to invite James to dinner given she can only serve him x, then it is surely also ok for Marjorie to invite James to dinner and serve him x, even though she is capable of serving him something better.
Now, inviting James to dinner is playing the role of procreation in the above analogy. The meal x is life here in the sensible world as it is.
Jane is us. Marjorie is God. If it is morally ok for us to subject a person to life here in the sensible world as it is, then it is morally ok for God too as well. That is, if it is morally permissible for us to procreate, then there is no problem of evil.
But a proponent of the problem of evil thinks Marjorie did wrong in serving James X. If that was what she was going to serve, she should not have invited him.
So, a proponent of the problem of evil thinks it wrong for Marjorie to invite James over for dinner if all she is going to serve him is meal X.
But that now means that Jane would also be doing wrong if she invites James over for dinner given she can only serve him meal X.
In other words, if God would have been doing wrong if he introduced innocent life into this world as it is, then we too are doing wrong if we introduce innocent llfe into this world as it is.
See?
If it is wrong for Marjorie to serve James X, then it is wrong for Jane to invite James over given she can only serve him x.
If it is ok for Jane to invite James over given she can only serve him x, then it is ok for Marjorie to serve James x (even though she has the ability to serve him something better).
Thus, if it would be wrong for an omnipotent omniscient person to subject innocent persons to life in a world such as this, then it would be wrong for us to as well, given all we can offer is life in a world such as this.
And if it would be morally permissible for a person who can only offer life in world such as this to subject an innocent person to a lifetime in it, then it is morally ok for an omnipotent, omniscient person to do so as well, even though he has the ability to alter how the world operates.
So, if there is a problem of evil for God - and virtually everyone thinks there is (mistakenly, as it happens), then procreation is immoral.
If procreation is not immoral, then there is no problem of evil for God.
They are fair questions. Is God not unjust in allowing millions to suffer? Were my parents not wrong to bring me into this vale of tears? Even if I can get my parents off the hook it may not absolve God. And even if God can get in the clear my parents may still be culpable. They seem to be separate cases. At any rate it distracts attention from any blame that I might carry for making the world a worse place or distressing my parents.
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 10:41#7532230 likes
:lol: Those who connect anti-life posits with omni god posits, have to muse on why a superhero god does not end the experiment the anti-life people exclaim is a complete failure, based on the evidence of human suffering or/and the futility of human existence. If you believe this supernatural omni exists, then your disagreement is with it. So, you should spend all the time you can, communicating your complaints with it, and not those of us that are mere dots on this universal petri dish, created by your omni god.
We need to leave the god BS in the dirt, like any empty vessel no longer of any use to a progressive intelligent species.
Tell me Universeness what god should we leave in the dirt as BS? Bobs god? Sharon's? John's? Emily's? I wasn't aware you knew every single concept of/interpretation of god possible?
Whatever god you reject is your own personal concept of such an thing. And only that one thing. Which is fine, reject it at will. But perhaps don't pretend you understand everyone else's beliefs/interpretation of reality or what it means to them, whether they term it god, logic, reason, ethics, fundamental principle, etc.
We must maintain everyone's free will to admire and pursue a true meaning of reality with respect to them personally, otherwise we are some autocratic dictator enforcing our beliefs on others whether they want to accept them or not. Hardly justifiable.
Everyone worships something - maybe money, maybe fame, maybe knowledge, maybe humanitarism, maybe a person, maybe a god, maybe an idea, concept or thing. For us to shoot down eachothers beliefs is to damage them/to insult them by ripping their core values to shreds - hardly ethical. All we can do is debate and discuss. And those who have a good command of argument will likely convince others of the errors in their beliefs through reasoning. But none of this comes about with brute force and no explanation.
Nothing is BS, it is simply a belief we disagree with on either reasoned or ethical principles. When you express those issues people are free to agree or disagree and offer an alternative explanation.
No one can determine what is absolutely BS unless they know what is absolutely true by contrast - somehow omniscient, a "know it all."
Are you universeness prepared to proclaim yourself a "know it all" or are you receptive to other peoples ideas/concepts?
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 19:46#7533190 likes
Tell me Universeness what god should we leave in the dirt as BS? Bobs god? Sharon's? John's? Emily's? I wasn't aware you knew every single concept of/interpretation of god possible?
All gods. I have no problem with someone's personal woo woo regarding their personal god.
They are welcome to it but if you preach it to me as something supernatural and real then have the evidence to support it or expect me to treat it as nothing more than your own personal coping mechanism. I am interested in that which is evidence based only.
Whatever god you reject is your own personal concept of such an thing. And only that one thing. Which is fine, reject it at will. But perhaps don't pretend you understand everyone else's beliefs/interpretation of reality or what it means to them, whether they term it god, logic, reason, ethics, fundamental principle, etc.
You can choose to give mindspace to the woo woo beliefs of others if you wish, it's your brain space.
I am not pretending anything, I just don't assign the same credence to concepts like god, logic, reason, human ethics or human fundamental principle. But you can, if you want to. Good luck with that.
Everyone worships something - maybe money, maybe fame, maybe knowledge, maybe humanitarism, maybe a person, maybe a god, maybe an idea, concept or thing.
That seems to be your analysis and employment of the word 'worship,' but it's certainly not mine.
I can experience heights of emotion, yes, as all humans can but I have never applied such a manic term as 'worship,' to any of my drivers or goals in life.
For us to shoot down eachothers beliefs is to damage them/to insult them by ripping their core values to shreds - hardly ethical. All we can do is debate and discuss. And those who have a good command of argument will likely convince others of the errors in their beliefs through reasoning. But none of this comes about with brute force and no explanation.
If that is an analysis of my posting on TPF then I reject it completely and I would suggest that certainly on this thread, I have provided as much evidence for my position as any of the anti-life posters.
If you think I am being a bit harsh towards the anti-life posters, then fine but perhaps that's just because I am not as tender a foot as you. You reveal your own conceit with "And those who have a good command of argument will likely convince others of the errors in their beliefs through reasoning." as I assume you are attempting to disguise a compliment to yourself.
Nothing is BS, it is simply a belief we disagree with on either reasoned or ethical principles. When you express those issues people are free to agree or disagree and offer an alternative explanation.
No one can determine what is absolutely BS unless they know what is absolutely true by contrast - somehow omniscient, a "know it all."
Are you universeness prepared to proclaim yourself a "know it all" or are you receptive to other peoples ideas/concepts?
Yes, I am completely open to the ideas of others but not when they type BS.
Donald Trump is the most intelligent man on the planet earth today!
I saw god's face in my cornflakes this morning!
Napoleon was actually a lizard alien from an exoplanet in the Vega star system!
I can tell you all the major events in your future!
I can speak to dead people.
Any of these seem like BS to you Mr Benj?
They are welcome to it but if you preach it to me as something supernatural and real then have the evidence to support it or expect me to treat it as nothing more than your own personal coping mechanism. I am interested in that which is evidence based
Happy to explain. Bring it on. Give me all you got.
I am not pretending anything, I just don't assign the same credence to concepts like god, logic, reason, human ethics or human fundamental principle. But you can, if you want to. Good luck with that.
You don't give the same credence in concepts like logic, reason, human ethics? You don't believe these things are not worth credence? (belief). Tell me then what do you believe in place of ethics, reason logic etc? Surely something you deem more enlightening I'm eager to hear all about it. I'm not one bit intimidated or afraid of having such an argument. Let it all be put out there.
And those who have a good command of argument will likely convince others of the errors in their beliefs through reasoning." as I assume you are attempting to disguise a compliment to yourself.
You assume incorrectly. I need not do any such thing. I don't compliment myself beyond anyone else's personal values. I value discussion above all. The verdict is up to others to decide. I simply have confidence that my views aren't intended to purposefully aggravate and harm others for the sake of it.
Yes, I am completely open to the ideas of others but not when they type BS.
And I suppose you're the be all and end all déterminer of what is BS? That's quite the claim. I hope it holds up to rigorous discourse, not simply because "you said so".
Of course they do. I have common sense and so do you. But citing extreme examples to highlight absurdity is hardly useful as we both already know they're easily contradicted.
What is truly valuable/useful is arguing those beliefs you genuinely believe in and don't wish to be contradicted. Which I'm happy to oblige in doing if they seem unreasonable.
As I said before and will repeat for clarity, I'm not perturbed by the prospect of arguing my points against yours to establish what the actual case is. Do your very worst. Let reason pervade /determine who has the reigns here.
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 20:23#7533230 likes
You don't give the same credence in concepts like logic, reason, human ethcis?
I don't give the same credence to posits about the supernatural compared to the credence I give to posits which are based on logic or reason or human ethical imperatives etc. I hope that clears up your confusion about what I am actually typing.
Of course they do. I have common sense and so do you. But citing extreme examples to highlight absurdity is hardly useful as we both already know they're easily contradicted.
Ok let's try a less extreme example.
An omnipotent being can exist and yet not be responsible for evil or what humans label evil.
To me that's just BS because its illogical. If a creature is omnipotent, then it has full control over suffering. What do you think?
don't give the same credence to posits about the supernatural than the credence I give to posits which are based on logic or reason or human ethical imperatives etc. I hope that clears up your confusion about what I am actually typing.
And what do you believe is "supernatural"? Please clarify.
An omnipotent being can exist and yet not be responsible for evil or what humans label evil.
An omnipotent object (person) cannot exist based on physics and thermodynamics. A single object cannot overcome the restriction of its own minute objectivity - a person cannot physically move mountains for example. It (a person) however, can choose to take responsibility for evil by not ignoring it in the world around them. A person can choose not to contribute to evil by figuring out what exactly it is (defining it) and taking the opposite course.
The universe as a whole unit on the other hand - containing all energy and thus degrees of potency, is omnipotent, but as a system of opposites which are neccesary and internal to its system cannot address the concept of evil. What is "evil" is relative to conscious entities within the universe - objects (people).
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 20:48#7533290 likes
It (a person) however, can choose to take responsibility for evil by not ignoring it in the world around them. A person can choose not to contribute to evil by figuring out what exactly it is (defining it) and taking the opposite course.
What has that got to do with whether or not an omnipotent creature can exist?
he universe as a whole unit on the other hand - containing all energy and thus degrees of potency, is omnipotent, but as a system of opposites which are neccesary and internal to its system cannot address the concept of evil. What is "evil" is relative to conscious entities within the universe - objects (people).
The universe may be one of many so you have no compelling evidence that any singular universe can be perceived as omnipotent. The universe may also be cyclical, so again cannot be perceived as omni anything. As you type, the concept of evil is a human concept, its relevance to the universe is not understood and it is BS to suggest otherwise. Is your basic complaint here that I think the term BS is warranted at times and you don't? I have already suggested that perhaps you are simply more tenderfooted than I. You are not offering much reasoning for your distaste towards me and I don't really care if its just that, your particular taste, when involved in discourse with others. You can hold hands with the anti-life posters if you want, as you try to reason with them that they are wrong. I choose to apply the term BS towards them when they type BS. If you think there are no occasions where you would employ the term BS then that's up to you. Go for it, let anyone who wants to cover you in BS, do so. You don't seem to mind.
It exists as a concept no? A concept/idea in your mind right now or how else would you be speaking of it? How can someone (something that exists) describe something that doesn't exist in any format - imagined or otherwise. Unless you are saying that concepts/beliefs/imagination doesn't exist which we can extend to basically all of the content of a mind. Therefore you would be suggesting "the mind" doesn't exist.
So you agree with me then. If you insist that an omnipotent creature can exist, then you are in BS territory. yes?
Yes I agree with you that an omnipotent "creature" (object/living thing) doesnt exist. I do think on the other hand that an omnipotent system exists (the universe).
The universe may be one of many so you have no compelling evidence that any singular universe can be perceived as omnipotent
You have no compelling evidence that multiple universes exist. And by the "universe" I mean "everything that exists" which would thus still be the full set, other universes would merely be a subset of "thee universe" (entirety) in that case.
Just as the infinity of numbers between 0 and 1 is a subset of the infinity of real numbers (1,2,3,4 etc) on the number line.
The universe may also be cyclical, so again cannot be perceived as omni anything
I don't really understand how the universe being cyclical negates the idea of it being omnipotent. If energy cannot be created or destroyed (first law of thermodynamics) then it is finite in quantity (yet still omnipotent as it is "all energy" available to the system).
Whether that sum of energy is arranged in a cycle or not seems irrelevant/incoherent with the argument.
You are not offering much reasoning for your distaste towards me and I don't really care
Whoa cowboy. I have no distaste towards you - someone engaging in philosophocal argument is harmless. I don't know you. We are merely in the process of discourse, you have your views and I have mine, I see no space for personal attack only challenging beliefs. Doesn't seem reasonably to me to have distaste for a person as people are not equal to/defined by the beliefs they hold. Beliefs and opinions change.
If you think there are no occasions where you would employ the term BS then that's up to you.
Well as far as I know the term "BS" is used mostly a quick, informal, sharp, derogative and aggressive term used to disable other people's beliefs more by intimidation and blunt hostility than welcome discourse. More formal academic terms for "BS" would be "falsity", "contradiction", "deception", "deceit", "paradox", "illogicality" or "irrationality". Many synonyms indeed, a bit less emotionally charged and personal than the word "BS" but I guess that's up to the person.
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 21:31#7533400 likes
It exists as a concept no? A concept/idea in your mind right now or how else would you be speaking of it?
So do fairies and orcs and a race of omnipotent beings called the Q in Star Trek. But none of them have any existent either and to suggest they have is BS.
How can someone (something that exists) describe something that doesn't exist in any formt - imagined or otherwise. Unless you are saying that concepts/beliefs/imagination doesn't exist which we can extend to basically all of the content of a mind. Therefore you would be suggesting "the mind" doesn't exist.
By imposition of that which is existent, ME or YOU. What is the beginning or end of a circle? The same place on the circle, I can choose where it is, so can you. This allows me to separate real from imagined.
I think therefore I am, and solipsism is BS nonsense.
Just as the infinity of numbers between 0 and 1 is a subset of the infinity of real numbers (1,2,3,4 etc) on the number line.
Infinity is not a measure, it is a concept just like paradox is not a state of propositional logic, it is also just a concept. We are unable to take such concepts any further than we have taken them in the past 100 years or more. We probably need another million years of scientific effort before we can garnish any real meaning from such concepts.
I don't really understand how the universe being cyclical negates the idea of it being omnipotent.
How can an omnipotent system be entropic? Chaos-order-chaos, or singularity-expansion-singularity-expansion, with no ability to apply intent is not omnipotent.
Paint your wagon anyway you want! I judge by what you type not what you think you typed. You obviously disapprove of the way I engage in discourse with others, I would call that distaste.
It's ok, you don't have to tenderfoot around me. I am very resilient.
So do fairies and orcs and a race of omnipotent beings called the Q in Star Trek. But none of them have any existent either and to suggest they have is BS.
But they are information that can be shared/communicated right? And elicit emotions, new ideas, articulation etc?
Tell me if your family member told you they felt sad would you believe that was BS too as it has no existent outside themselves? Or would you assume their emotions exist and are thus valid and due consideration? Is this not the basis of empathy? Believing in what others say about themselves without objective proof external to them?
By imposition of that which is existent, ME or YOU. What is the beginning or end of a circle? The same place on the circle, I can choose where it is, so can you. This allows me to separate real from imagined.
I think therefore I am, and solipsism is BS nonsense.
Can you explain how your circle analogy links with the mind or the existence of you and I. I seem unable to make the leap between the two concepts and perhaps more elaboration would help
How can an omnipotent system be entropic? Chaos-order-chaos, or singularity-expansion-singularity-expansion, with no ability to apply intent is not omnipotent.
Are conscious beings like us not the part of the universe that demonstrates intent? If we have no intent/desire/agency then we wouldn't have free will would we?
I think entropy - the tendency for energy to spread away from itself is countered by negentropy - the ability of systems to self organise through gravity, then self assembly of prebiotic chemicals, then life as a strictly regulated system then evolution of that system into conscious awareness which further organises knowledge into strictly categorised information and relationships etc - the external system becoming more chaotic and spread out but the internal system (self) becoming more organised and coalesced.
You obviously disapprove of the way I engage in discourse with others, I would call that distaste.
It's ok, you don't have to tenderfoot around me. I am very resilient.
To project "obviousness" on other people's minds/intent suggests you somehow understand them better than they do themselves. Perhaps my challenging of your beliefs/views came across as distaste but that was not my intention. And in such a case I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come across as distasteful.
Any viewpoint - agreeable or not to me - is insightful, it holds informative value.
But they are information that can be shared/communicated right? And elicit emotions, new ideas, articulation etc?
I am most interested in information that has empirical support not the musings of entertaining authors of human fiction. I place fairy in a different category of information, don't you?
Tell me if your family member told you they felt sad would you believe that was BS too as it has no existent outside themselves? Or would you assume their emotions exist and are thus valid and due consideration? Is this not the basis of empathy? Believing in what others say about themselves without objective proof?
You seem to depend too much on generalised conceptualisations rather than paying attention to the much more interesting, and reliable detailed case by case approach.
The family member may be a person who has cried wolf many times before or they may be sad, that's a judgement call based on your relationship. What has that got to do with whether human emotions actually exist. There is biological and neurological evidence that human emotions exist along with an enormous amount of observational evidence. What more proof do you need? Do you agree that you may show empathy and believe what another says about themselves, let them into your house and then watch them kill your family? Perhaps you need to be careful when you judge the intentions of others.
Can you explain how your circle analogy links with the mind or the existence of you and I. I seem unable to make the leap between the two concepts and perhaps more elaboration would help
I will try, The universe has no intent that we are aware of. We are not a networked consciousness, we experience individuality. There is me, myself and I (triune brain system) and everyone else.
I/WE demonstrate intent, so this could be conceived in its totality, as the intent of the universe.
My circle example can demonstrate this through individual choice of where a particular circle begins and ends (same place). Individually we can all choose any position we like on the circle. Every position on the circle is on offer, in this way the universe can be 'investigated' by creatures such as us. The fact that we can perform such investigations in the individual way we can (but we can also communicate our findings to each other), is evidence that there IS a YOU and an I. It is a demonstrable way to support 'I think therefore I am.'
Are conscious beings like us not the part of the universe that demonstrates intent?
Yes. But the intent is individual, not universal, although there may be some concept of totality that we can suggest is some kind of emerging panpsychism but based on current evidence ...... meh!
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 22:07#7533510 likes
To project "obviousness" on other people's minds/intent suggests you somehow understand them better than they do themselves. Perhaps my challenging of your beliefs/views came across as distaste but that was not my intention. And in such a case I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come across as distasteful.
Apology accepted and appreciated.
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 22:15#7533550 likes
Can somebody sum up just why anti-natalism is such a popular topic?
Same reason why so many humans are still attracted to the 'freak show,' imo.
Finding out why some members of a species would vote for not just terminating themselves, but would vote for the termination of all life that is capable of suffering is fascinating, especially when it is based on free choice and not any law of nature. No amount of happiness can compensate for any amount of suffering it seems. Is there any cut off percentage for the anti-life people? If the average amount of human suffering against human happiness was 45% suffering and 55% happiness would that be good enough or do they want something like 5% suffering and 95% happiness?
I am most interested in information that has empirical support not the musings of entertaining authors of human fiction. I place fairy in a different category of information, don't you?
What do you mean by "empirical" support? Do you mean objectively measurable by scientific method? And if so how do you go about objectively measuring/proving empirically the existence of ethics? Or the existence of the observer that applies empirical method/scientific method for that matter.
If you cannot prove empirically ethics then I suppose we have no use for it as it doesn't exist. And we must open the doors of science to all avenues and cut up living people to collect the empirical evidence we can't collect when theyre dead. Maybe the empirical evidence pertaining to chemicals/ neurotransmitters released during pain, suffering, fear and murder.
Or perhaps there are things beyond the grasp of empirical collection? Things we should consider not to commit atrocities in pursuit of all empirical evidences.
There is biological and neurological evidence that human emotions exist along with an enormous amount of observational evidence. What more proof do you need?
In order for there to be neurological evidence that humans have emotions the hard problem of consciousness would have to have already been resolved. Which it hasn't. So I'm calling your bluff on this one..
As for requiring evidence I don't need objective evidence that others have emotions. I have them. And thus I believe others also have them in their likeness to me as being human.
I use subjective evidence (trust) not objective scientifically proven evidence that they have emotions.
You said you only believe in things upheld by empirical evidence and yet naturally assume people have emotions. Which definition of empirical do you use then exactly and can it be applied both to physical objects through scientific standardised measurement and also unique individuals with there individual experiences, feeling and emotions simultaneously? I think you contradicted yourself in your previous arguments and didn't spot the contradiction.
What do you mean by "empirical" support? Do you mean objectively measurable by scientific method?
Well yes, especially for 'important information,' about the structure and workings of the universe but I also consider as empirical, my own empirical evidence for such information as 'She can be trusted,' 'He is a good guy,' etc. My empirical evidence would be my own observation of what they do and say. No doubt you apply a similar approach yourself, yes?
And if so how do you go about objectively measuring/proving empirically the existence of ethics? Or the existence of the observer that applies empirical method/scientific method for that matter.
Ethics are memorialised as words on paper and you measure by observing attempts to apply them.
I can act as an observer which convinces me that observers exist. I already typed to you that I think solipsism is nonsense.
If you cannot prove empirically ethics then I suppose we have no use for it as it doesn't exist. And we must open the doors of science to all avenues and cut up living people to collect the empirical evidence we can't collect when theyre dead. Maybe the empirical evidence pertaining to chemicals/ neurotransmitters released during pain, suffering, fear and murder.
This sound like a theistic viewpoint that posits morality can only come from a god.
Human morality and human ethics would not allow such behaviour. I would not vote for cutting up living people to collect some perceived evidence we can't collect when they are dead, would you?
Your statement is a bit mad, is it not?
Or perhaps there are things beyond the grasp of empirical collection? Things we should consider not to commit atrocities in pursuit of all empirical evidences.
I don't follow your logic here, Perhaps you could reword it. The last sentence makes little sense.
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 22:48#7533650 likes
In order for there to be neurological evidence that humans have emotions the hard problem of consciousness would have to have already been resolved. Which it hasn't. So I'm calling your bluff on this one..
No bluff involved, I am only reffering to my basic understanding of what neuroscience has and is investigating. A very basic example from wiki:
Jenny sees a snake.
Jenny cognitively assesses the snake in her presence. Cognition allows her to understand it as a danger.
Her brain activates the adrenal glands which pump adrenaline through her blood stream, resulting in increased heartbeat.
Jenny screams and runs away.
There has been a lot more detailed work done in the field of neuroscience to identify which parts of the brain light up during certain emotions and then much more detailed work on what is going on in those particular brain regions etc. I have only a laymans knowledge of the area but they have made a lot of progress. Have a look at my thread https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13222/consciousness-microtubules-and-the-physics-of-the-brain
You said you only believe in things upheld by empirical evidence and yet naturally assume people have emotions.
No, I typed that I give more credence to information backed by empirical evidence than I do to information not supported by such. There is plenty of evidence that people have emotions.
universenessNovember 02, 2022 at 22:55#7533680 likes
Which definition of empirical do you use then exactly and can it be applied both to physical objects through scientific standardised measurement and also unique individuals with there individual experiences, feeling and emotions simultaneously? I think you contradicted yourself in your previous arguments and didn't spot the contradiction.
Empirical in that it can be tested/investigated by experiment.
Yes, you can test the emotional responses of individuals, either in a lab or even personally in a social environment. We do it every day in our relationships, do we not? I still don't see the contradiction you are suggesting I have made. I am sure you can clearly highlight it more convincingly.
Can somebody sum up just why anti-natalism is such a popular topic?
It's so boring and vacuous that, by becoming obsessed with it, it reinforces the adherents beloved notion that life is.tout court, boring and empty. Because it's a kind of constant complaint it delights those who love to constantly complain, and attracts others who love to call the complainers out for being whimps and whingers.
schopenhauer1November 03, 2022 at 07:15#7534300 likes
While the vast majority may live happy lives, the hundreds of millions with lives of unbearable suffering are the sacrifice for this. I think there's a fair argument that this should be discouraged.
While the vast majority may live happy lives, the hundreds of millions with lives of unbearable suffering are the sacrifice for this. I think there's a fair argument that this should be discouraged.
While the vast majority may live happy lives, the hundreds of millions with lives of unbearable suffering are the sacrifice for this. I think there's a fair argument that this should be discouraged.
Is antinatalism the answer?
Perhaps the lure is the provocative nature of this absurd idea. After all, if everyone believed in antinatalism, we as a human race would be wiped out of the Earth. Too bad for all of our domesticated animals.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 09:56#7534530 likes
While the vast majority may live happy lives, the hundreds of millions with lives of unbearable suffering are the sacrifice for this. I think there's a fair argument that this should be discouraged.
Why do you think so many people work so hard to alleviate suffering? Such as the whole medical profession and those involved in medical research and why do you think so many people get involved in protest, political movements, philosophy, debate about how we might live better lives? Is it not to reduce the number of lives of unbearable suffering?
Empirical in that it can be tested/investigated by experiment.
Yes, you can test the emotional responses of individuals, either in a lab or even personally in a social environment. We do it every day in our relationships, do we not? I still don't see the contradiction you are suggesting I have made. I am sure you can clearly highlight it more convincingly.
Ah okay yes it was just confusing as scientists base their empirical evidence on objectively measurable/replicable/repeatable results that can be performed by any other scientist and get the same outcome.
Whilst individuals base their empirical evidence on their own individual observations and beliefs about one another. So it seems the criteria (subjective) or (objective) to be empirical differs depending on who you ask. That's why I wasn't sure exactly what you meant by your use of the term.
Well yes, especially for 'important information,' about the structure and workings of the universe but I also consider as empirical, my own empirical evidence for such information as 'She can be trusted,' 'He is a good guy,' etc. My empirical evidence would be my own observation of what they do and say. No doubt you apply a similar approach yourself, yes?
Yes you're right. That was the confusion I had, I needed clarification that you used the 2 forms depending on situational context.
. I already typed to you that I think solipsism is nonsense.
On the contrary I think consciousness is fundamentally possible to occur because of how physics is set up (quantum and Newtonian). Especially the quantum phenomenon of determination of a result through observation.
I don't think any one single observer (you or I) are the only minds that exist. That's totally absurd. But I think the consciousness that underlies our ability to have minds is innate to nature itself. You're free to disagree.
This sound like a theistic viewpoint that posits morality can only come from a god.
Human morality and human ethics would not allow such behaviour. I would not vote for cutting up living people to collect some perceived evidence we can't collect when they are dead, would you?
Your statement is a bit mad, is it not?
It may "sound theistic" to you but that's your interpretation. Your words not mine. I don't really know why you're suggesting I meant morality can only come from a god.
What I actually said is scientific method is limited - in that it cannot pervade our innate ethical principles. We are human. They're human ethics. If a scientist did experiments like that the very great majority of humanity woukd agree that its unethical/immoral. We don't need to be theistic in that regard.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 10:53#7534600 likes
Reply to Benj96
Empirical is defined as:
[b]based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic:
"they provided considerable empirical evidence to support their argument"
synonyms:
observed · seen · factual · actual · real · verifiable · first-hand · experimental · experiential · practical · pragmatic · hands-on · applied · heuristic · empiric[/b]
So, empirical evidence is not exclusively tethered to the rigor demonstrated in the scientific method. We also have the ability to apply a 'credence level,' or error margins etc.
Ah okay yes it was just confusing as scientists base their empirical evidence on objectively measurable/replicable/repeatable results that can be performed by any other scientist and get the same outcome.
So, if we consider the application of rigor in the scientific method and the broader range that may be applied in general terms for the label 'empirical evidence.' When posters like @bartricks try to employ propositional logic, to help posit the existence of an omnipotent, which either has a desire to create lifeforms which can suffer horribly (akin to the problem of evil) or he posits, it cannot have such a desire, as it is also omnibenevolent. He then suggests that his conflation of logic actually proves that any theist who considers the problem of evil, a challenge to their theism, MUST declare themselves antinatalist because such an omni god would not create this world. So therefore, they MUST vote for our extinction as he would.
You are moaning at me for calling his proposal and the logic he is using, bullshit. I think I am quite justified in using that term as an emotive way of emphasising how intensely I think he is wrong. Why does my need to express that emotional intensity, warrant your, in my opinion, over the top response to it. You felt that it was valid to express your own emotive reactions, such as; Quoting Benj96
I wasn't aware you knew every single concept of/interpretation of god possible?
And I suppose you're the be all and end all déterminer of what is BS? That's quite the claim. I hope it holds up to rigorous discourse, not simply because "you said so".
I accept that you did apologise for some of the above attacks, but I just list them to highlight your own choice of 'turn of phrase' when you feel incensed and yet your annoyance is based on displeasure at my use of the term BS and that you think I pose as an arrogant 'know it all.'
Can you see the contradiction here?
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 10:54#7534610 likes
I don't think any one single observer (you or I) are the only minds that exist. That's totally absurd. But I think the consciousness that underlies our ability to have minds is innate to nature itself. You're free to disagree.
Is 'totally absurd' merely your polite version of BS? :naughty: So you agree with me that solipsism is nonsense? Are you declaring yourself a panpsychist?
It may "sound theistic" to you but that's your interpretation. Your words not mine. I don't really know why you're suggesting I meant morality can only come from a god.
Ok, I accept that my interpretation of what you typed did not suggest you were a secret theist.
I fully accept my status as a fallible mind, after all, if I don't admit to being wrong at times then you will continue to label me an arrogant prick who thinks he 'knows it all.' :grin:
See these two terms many people would argue can be contradictions. For example "Anna observes John and determines he is upset. She says his sadness is fact because she observed it.
Others observe John and determine that he is not upset. They say his lack of sadness is fact because they have observed it.
They may determine that because the vast majority determined that John is not sad then Anna must be wrong. However this cannot be proven as absolute. What we are missing is John's input as he is the only one that knows johns internal mood/mindstate. And furthermore everyone is observing based on preconceived ideas - of the relationship between observed behaviour and emotional state. None of which are considering addressing their own preconceptions instead of making a judgement about John.
All of them are using the same empirical approach with differing conclusions.
Ok, I accept that my interpretation of what you typed did not suggest you were a secret theist.
I fully accept my status as a fallible mind, after all, if I don't admit to being wrong at times then you will continue to label me an arrogant prick who thinks he 'knows it all.' :grin:
We are all fallible in this way. I have already made erroneous assumptions about what you meant by the words you used in this thread. But you clarified then well and then I understood. So I can totally relate.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 11:17#7534670 likes
What I actually said is scientific method is limited - in that it cannot pervade our innate ethical principles. We are human. They're human ethics. If a scientist did experiments like that the very great majority of humanity woukd agree that its unethical/immoral. We don't need to be theistic in that regard.
It probably suffices to type that we both agree that the word 'perfect' (as in perfect method/system/person etc) is another one of those concepts, it is not a measure.
What is the most accurate measurement of the speed of light in a vacuum?
Is it 299,792,458 metres per second?
Surely we can get much much more accuracy that that!
Given another million years of science, will we get the 'perfect' measure?
What would be the significance if we did?
My current answer? YEP, you guessed it, I have absolutely no f****** idea but I certainly wont use that to suggest that the fact that it seems that the human race cannot reach any perfections, depite the fact the concept exists means that we are forced to slot in an omni god of the gaps, declare that humans will always be imperfect and will suffer for being so and therefore we should surrender to the BS peddled by the anti-life posters. Hah! Those pessimists can take a running jump off the highest cliff on Earth along with any other mindless lemmings. Sorry, if you find my 'turn of phrase' pressing.
My intentions was to highlight that nothing is BS in the dynamic of "ALL" opinions and their interrelation with one another. Beliefs are believed to be true by the people who hold them otherwise they wouldnt be held.
That is a matter of demonstrating patience and empathy for people with what one thinks are BS beliefs. Because just saying "that is BS" is pretty useless in resolving the contradiction.
To dismiss them as BS without going to the effort of examining and arguing them is naturally not going to lead to understanding by the other as to why you think the belief is erroneous. If anything they will just consider the person touting BS as being inconsiderate and invalidating others without reasoning it. They will think such a person is arrogant and rude.
And I suppose you're the be all and end all déterminer of what is BS? That's quite the claim. I hope it holds up to rigorous discourse, not simply because "you said so".
It wasn't designed as a personal attack but a device to implore you to explain. As only through discourse do we elicit whether we are on board with one anothers ideas or not.
Being resolutely sure of your opinion, confirming your own reasoning without sharing it with others. Without speaking your mind leaves nothing left for others to do but to define you by your own certainty - as some sort of god (know it all) and one they have no access to because they will not demonstrate this reasoning as to why they know it all. A good omniscient being would share that knowledge with others instead of stomping on the ground and just reiterating that they know it all. Claim is there, but no evidence.
Surely we can get much much more accuracy that that!
The same goes for irrational numbers like Pi, Phi, and e. We can always improve the accuracy but because they never repeat themselves we can never make that accuracy discrete and full/complete. It would have to go on to infinity. So the accuracy we have for irrational things will never be perfect.
Perfection is for the discrete. It is something that can be applied to limited finite things that cannot get any better. But not systems of constant change or infinities.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 11:38#7534700 likes
See these two terms many people would argue can be contradictions. For example "Anna observes John and determines he is upset. She says his sadness is fact because she observed it.
Well no, as Anna's output can be incorrect despite her input having a measure of validity when described as empirical. John does look upset/sad but perhaps he just ate something that didnt agree with him and he is not actually mentally sad, just physically compromised. John can provide verbal conformation either way. We know about observational relativity, and we consider it when dealing with empirical evidence. We know observers in space can report CORRECTLY, different results for the same observation such as the particle was observed or there was no particle based on their frame of reference.
We are all fallible in this way. I have already made erroneously assumptions about what you meant by the words you used in this thread. So I can totally relate.
But to dismiss them as BS without going to the effort of examining and arguing them is naturally not going to lead to understanding by the other as to why you think the belief is erroneous. If anything they will just consider the person touting BS as being inconsiderate and invalidating others without reasoning it. They will think such a person is arrogant and rude.
The problem here is that you are assuming that your interlocuters always have honourable intentions and that is just not the case. If you were debating Donald Trump in front of a mixed ability audience. You would leave yourself almost defenceless, if you are unwilling to attack him. His fake news and conflated logic would defeat you in the minds of many of the audience because you were too busy making sure you were not 'inconsiderate' towards him and meantime so many minds are being poisoned by his BS.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 11:41#7534710 likes
Perfection is for the discrete. It is something that can be applied to limited finite things that cannot get any better. But not systems of constant change or infinities.
But do you agree that it is concept areas such as infinity, paradox, perfection, the omnis etc which are the few remaining places that characters such as antinatalists and theists still find their pulpits.
The problem here is that you are assuming that your interlocuters always have honourable intentions and that is just not the case
Well I am an optimist. You can call it naive if you wish. But its just in my nature. I assume the best until shown the worst. I also think people can and do often change their views when faced with well reasoned discourse - they can become more or less honourable. That's their perogative. Mine, is to present the arguments I have available to me.
Anna's conclusion could be wrong yes. John may be perfectly fine.
But Anna's conclusion could be the only correct one (if John felt comfortable around only Anna and expressed his sadness, but then saved face in front of everyone else because of not feeling comfortable to express his true feelings, lying about Anna claiming he was sad the the larger group to Anna's disbelief.
The verifiability of the true nature of the situation from the perspective of any of the participants within the situation is difficult and limited by what each person is willing to explain.
Not all of the information is accessible to each person.
Only us the audience, third observers - have the details of each of their beliefs and their behaviours. And even then still we can only hypothesise the possible choices they may make, but we won't know which until they do.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 11:57#7534750 likes
Reply to Benj96
I too am an optimist but look what can happen if you don't combat the nonsense peddled by others as truth and fact. Recent examples include the storming of the congress building, personal attack on the family of politicians (Nancy Pelosi's husband) or on the politicians themselves such as the killing of MP Jo Cox in the UK. I could start to list historical assassinations and talk about the rise of fascism in the lead up to WW II but suffice to quote the old favourite. 'Evil thrives when good people do nothing.'
I personally consider antinatalism to be an evil trope which does nothing but attempt to dismiss all human attempts to improve themselves. I will forever combat it.
Very creditable. But if it ever takes over then it will soon die out. Because we will soon die out. And there's no replacement plan aside from more babies. It's a self-limiting theory.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 12:07#7534780 likes
Reply to Benj96
Yes, but in your Scenario, it turns out that Anna actually did find out the truth of Johns situation because he trusted only her as his confessor.
So, to me, you are suggesting that 'the truth is out there,' but you have to approach with a sceptical mind. Just because YOU THINK an anti-life poster is making logical posits about antinatalism. Do your own dissection of every word they type and their combinatorial interrelationships. If you cannot tear their argument to pieces, then look at the attempts of others to do so. If you still find their arguments compelling, then join them. I suspect this process is the reason why they continue to have a tiny number of convinced followers.
I too am an optimist but look what can happen if you don't combat the nonsense peddled by others as truth and fact.
Yes I agree. Hence why I discuss things with people (big things, trivial things, personal ones, political ones). Arguing for what's right/ideals is activism despite people's use of the term "actions speak louder than words". They forgot that speaking is action. I try to raise awareness through discussion of both my own fallability (wherever the flaw in my thinning exists now) and that of others.
I also dislike antinatalism. I did a whole discussion with someone earlier not sure which thread where I expressly disagreed with it.
What I do believe though us that it's not going anywhere. That's why I said no beliefs are BS, in the sense that they exist for a reason - even if the only reason is to stand as an unreasonable thing to think. Just as evil isn't going anywhere as a concept. As without it we don't really have free will and good woukd be meaningless.
People drift towards antinatalism and people drift away from it again based on the persuasion of others.
schopenhauer1November 03, 2022 at 12:08#7534800 likes
I also dislike antinatalism. I did a whole discussion with someone earlier not sure which thread where I expressly disagreed with it.
What I do believe though us that it's not going anywhere. That's why I said no beliefs are BS, in the sense that they exist for a reason - even if the only reason is to stand as an unreasonable thing to think. Just as evil isn't going anywhere as a concept. As without it we don't really have free will and good woukd be meaningless.
People drift towards antinatalism and people drift away from it again based on the persuasion of others.
Casually associating AN with evil, whilst ironically, no one has to experience evil in the first place with AN. Its a political position with ANs against paternalistic assumptions about unnecessarily creating unnecessary harms for others, and assuming for others that they must like this game or kill themsemves (a hard thing to go through with).
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 12:18#7534860 likes
Casually associating AN with evil, whilst ironically, no one has to experience evil in the first place with AN
No one gets to experience anything good then either do they? Would you be satisfied taking away all the people in love (with eachother, with their kids, with their jobs, with food, entertainment friends etc, people living their life the best they can and enjoying it) just for the sake of not existing at all? Just so that two opposites can be neutralised and nothing can or ever occurs again.
Sounds super boring tbh.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 12:21#7534880 likes
Reply to Benj96 To me the central question of antinatalism isn't whether people should or shouldn't experience all of those things, but whether an individual should get to decide on another's behalf that they should.
Impositions, even small ones, are generally regarded as immoral. Birth is one giant imposition.
Does it matter whether the imposition is made with the individual's best interest at heart? I don't think so.
schopenhauer1November 03, 2022 at 12:28#7534920 likes
Would you be satisfied taking away all the people in love (with eachother, with their kids, with their jobs, with food, entertainment friends etc, people living their life the best they can and enjoying it) just for the sake of not existing at all?
Im not taking away anything from anyone. But if you explore that implication you would be facing problems of using peoples suffering for personal gains. Thats your arguments problem though, not ANs.
Impositions, even small ones, are generally regarded as immoral. Birth is one giant imposition.
Does it matter whether the imposition is made with the individual's best interest at heart? I don't think so.
Exactly!
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 12:29#7534940 likes
Reply to Benj96
Thanks for the interesting exchange. I'm away offline for a while to do some other stuff and lick all those wounds you inflicted on me. :joke:
To me the central question of antinatalism isn't whether people should or shouldn't experience all of those things, but whether an individual should get to decide on another's behalf that they should.
Yes that's why we have a moral imperative if we want to exist to help eachother. Then you're not deciding to exist instead of someone else but through them, with them
Impositions, even small ones, are generally regarded as immoral. Birth is one giant imposition.
Yes you can't impose on anyone. But a baby is born and its existence somehow already imposes on others through no fault of their own. So the best they can do is grow up, help others and in that way try to mitigate the blame, shame, guilt etc that comes with ignoring others that exist and are in need
And yet it's merely hypothetical because you're not omnipotent - you don't have the ability to make antinatalism come to fruition. So we should probably just settle for what we do have - the fact that we are here already.
Sentient beings that have such dilemmas and philosophical arguments would be sure to evolve again to occupy the niche currently occupied by humans in nature if all of humanity were to self annihilate. Maybe some other primate over millions of years would go through the same processes of adaptation under the same pressures exerted by nature and re-emerge.
Re-emergence of species is well documented by biologists. So the argument would just be postponed until next time wouldnt it
Im not taking away anything from anyone. But if you explore that implication you would be facing problems of using peoples suffering for personal gains. Thats your arguments problem though, not ANs.
I'm merely saying that existence is polarised. Non-existence is neutral. If one wants to exist they must contend with navigating those opposites - the good, the bad. Etc
But they have a choice in that case dont they. To improve or worsen the situation.
You can have Good, co-operative humanitarian systems where evil is maximised to the most conceptual idea possible and minimised in the most physically acted way.
That's what entertainment is. When we indulge the thought of good and evil at war with one another without ever manifesting actual criminal things/evil acts against eachother.
That way both evil and good can exist (evil as a concept) and good as the physical world. And a good physically world is an acceptable reason to want to exist. Its our choice whether we do that.
schopenhauer1November 03, 2022 at 13:05#7535030 likes
Yes that's why we have a moral imperative if we want to exist to help eachother. Then you're not deciding to exist instead of someone else but through them, with them
That does not change the nature of an imposition.
If I impose something on you, with the intention of "helping you through it", that doesn't suddenly make my act of imposing any less immoral.
But a baby is born and its existence somehow already imposes on others through no fault of their own.
The baby bears no blame, of course. The parents do. To me, antinatalism is about the choice to have children, not about what to do when the child is already there.
schopenhauer1November 03, 2022 at 13:15#7535060 likes
The baby bears no blame, of course. The parents do. To me, antinatalism is about the choice to have children, not about what to do when the child is already there.
No not an issue of antinatalism as a concept. But it is a "you as a person" issue no? I mean im sure you go about living your life, enjoying things, taking care of your loved ones, watching TV etc. Because all these things are good right? You desire them.
How then do you reconcile you antinatalist ideal with your current life? It doesn't make sense to me. Everyone who continues to brave it in the world, to strive forward and survive, has hope. They have to. People who lose almost all hope and fall into the deepest pits of depression are vulnerable to violating their own right to life.
So as far as i know everyone who lives has a reason to. They believe there is something worthwhile, something good to hold onto right? That's why I disgree with antinatalism as anything esle than just a concept.
I think people who live want to continue living. And there's nothing wrong with that we shouldn't be guilty for being born when we can inspire happiness in others or at least try.
I don't think offering people ideas, suggestions, possibilities of new ways of thinking is imposing. You don't have to accept anything im saying. You're free to believe whatever you want. I just want to try to do right by others if I can and if they'll allow me.
We can leave it at that and just agree to disagree if you want.
How is it imposing to make suggestions? They're just suggestions. You can choose whether to take it on board or not. That's your call, ball in your court. Imposing would be to force you to agree or accept something.
I won't do that. You cant offer anything to someone who doesn't want it. All I can do is give my perspective and be ignored, or maybe if someone decides, listened to.
The baby bears no blame, of course. The parents do. To me, antinatalism is about the choice to have children, not about what to do when the child is already there.
24m
Parents were babies once too. So at what point does the blameless/innocent baby become guilty and shameful?
For me: People have evolved the means to reproduce as its biological and natural. All of nature seems to agree that reproduction is not only permissible but necessary.
As for whether two loving parents want to bring a lovely little baby into their happy lives or not, that's their business.
I don't dare impose on anyone's right to or not to have children as they have their own rights and autonomy.
I don't think anyone should have that sort of autocratic power over whether others live or die. We are equals.
I do enjoy living but personally I don't want my own child. I'm happy to be an uncle.
As for whether two loving parents want to bring a lovely little baby into their happy lives or not, that's their business.
Whether it's A and B's business to decide whether C shall live I find questionable. But at the very least C ought to be consulted, which is impossible, hence the dilemma.
So people are innocent in their entire life all the way up to the point that they procreate and then they're criminal/deserve shame and guilt etc?
So during their whole life even if they don't have children and they go around committing the most heinous atrocities they're not guilty because they didn't have children? Or perhaps is having children not as evil as I dunno, raping pillaging and plundering, mass genocides etc.
If you had the choice between having a child or having Hitler exist in the world again... Which would you pick?
Again, I'm coming at this from an angle that is only concerned with the choice of the parents to create a child, and whether that is a moral action.
Well what I'm trying to point out is I think it's a moral fixation that is overshadowed by quite frankly much worse things that could and are happening right now in the world that does exist and does have people in it.
To believe its immoral to have children is to believe you're incapable of being a good parent no? And raising them to be outstanding citizens. A lack of self belief the I suspect.
To believe its immoral to have children is to believe you're incapable of being a good parent no?
No.
Whether it's A and B's business to decide whether C shall live I find questionable. But at the very least C ought to be consulted, which is impossible, hence the dilemma.
Well perhaps elaborate more so I can understand exactly what you believe? I don't want to make assumptions but I will follow the logic of what you present in your arguments.
Whether it's A and B's business to decide whether C shall live I find questionable. But at the very least C ought to be consulted, which is impossible, hence the dilemma.
It's not a really a dilemma because we can't "consult nature" and ask if we can have a chat with our non existent child as to whether it wants to be born before it is. How would something non existent know what existing is like to make an informed decision?.
People don't ask the stories they imagine if they would like to written down as a novel. We create, in good faith, as an exercise in trust that we can bring into existence something that offers good purpose - more beauty, more knowledge, more understanding, more benefit.
If a parent is certain their child will be an awful monster for whatever reason then yes it's likely they wouldn't procreate. But how on earth can a parent know that in foresight? I doubt Hitlers parents knew what they would be creating when they reproduced. So we can't blame the act of being born inherently. We can only blame the environment, teachings and beliefs we instill in our children. We can teach them to be racists, we can teach them to be selfish, to manipulate etc or other people could teach them that if we are too passive in our role. Parents do their best. Sometimes it's enough. Sometimes it's not. Because what they've made is another agent - with their own agenda and self determination, decisions to make, responsibilities to take on. But never is that a reason not to exist at all.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 16:15#7535400 likes
Reply to Tzeentch
Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that does not involve the fusion of gametes or change in the number of chromosomes. The offspring that arise by asexual reproduction from either unicellular or multicellular organisms inherit the full set of genes of their single parent. Asexual reproduction is the primary form of reproduction for single-celled organisms such as archaea and bacteria. Many eukaryotic organisms including plants, animals, and fungi can also reproduce asexually. In vertebrates, the most common form of asexual reproduction is parthenogenesis, which is typically used as an alternative to sexual reproduction in times when reproductive opportunities are limited.
While all prokaryotes reproduce without the formation and fusion of gametes, mechanisms for lateral gene transfer such as conjugation, transformation and transduction can be likened to sexual reproduction in the sense of genetic recombination in meiosis.
Animals that reproduce asexually:
The Komodo dragon, the Whiptail lizard, Bees, Wasps, Starfish and many more, even some Shark species reproduce through parthenogenesis.
Where would your antinatalism argument be if we developed a tech that allowed transhumans to reproduce asexually? How about a sentient alien species that reproduces asexually? If antinatalism is based on any natural imperative the why does asexual reproduction exist?
Would the burden of blame for procreation be lifted if a human could reproduce asexually?
If so then perhaps all you antinatalists should be compelled to pool your intellect and study biology and see if you can offer asexual reproduction to humans of the future and then you would have helped humans remove some of that guilt for reproducing that you feel so happy about trying to impose on them.
If humans go extinct and the next sentient species to dominate the Earth reproduces asexually, then that would be the termination point for anti-natalist BS, yes?
Whether it's A and B's business to decide whether C shall live I find questionable. But at the very least C ought to be consulted, which is impossible, hence the dilemma.
It's not a really a dilemma because we can't "consult nature" and ask if we can have a chat with our non existent child as to whether it wants to be born before it is. How would something non existent know what existing is like to make an informed decision?.
It's not a dilemma to you that you don't know whether someone consents before making a monumental decision on their behalf?
We create, in good faith, as an exercise in trust that we can bring into existence something that offers good purpose - more beauty, more knowledge, more understanding, more benefit.
And there are many things one could create that don't involve imposing monumental decisions and possibly a lifetime of suffering on another.
Also, good faith is not an excuse. Many atrocities were committed by individuals who thought they were doing good, and tragically many unhappy people are born from well-intentioned parents. Ignorance is not an excuse.
If a parent is certain their child will be an awful monster for whatever reason then yes it's likely they wouldn't procreate. But how on earth can a parent know that in foresight?
They can't. Sounds like a darn good reason not to make such a decision on someone else's behalf.
We can only blame the environment, teachings and beliefs we instill in our children. We can teach them to be racists, we can teach them to be selfish, to manipulate etc or other people could teach them that if we are too passive in our role. Parents do their best. Sometimes it's enough. Sometimes it's not.
No, we can blame the hubris of the parents who voluntarily hurled someone into life's crucible - into conditions over which they had little control and of which they had little knowledge.
It's not a dilemma to you that you don't know whether someone consents before making a monumental decision on their behalf?
Who? Who is the someone? The yet to be born? How do I talk them what's their number? Email? Perhaps WhatsApp?
Dilemmas apply to conscious agents that "already" exist and can make decisions. They don't apply to non existing possibilities. You can't ask all your future possible children who wants to be alive? Therefore you cannot treat them as already existing agents. Only potential ones. They don't have a say because they aren't alive. Just as I cannot ask my dead great great grandmother whats her ethical attitude towards Facebook, or climate change, or autocracies.
You as the the one who is capable of creating living agents (assuming you have a partner and you're both fertile) have the option to make them or not. You do not however that that option for all peoples will - everyone else's personal choice as to whether they want to reproduce.
If you want to abstain from fathering children, if you want to remove your own genetics from the constant competing evolution of life, that's fine. No one is going to judge you for your decision to not procreate.
They would kindly ask you to respect their own autonomy of choice in a likewise manner.
The reason antinatalism isn't the predominant belief already, the reason we haven't all purposely gone extinct by now, probably means that antinatalism doesn't nor has it ever nor will it ever make much sense to the majority.
If an infertile couple approached me devastated by their inability to have kids, I think telling them "well you shouldnt have kids anyways" is not particularly empathetic.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 16:46#7535510 likes
It would be exactly the same, with the same critical questions asked to whomever decides another being should be thrown into the crucible of life.
Based on what argument? Humans would have no choice regarding reproduction, if it was asexual.
Some living species do reproduce asexually, no intelligent species does so yet but if humans went extinct then who knows what species will fill the gap. How can an antinatalist posit that its immoral for a parent to reproduce, if it's a natural imposition via parthenogenesis. No choice involved!
"Possibly" being the key word. We don't know the future so we don't know if it will be all suffering or actually pleasant and doable. We can't make the world perfect for our future chindren. No generation has ever managed that. We can however educate them and give them the tools to combat adversity themselves. A perfect utopia would be as pointless as a hell. It would have no purpose to improve or change anything, people wouldnt know what to do with themselves as all knowledge, all innovations, all challenges would be already complete. Someone could be like hey let's do this (and everyone would say oh its already done sorry. You've been beaten to the punchline). We would have no free will. Nothing left to do except twiddle our thumbs and wait for death.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 16:55#7535560 likes
A perfect utopia would be as pointless as a hell. It would have no purpose to improve or change anything m, people woukdnt know what to do with themselves as all knowledge, all innovations, all challenges would be already complete. Nothing left to do except twiddle our thumbs and wait for death.
I think Christians and Muslims call that heaven, but you don't even have the possibility of escape via death!
The person who the parents know will come to be as a direct result of their actions.
Who do future parents make a children's room for, or buy clothes for?
I assumed that taking into account logical consequences of one's actions was a given before going into a debate about moral action, but I guess I'm wrong?
And a parent will never have anything other than "possibly", whether they envision a pleasant or unpleasant life for their child. In other words, their actions will never amount to more than a gamble with someone else's well-being.
Ah I see so we must be omniscient before bringing anything into existence. No room for any answers being still unknown? How's that pursuit of omniscience going for you?
One more question: if you think it's immoral for parents to ever bring children into the world do you therefore resent your own parents? Do you despise them? Or do you think they are good people just trying to do their best? Is it fair to blame everything on one/two people? Do you believe that's a mature or grown up approach to make parents suffer endlessly because you're not having a good time? Or maybe perhaps we can take control of our own narrative and create our own happiness and self fulfillment?
In other words, their actions will never amount to more than a gamble with someone else's well-being.
It's also a gamble with their own well being. They could soon find themselves the scapegoat for any and all of the problems ever faced by their child. Dragged through the mud and tortured relentlessly by someone that resents them.
How can an antinatalist posit that its immoral for a parent to reproduce, if it's a natural imposition via parthenogenesis.
It would be the responsibility of whomever brings such a situation about, and after that just a very unfortunate state of affairs, I suppose, with people not only being born involuntarily but also giving birth involuntarily.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 17:09#7535660 likes
Reply to Tzeentch
So you would consider all species on the earth such as starfish, komodo dragons, bees, wasps and many plant and microbial species to be in your revered judgement, unfortunate species?
I think Christians and Muslims call that heaven, but you don't even have the possibility of escape via death!
Yes I think we can agree that a physically manifested heaven/utopia would be temporally enjoyable but the novelty would soon wear off and become dull and unfulfilling.
Stress can lead to post traumatic growth. For example I got hit by a car a few months ago. Surely an adverse event that wouldnt occur in a utopia. Whilst the immediacy was very unpleasant, the hindsight was very motivating for me to use the time I have on earth more wisely/constructively. I became more dedicated in my career and relationships with friends. What didn't kill me did indeed in this case make me stronger and more resilient.
It seems then that many "bad things" have silver linings in the end. I don't think I would like to be "bubble wrapped" in heaven where there is no threat, therefore no means to learn, navigate, overcome and feel proud for it.
I do think heaven exists. As a concept. But only an ideal in our minds. Its something lucrative at a distance, from which ambition, inspiration, innovation, knowledge, all the good/virtuous/idealistic characteristics of humanity can be extracted in pieces throughout time to bolster progress and evolve culture.
But we should not ever arrive at the destination for then the journey is over. And usually the journey offers a longer hit of dopamine than the final brief reward.
But we should not ever arrive at the destination for then the journey is over. And usually the journey offers a longer hit of dopamine than the final brief reward.
To me, that's where Plato and Aristotle went a little skewed. I think the concept of Platonic perfect forms and Aristotelian ideals are an almost natural progression of the thinking of the atomists such as Democritus. The concept of infinite variety in infinite combination would obviously result in projection towards some idealised, perfect form. But we have to be existents to progress towards such. The omnis and the god posits are no more that human projections of what humans think they may one day achieve as a totality or a networked collective. But they probably never will as the universe will probably end first.
The antinatalists just want to terminate the human story early for the most selfish of reasons it's possible to conceive and that reason, is because they can't come to terms with their own oblivion.
If they could then they would have already gone.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 17:47#7535810 likes
Well, if they are the unfortunate species then those species that are able to employ sexual reproduction, must be, if we follow that logic, the fortunate species as they have choice to reproduce or not.
So, you hold your anti-natalism viewpoint, despite the fact that the method of reproduction for humans, evolved through natural selection, which science has shown HAS NO INHERENT INTENT.
Do you blame the first 'spark of life,' for want of a better phrase for happening? Parent can blame parents who can blame parents for the immorality of their existence all the way back to that first vital spark of life.
Do your antinatalism musings enable you to follow your logic back to that question?
Do you think the fact that the universe experienced a moment when life became an existent was a moment of immorality. Is that what you are trying to sell?
The omnis and the god posits are no more that human projections of what humans think they may one day achieve as a totality or a networked collective. But they probably never will as the universe will probably end first
I agree with you on the Plato - Aristotle point of digression with one another. But this remark really interests me. Because I'm going to introduce a line of commentary.
I do definitely agree that the omnis/God's posits are a human projection of untenable but desirable ideals. However I also believe that "God" is a rare but possible mind state. A sort of manic, euphoria. A "Eureka!" moment when something major and groundbreaking clicks in one's mind and they're overcome by an acute and intense revelation of new meanings, new insights, new predictive value based on their discovery. This intense "rapture" or "ecstasy" may have been written about in many forms through many disciplines (science. =eureka), (religion =revelation), (psychiatry = mania).
Im not saying they are all the same thing. Perhaps not. Merely suggesting a link. That in a moment of blissful euphoria, overwhelmed by confidence and a sense of knowledge .. One feels like a God.
The danger is not in feeling a godly bliss, perhaps you did discover something authentic, impactful and useful to society. The danger is that in feeling this sensation you make the jump to the assumption that you are infallible thereafter. And that you can commit no harm. And such a sense of entitlement and surity is extremely precarious, likely to do harm indeed.
Well, if they are the unfortunate species then those species that are able to employ sexual reproduction, must be, if we follow that logic, the fortunate species as they have choice to reproduce or not.
So, you hold your anti-natalism viewpoint, despite the fact that the method of reproduction for humans, evolved through natural selection, which science has shown HAS NO INHERENT INTENT.
Sure. I don't think nature is an excuse for immoral action.
Do you think the fact that the universe experienced a moment when life became an existent was a moment of immorality. Is that what you are trying to sell?
I don't even know what that means, so I'm going with another "no".
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 18:14#7535940 likes
Reply to Benj96
You are just travelling through the human psyche like the rest of us, trying to apply reason, logic, sense whilst taking into account history, primal fear, origins, emotions, mental illness etc etc.
If you are good enough at that stuff then you can become a 'head doctor' etc. YOU the almighty, ME the immortal, US the creators, they are all part of the human psyche which we project onto a manifestation of some divinity either a mono god or a whole pantheon of gods. Human create god stories. God has no existent, if it did, it would confirm its existence easily and irrefutably.
We progress from generation to generation when we correct the errors made in previous generations. That's the only way forward that I can perceive.
God has no existent, if it did, it would confirm its existence easily and irrefutably
All agreeable statements you've made. One question though. Is that not possible, for God to have an existent? A channel of its ideals through a person, a conduit.
Suppose someone channelled an ultimate ideal, described their truth (this ideal) to others in hope that they agree, and because their truth is so blindingly convincing others took it on board and spread the notion of such an ideal. Then, naturally it would come to a point when that truth is spread far enough, wide enough ("spread the word so to speak") that it encounters rebuttal, abject denial and Intolerance, perhaps by those that can't imagine their own existence in a world where that ideal prevails (antinatalists perhaps, or something worse) , and thus they do everything in their power to stop it. They would ask "who said this?! Who is responsible for infecting everyone with this intolerable belief?!"
Of course this person channeling their truth, knowing its power of persuasion, its ability to gather a following, would already know this and know that by spreading it they are putting themselves on the line, in harms way.
They would have to accept their fate, that spreading something ideal will bring the wrath of the non-ideal against them. And probably they will be assassinated for what they believe in, but in doing so they demonstrated the highest level of integrity, not shying away or resorting to lying or violence in order to speak their mind.
The killing of such a person ties up the loose ends. If their belief is based on benevolence and unwillingness to put themselves before others, to be selfless, their death is the final proof that their truth was the truth. A good one. A beneficial one.
It would be a demonstration of pure goodness being destroyed by hatred because good will never destroy anything for its own purposes, only offer choice. Such a person would be immortalised through legacy. Considered a god only after they proved their belief by being murdered for it.
Haven't we seen this before? Who has done such things? History has shown us many martyrs which were condemned or assassinated because their beliefs were too dangerous for the most self interested of us, to the false gods amongst men, to condone.
A criminal offence that was unjust. Forbidden fruit.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 18:45#7536010 likes
Well, if they are the unfortunate species then those species that are able to employ sexual reproduction, must be, if we follow that logic, the fortunate species as they have choice to reproduce or not.
universeness
Maybe? That's not a question of antinatalism.
Yes it is, as it establishes that only those who reproduce sexually as opposite genders have the CHOICE to reproduce or not and that is what antinatalism pivots on. The execution of that choice is the prime focus of antinatalism, is it not?
Sure. I don't think nature is an excuse for immoral action.
But the point is that the origin of the reproduction choice a human has, had no inherent intent, so any moral question you impose based on the existence of that choice is a purely human construct and has no natural imperative. Yet all species on Earth demonstrate the natural imperative of reproduction even to the extent of the removal of that choice, as is the case for asexual species so surely you see the power of the natural imperative to reproduce as a defence against extinction regardless of any human constructed moral imperative you think has value.
No, morality is about individuals, their intentions and their actions. That's what I am talking about.
But you are ignoring the result of your imposed moral imperative. EXTINCTION, which as I have already suggested is contrary to the much more significant natural imperative of reproduction as a defence AGAINST EXTINCTION. Evidenced further because of the existence of asexual reproduction, which as already stated, REMOVES THE CHOICE that antinatalism depends upon.
No, because that question is not relevant to my take on antinatalism.
It is very relevant, you just don't want to admit it is because it destroys the foundation your antinatalism is based on, human choice to reproduce. It shows that choosing antinatalism would result in extinction and extinction is against the natural imperative. If we went extinct and there was no other intelligent life in the universe, then combinatorial biology would just reproduce it in time. Can you not understand that this makes your antinatalism futile and pointless.
Do you think the fact that the universe experienced a moment when life became an existent was a moment of immorality. Is that what you are trying to sell?
universeness
I don't even know what that means, so I'm going with another "no".
It's simply a statement about the concept of morality/immorality being merely a human construct.
Before life became existent there can be no issue of morality. Every happenstance before life in the past 13.8 billion years has no moral aspect to it. So, life in its infancy has no moral aspect to it. Do you think that early hominid species such as Neandertals should not have engaged in reproduction? Did they really have a choice? Most humans can never support antinatalism as it is contrary to the natural imperative to be an existent and continue our species. The alternative is a return to an earlier state of the universe that has already been, and if there was a return to that earlier point, we would just progress to this point again in some variety of what currently is. Antinatalism is therefore utterly futile.
Using our time and effort to reduce all human suffering is the more sensible choice.
Try to think about it a little deeper and you might arrive at the same correct conclusion or stay fogged. Your choice.
Sentient beings that have such dilemmas and philosophical arguments would be sure to evolve again to occupy the niche currently occupied by humans in nature if all of humanity were to self annihilate. Maybe some other primate over millions of years would go through the same processes of adaptation under the same pressures exerted by nature and re-emerge.
Re-emergence of species is well documented by biologists. So the argument would just be postponed until next time wouldnt it
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 19:07#7536140 likes
One question though. Is that not possible, for God to have an existent? A channel of its ideals through a person, a conduit.
A god which is shy? and needs to communicate by proxy? Not a description of a god which inspires much respect from me. I seem to be more self-assured than this god you describe. Such a channel/conduit would not be a god existent it would simply be nothing more than a communications relay. Even if you decided to be nice and call it a prophet it's still not an actual god incarnated into an existent.
Suppose someone channelled an ultimate ideal, described their truth (this ideal) to others in hope that they agree, and because their truth is so blindingly convincing others took it on board and spread the notion of such an ideal.
Many have done so yes, from Plato to Hitler to Martin Luther King.
Then, naturally it would come to a point when that truth is spread far enough, wide enough ("spread the word so to speak") that it encounters rebuttal, abject denial and Intolerance, perhaps by those that can't imagine their own existence in a world where that ideal prevails (antinatalists perhaps, or something worse) , and thus they do everything in their power to stop it. They would ask "who said this?! Who is responsible for infecting everyone with this intolerable belief?!"
Absolutely, especially if the ideas being communicated will prove to be to the detriment of those who hold power.
You go on to describe people who have died rather than speak contrary to what they believe is truth. A rendition of what is called 'martyrdom' yes but such is just an aspect of the human psyche. I see nothing in what you type that supports your initial question: Quoting Benj96
s that not possible, for God to have an existent?
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 19:10#7536150 likes
. Even if you decided to be nice and call it a prophet it's still not an actual god incarnated into an existent.
It is a prophet indeed. You're quite right. Because for actual god to exist as a person it would require the entire universe to condense into a singular person, what external reality then would such a person exist in? The universe as a system cannot be the whole unit and also be within itself.
But a prophet is no mere lay person though. They have a deep knowledge of the relationship of them and others (fractions of a whole) to the actual whole (god/the universe).
Through that deep understanding, they would inherit the highest degree of empathy and patience for others who don't understand their own relationship to the universe as it actually is, and would naturally go about illuminating that knowledge in them so they can appreciate in full their true relationship to reality, as he/she does.
As I said they would be the fourth condition of a god worth pursuing - the benevolent aspect of the entire system. The part that can't imbue a sense of connectedness and belonging.
A god which is shy? and needs to communicate by proxy? Not a description of a god which inspires much respect from me. I seem to be more self-assured than this god you describe. Such a channel/conduit would not be a god existent it would simply be nothing more than a communications relay.
Not a shy god, a god that presents its true nature as the whole/the everything, in a means/format understandable and accesible to humans, a human voice, a human that beholds and shares the true nature of reality.
Absolutely, especially if the ideas being communicated will prove to be to the detriment of those who hold power
Precisely, it would be to the detriment of those that hold power, fame, recognition, authority, beauty, knowledge, révérence in all its formats. It would pose a threat to those that fancy themselves as gods and others as beneath them by proxy.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 19:35#7536310 likes
But a prophet is no mere lay person though. They have a deep knowledge of the relationship of them and others (fractions of a whole) to the actual whole (god/the universe).
For me, a prophet is just a human who is trying to dupe others that god speaks through him/her.
It's an old ruse, first used to establish the divine right of kings to rule over the masses. A prophet is the biggest bullshitter there is. Especially a political prophet.
But a prophet is no mere lay person though. They have a deep knowledge of the relationship of them and others (fractions of a whole) to the actual whole (god/the universe).
Are you going to admit you are a panpsychist Mr Benj or am I totally off the mark?
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 19:38#7536330 likes
Not a shy god, a god that presents its true nature as the whole/the everything, in a means/format understandable and accesible to humans, a human voice, a human that beholds and shares the true nature of reality.
Perhaps even a panpsychist who believes that some humans are more 'in touch' with the 'universal mind' than others are?
Precisely, it would be to the detriment of those that hold power, fame, recognition, authority, beauty, knowledge, révérence in all its formats. It would pose a threat to those that fancy themselves as gods and others as beneath them by proxy.
You go on to describe people who have died rather than speak contrary to what they believe is truth. A rendition of what is called 'martyrdom' yes but such is just an aspect of the human psyche. I see nothing in what you type that supports your initial question:
s that not possible, for God to have an existent?
Well, we worship noble people and the noble acts they do. And we condone the most intense demonstrations of evil that have existed amongst us. (Both may know the truth - god/reality)
The difference is what they choose to do with it.
If you have the entire truth but withold it entirely from others you have no choice other than to lie - the opposite of truth. You can be utterly convincing, manipulative and appear as a noble person but you intentions (to withold the truth but use its power, to take no responsibility) is an evil act. I believe this is why Hitler came to power. Anyone who understands how the mind works can either empathise with it and inform it (Martin Luther king, ghandi, jfk, Joan of arc, all the revered martyrs) or manipulate it (Hitler, perhaps Putin nowadays).
Those who don't know the truth of things are vulnerable. Children don't know much at all and are therfore vulnerable to the teachings (good or bad) of those that know the truth. Right? So the choice when faced with reality is do I choose to benefit myself by manipulating others, or do I choose to share it and empower them to be more informed and therefore less likely to be swayed by manipulation.
Perhaps even a panpsychist who believes that some humans are more 'in touch' with the 'universal mind' than others are?
Well I believe you are more in touch with reason and ethics than many others. As you showed me you were. Is it not then possible that there is an ultimate reason and ultimate ethics that are one and the same? A maximum we can reach through discourse. And have done so many times in the past.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 19:45#7536370 likes
So the choice when faced with reality is do I choose to benefit myself by manipulating others, or do I choose to share it and empower them to be more informed and therefore less likely to be swayed by manipulation.
Yep its akin to the two questions we must always ask ourselves.
1. Who am I.
2. What do I want.
Yep is akin to the two questions we must always ask ourselves.
1. Who am I.
2. What do I want.
Precisely. They are much the same.
I think the borders of self are created by our beliefs, not definitive and discrete. So if we want to maximise our self awareness, if we want to extend those borders to the maximum, we are ever increasingly responsible for others and thus their suffering or happiness.
If on the other hand, we minimise our borders to just our body. Reduce it to simply me, then all we have to consider is "what's in it for me". A selfish stance.
The only difference between "them" and "I" (boundary of self) is to what degree I am prepared to see likeness, to believe I am the same as others, to empathise and thus take on board their suffering and delight as if it were me own.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 19:54#7536400 likes
Is it not then possible that there is an ultimate reason and ultimate ethics that are one and the same? A maximum we can reach through discourse. And have done so many times in the past.
I can only place such a question into the same file as the one that holds questions such as. How close will we get to KNOWING the actual speed of light in a vacuum with complete accuracy? Which piece of info, if known by the human race, would mean a human could completely transcend human existence and 'become' or 'ascend, ' to ........... (to be filled in when we know what should go here :naughty: )
'Ultimate' is another one of those 'concept' words. I think we are still a lot closer to the early hominid species that we are to the omnis Mr Benj.
I see what you mean. I think irrationality must exist in commune with the rational. For without eachother neither would exist. Irrational numbers for example will never be complete as they are endless and not repetitive (not predictable). They can thus never fully be known.
And on the other hand the rational and predictable can be known and thus is discrete.
So here we have two opposing forces, one that is erratic, changeable, unpredictable, inaccurate, and one that follows a rule, is clear and known and finite/discrete.
Nature always creates such opposites. That which is pure chaos and that which is pure order.
Their interaction and dynamic with one another, is the basis for evolution, for the struggle between control and lack thereof, between life (ordered systems) and death (dissolution into the chaos).
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 20:12#7536460 likes
Reply to Benj96
Your typings remind me again of a dilemma dramatised in an episode of Babylon 5.
A student 'warrior of light' (a Minbari Ranger) is having a crisis about what he thinks is worth dying for.
His mentor asks him;
'If I tasked you to climb to the top of a mountain to retrieve a rare flower that grew only there, and I told you that you would be successful, but you would die, would you do it?'
'No' was the reply.
When asked why? The student said, 'because it would be a futile way to lose my life.'
The mentor said, 'well if I now revealed to you that this flower is the worshipped symbol of a subjugated people and the sight of this flower will inspire them to revolt against their oppressors and free millions of them from abject slavery and horrific suffering, would you do it then?'
'Yes' was the humble response.
We just don't know what effects our actions and our words may have on others, that's why we have to think about our actions and our words deeply and carefully.
Something I don't think antinatalists are very good at.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 20:19#7536480 likes
Nature always creates such opposites. That which is pure chaos and that which is pure order.
Their interaction and dynamic with one another, is the basis for evolution, for the struggle between control and lack thereof
So, perhaps we are indeed natures/the universes best attempt so far, to be able to figure out what and why it is existent. Another reason why we can't vote to end our story, as the antinatalists request, as the universe may never know what or why it is other than through the efforts of a species like us. I am not a panpsychist, but do I think that some kind of emerging panpsychism is happening within the linear time we experience? ....... meh!
We just don't know what effects our actions and our words may have on others, that's why we have to think about our actions and our words deeply and carefully.
Something I don't think antinatalists are very good at.
I think this story from Babylon 5 holds a deep, endearing message. I'm glad you shared it with me, I had never come across it before. It's really nice and quite apt to our conversation.
We do definitely need to consider our words and actions carefully. Words are very often underestimated in place of action. But words are mighty. They have huge power when used rationally and ethically. They shape and influence eachother beyond what physical bodily action could ever do.
To use your body to enforce your ideals, to be intensely active, is often a source of aggression, imposition and intimidation. To use words on the other hand is to suggest/impart meanings and beliefs without laying a finger on the other person. It allows choice.
So, perhaps we are indeed natures/the universes best attempt so far, to be able to figure out what and why it is existent. Another reason why we can't vote to end our story, as the antinatalists request, as the universe may never know what or why it is other than through the efforts of a species like us. I am not a panpsychist, but do I think that some kind of emerging panpsychism is happening within the linear time we experience? ....... meh!
Agreed. We may be nature's most recent prize, its latest pride and joy, the current best effort. And we (as parts of nature) may create on its behalf something more durable, more long lasting, and imbue it with our nature, the product of nature itself, so that it may extend this awareness beyond the boundaries of what is capable by the human body. The next frontier.
But if we birth something human in mind but not in body, something metallic perhaps, then we need to tread carefully, not to assume that because it is different to us in appearance, it is not the same as us in spirit.
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 20:36#7536580 likes
Reply to Benj96
Here is an even tougher one from Babylon 5.
Your death in certain circumstances will be the action that will improve the lives of millions, permanently. But you will never be credited. In fact, your memory will be despised, as the circumstances mean that you will have to seem to be the traitor, the judas, the evil one. You will be forever damned. No one will ever know that you were in fact the saviour. Would you do it? no martyrdom, no credit, no memorial other than as one who is hated and utterly damned?
universenessNovember 03, 2022 at 20:42#7536610 likes
But if we birth something human in mind but not in body, something metallic perhaps, then we need to tread carefully, not to assume that because it is different to us in appearance, it is not the same as us in sprit.
In the timescale laid out by the cosmic calendar we are still an infant species. 10000 years of significant human cooperation and civilisation, is a few seconds in the cosmic calendar. Many humans still suffer horrendously from generation to generation but we have improved things since the days of the first cities, Jericho, Uruk, Ur etc. So I would say to the antinatalists that before we vote for our own extinction. GIVE US A F****** CHANCE! Say another few million years (which is less than the dinos had) before you offer us antinatalism again.
Down The Rabbit HoleNovember 03, 2022 at 21:02#7536730 likes
While the vast majority may live happy lives, the hundreds of millions with lives of unbearable suffering are the sacrifice for this. I think there's a fair argument that this should be discouraged.
Perhaps the lure is the provocative nature of this absurd idea. After all, if everyone believed in antinatalism, we as a human race would be wiped out of the Earth. Too bad for all of our domesticated animals.
Save for editing our biology to remove the ability to suffer (as promoted by David Pearce) there is only antinatalism. Everything else is mitigation of suffering.
Alternatively, one could say the hundreds of millions living in torture are a price worth paying for all of the happy lives/
Down The Rabbit HoleNovember 03, 2022 at 21:32#7536880 likes
While the vast majority may live happy lives, the hundreds of millions with lives of unbearable suffering are the sacrifice for this. I think there's a fair argument that this should be discouraged.
I don't believe there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. It could be argued, we ought to do what we feel is right. Thus, if one feels the sacrifice is wrong, then they should discourage it. If one feels the price is worth paying, they ought not.
It has been suggested on here before by pronatalists that because of their miserable lives, antinatalists are looking at the world through excrement-tinted glasses. I can't say this is true of all antinatalists, but I believe this accounts for a significant number. Of-course the opposite is also true - if you're living a pleasant life, the sacrifice is worth it - why would you throw all the wonders we experience away, just because some people suffer.
It has been suggested on here before by pronatalists that because of their miserable lives, antinatalists are looking at the world through excrement-tinted glasses. I can't say this is true of all antinatalists, but I believe this accounts for a significant number. Of-course the opposite is also true - if you're living a pleasant life, the sacrifice is worth it - why would you throw all the wonders we experience away, just because some people suffer.
Yeah, I think all that is true, but there's a third option which I think is more significant, which is those who see the world as a bad place and see children as means of fixing that - ie ensuring there's a next generation, better than the last, to help those who still remain to live more pleasant lives.
Contrary to the archetypal antinatalist, we're not all selfish sociopaths. It's not always about me, me, me sometimes people spare a thought for their community as a whole and consider themselves (and others) to have a duty toward it.
But the point is that the origin of the reproduction choice a human has, had no inherent intent, so any moral question you impose based on the existence of that choice is a purely human construct and has no natural imperative.
I don't see how that would inhibit a moral discussion, which is also a human construct.
... so surely you see the power of the natural imperative to reproduce as a defence against extinction regardless of any human constructed moral imperative you think has value.
But you are ignoring the result of your imposed moral imperative. EXTINCTION, which as I have already suggested is contrary to the much more significant natural imperative of reproduction as a defence AGAINST EXTINCTION. Evidenced further because of the existence of asexual reproduction, which as already stated, REMOVES THE CHOICE that antinatalism depends upon.
There is no natural imperative, other than perhaps instinctual drives, which, again, I do not view as an excuse for immoral action. Appeals to instinct are no more than the individual admitting they're but a mindless beast, and what's the point of discussing morality with mindless beasts?
The individual is in no way obliged to care about "the species". It's not even rational for the individual to care, since they have no tangible control over whether the species survives. Nor do they have a stake in it, since they won't be around to witness an extinction if it does take place.
Additionally, even if one were to care, ends do not justify means.
It shows that choosing antinatalism would result in extinction and extinction is against the natural imperative.
Extinction is nothing more than an excuse to give in to instinctual drives. No individual reproduces because they are afraid the species might go extinct otherwise. They reproduce because they want to - because it satisfies some instinctual need.
It's simply a statement about the concept of morality/immorality being merely a human construct.
Before life became existent there can be no issue of morality. Every happenstance before life in the past 13.8 billion years has no moral aspect to it. So, life in its infancy has no moral aspect to it. Do you think that early hominid species such as Neandertals should not have engaged in reproduction? Did they really have a choice? Most humans can never support antinatalism as it is contrary to the natural imperative to be an existent and continue our species. The alternative is a return to an earlier state of the universe that has already been, and if there was a return to that earlier point, we would just progress to this point again in some variety of what currently is. Antinatalism is therefore utterly futile.
Using our time and effort to reduce all human suffering is the more sensible choice.
Try to think about it a little deeper and you might arrive at the same correct conclusion or stay fogged. Your choice.
I don't care about Neandertals, or reducing human suffering.
I care about the morality of individual human actions (which is the only rational way to approach morality - individuals and their individual choices). In this case the choice of individuals to reproduce. If that choice cannot make moral sense in their individual context, it will not make sense in any wider context.
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 10:43#7538330 likes
I don't see how that would inhibit a moral discussion, which is also a human construct.
It does not inhibit a moral discussion but your antinatalism solution ignores and hand waves away the very powerful natural imperative for continuation of the human species and the natural imperative to continue all species, including those produced asexually. All you are trying to do is squirm past that point by hand waving it away because you know its fact and it is strong evidence against the validity of an antinatalist viewpoint.
There is no natural imperative, other than perhaps instinctual drives, which, again, I do not view as an excuse for immoral action.
Based on what evidence? Give me an example of another species that has made itself extinct through the choice of all of its members to stop reproducing, thus showing there is no natural imperative to continue species. The Instinctive compulsion to reproduce is an example of the natural imperative but its not the only aspect. Humans wish to continue the story/bloodline/legacy of their family through reproduction this is also a natural imperative. Where is your evidence that if antinatalism was applied, it would be successful in the extinction of the immorality it is supposed to prevent? Intelligent life would simply continue elsewhere or reform elsewhere. You can't guarantee your fake immorality concern wont return again, and again and again. Your invalid immorality excuse is just your poor reasoning for a solution which won't work and is futile and is just based on your own inability to find balance in your own life.
The individual is in no way obliged to care about "the species". It's not even rational for the individual to care, since they have no tangible control over whether the species survives. Nor do they have a stake in it, since they won't be around to witness an extinction if it does take place.
Additionally, even if one were to care, ends do not justify means.
These are just your irrational opinions and exemplify/reveal your inability to find balance in your life.
It's up to you to solve this problem for yourself or seek outside help to do so. It's immoral for you to attempt to demand company for your imbalance.
Extinction is nothing more than an excuse to give in to instinctual drives. No individual reproduces because they are afraid the species might go extinct otherwise. They reproduce because they want to - because it satisfies some instinctual need.
That's not a basis for moral decision-making.
Instinctual drives are not immoral just because you think there is something immoral about the concept of instinct. Human morality guides instinct. People do reproduce for many reasons, including a wish to contribute to continuing the species through their familial bloodline. That is a moral act not an immoral one. Do you think that human instinct has no input to offer when humans are considering an area of human morality? Are all human instincts just 'dirty, base and evil,' to you? Are images in your head of 'dirty evil human instincts,' the basis of your antinatalism?
I don't care about Neandertals, or reducing human suffering.
The fact that you have just admitted you don't care about reducing human suffering is a very important admission for anyone reading this thread to cognise regarding someone who fly's the flag for antinatalism. Human suffering is put forward by antinatalists as the main reason for their adherence to it.
I care about the morality of individual human actions (which is the only rational way to approach morality - individuals and their individual choices). In this case the choice of individuals to reproduce. If that choice cannot make moral sense in their individual context, it will not make sense in any wider context.
But the decision to reproduce is problematic for antinatalists because they suggest this is an innocent self-aware lifeform, who was not consulted (impossible to do anyway) that MAY now experience UNACCEPTABLE levels of suffering, but YOU have just admitted YOU DONT CARE ABOUT REDUCING HUMAN SUFFERING. Can you really not see the contradiction?
schopenhauer1November 04, 2022 at 10:46#7538340 likes
Where is your evidence that if antinatalism was applied, it would be successful in the extinction of the immorality it is supposed to prevent? Intelligent life would simply continue elsewhere or reform elsewhere. You can't guarantee your fake immorality concern wont return again, and again and again. Your invalid immorality excuse is just your poor reasoning for a solution which won't work and is futile and is just based on your own ability to find balance in your own life.
Youre not even paying attention to his argument at this point. Frothing at mouth.
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 10:52#7538350 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1
The attention I am paying to 'his argument,' is simply shaking your little room. If you want to help him then make your points or concentrate on wiping the slabbers from your own mouth.
. Many humans still suffer horrendously from generation to generation but we have improved things since the days of the first cities, Jericho, Uruk, Ur etc. So I would say to the antinatalists that before we vote for our own extinction. GIVE US A F****** CHANCE! Say another few million years (which is less than the dinos had) before you offer us antinatalism again.
I agree. Consider what a middle class person has available to them at this current moment: global communication at the touch of a button (internet), global foods and luxuries of all exotic sorts (chocolate, coffee, avocado's in frigid North regions where they historically were impossible to ever expect to eat for dinner). We have a mini Arctic climate in a little box in our kitchen able to preserve food as long as we please, we have an ever more complex and refined immune system (legal constitution) we can seek aid from for when others commit crimes against us.
We can travel at great speeds never before believable, be across the world in less than a day. We have all these tools and appliances that make previously arduous time consuming tasks fast, efficient and effortless.
Are these all things we should be amazed by, grateful for and happy thus? Yes I think so. Is everyone happy about it? No. A shame really.
To our ancient ancestors we seem like gods of unfathomable knowledge, power and abilities. And likely we would look like simpletons to the humans of hundreds of years in the future, our current methods appearing barbaric in their better refined modernity.
Antinatalism will probably still fixate on their future problems while ignoring the immense progress we have made and will continue to make at ever accelerating rates.
schopenhauer1November 04, 2022 at 11:15#7538410 likes
The attention I am paying to 'his argument,' is simply shaking your little room. If you want to help him then make your points or concentrate on wiping the slabbers from your own mouth.
Not at all. Youre simply missing his points and/or ignoring them. Hes doing a fine job. Cant help if youre like a child with fingers in his ears.
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 11:19#7538420 likes
Antinatalism will probably still fixate on their future problems while ignoring the immense progress we have made and will continue to make at ever accelerating rates.
Well said sir! From a google search: In his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that despite common assumptions, violence has dropped dramatically from biblical times to the present. His new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, picks up on that theme, exploring how other threats to human well-being have been in similar retreat.
This is the kind of evidence that shows humans HAVE significantly progressed in their goal to make the human experience a better one for all stakeholders including the flora and fauna of the Earth itself.
Things are still very worrying, I dont want to dilute that one bit, but they have been even more worrying in the past. Can you imagine being in or around Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted? You really would have thought armaggedon had arrived. How about living during the black death plagues. I think even I would have called out 'we are doomed, doomed, WE ARE ALL DOOMED!,' as my neighbours and family died all around me. But we survived and we continued to progress.
Your death in certain circumstances will be the action that will improve the lives of millions, permanently. But you will never be credited. In fact, your memory will be despised, as the circumstances mean that you will have to seem to be the traitor, the judas, the evil one. You will be forever damned. No one will ever know that you were in fact the saviour. Would you do it? no martyrdom, no credit, no memorial other than as one who is hated and utterly damned?
It would be sad to imagine helping others and nobody appreciating it. People like to be appreciated for the good things they do. Positive reinforcement and all.
For me this would seem like an unlikely scenario. It would mean humanity would have to be totally and completely blind to what's good for them, to lack all sense of what is good. Which sounds suspiciously like antinatalism again.
I think at most, if you really were a saviour of humanity and died for their benefit, you would be a great source of controversy, but not universally hated.
Some would hail your efforts as mighty and wonderful, others would say you were an anarchist trying to ruin everyone's lives by disrupting and upheaving the systems in place (even if you did so by simply by highlighting their flaws and trying to prevent their demise through that flaw. ).
Most martyrs or assassinated leaders are very controversial indeed. History books tend to polarise those that cause a great change or Copernican revolution of seismic proportions, as history writers are undecided towards either one of two arguments (he/she was good and saved us) or (he/she was bad and trying to destroy us) so they record both.
In the case that you believe you were a saviour yet every single person things you are horrible, evil, incorrect and deserve to be hated, I think one ought to assume that their judgement is severely misplaced. If no one is on your side then why believe you're actually doing something good. It's a matter of whether you respect others ability to appreciate good acts or believe you are the only one who knows what they're talking about and totally superior, everyone else just meer simpletons.
I don't think someone hated by everyone has any power to influence them, so thus unlikely to be the saviour of anything at all.
I don't think Hitler did much good for anyone. He probably believed he was a saviour blessing humanity with his efforts and simply ignoring anyone who contradicted this belief. Good leaders, actual saviours, entertain others thoughts and navigate them not by ignorance but by explanation (revelation).
Good leaders leave the choices to be made by others. They merely offer their wisdom and ask that others might accept it (democracy). Bad leaders make the choices despite what anyone else might think or say (dictatorships).
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 11:24#7538450 likes
Not at all. Youre simply missing his points and/or ignoring them. Hes doing a fine job. Cant help if youre like a child with fingers in his ears.
All you do is throw another toy from your pram! around about 200 of them so far, according to the moderators. Make you antinatalist points, stop trying to throw your pelters at me, your efforts are completely benign.
It does not inhibit a moral discussion but your antinatalism solution ignores and hand waves away the very powerful natural imperative for continuation of the human species and the natural imperative to continue all species, including those produced asexually. All you are trying to do is squirm past that point by hand waving it away because you know its fact and it is strong evidence against the validity of an antinatalist viewpoint.
I'm handwaving it, because there is no reason whatsoever for an individual to feel any natural imperative. I don't feel any natural imperative. Simultaneously seeing that people using this "natural imperative" are using an irrational "end justify the means" argument (I explained why it is irrational) to excuse their individual actions.
Give me an example of another species that has made itself extinct through the choice of all of its members to stop reproducing, ...
Morality is about individuals and individual choices. I can point to many individuals who made the conscious decision not to reproduce, thus disproving - yes, disproving - any allusions to the existence of a "natural imperative" that we are somehow all magically subjected to.
Are images in your head of 'dirty evil human instincts,' the basis of your antinatalism?
No, really what I'm doing is applying a very common moral principle - do not impose on others - consistently, and I view your position as special pleading to excuse your inconsistency.
Human suffering is put forward by antinatalists as the main reason for their adherence to it.
Not by/for me.
To use human suffering as the reason for antinatalism would imply utilitarianism, which is another type of "ends justify the means" argument that I am principally against.
It would be sad to imagine helping others and nobody appreciating it. People like to be appreciated for the good things they do.
Based on your response, I think you agree that dilemma's such as the two I highlighted from Babylon 5, at least demonstrate that figuring complicated stuff out, can be really really tough.
I know that's a very 'no shit Sherlock,' observation to make, but I do think it's important to think deeply when faced with such irrational and impractical people as antinatalists.
I think they may be just people who are crying out for help and recognition.
I know that's a very 'no shit Sherlock,' observation to make, but I do think it's important to think deeply when faced with such irrational and impractical people as antinatalists.
I think they may be just people who are crying out for help and recognition.
Haha sometimes the "No shit sherlock observations" are the most profound and useful. We often forget the basics on such a hectic and changeable life.
For me Antinatalists are:
1). People with a fundamentally good intention (to address suffering, to find an ultimate ethical/moral solution for suffering).
2). Lack any coherent good reasoning for that intention (because from their ideal concept: no one would exist - and then oops! Suffering doesn't exist, hence what ethical intention would they have to even suppose the ideal in the first place, as they wouldn't exist to have intention. Duh. ).
In this way it is a paradoxic cycle alternating from subjectivity (concept of an ideal), to the implications of that ideal if it was objective (actually the case). In which case the intent (ideal) violates its own existence if it were to be real (objective).
You cannot have an ethical principle (existence without suffering) that destroys the assumptions (suffering) required to formulate that principle.
And that's why they feel helpless and sad. Because they don't contribute in action to mitigating suffering. Like starting a charity or educating people or doing a humanitarian aid trip. They only articulate a pointless contradictory principle and flounder helplessly by fixating on it. One needs to identify their ability to act (their agency, the fact that their life can and does matter, and they can make a positive differenve against suffering) rather than just talk about sufferings inability to be abolished entirely.
Being someone who exists (but has an ideal of not existing) signals serious concern to me for their wellbeing. Because to me it sounds like a state of helplessness and impotency - inability to reconcile their purpose (core ideal) with the fact that they exist as a person. So the only other option is to project the need for non existence onto others (in other words make it everyone elses problem).
In short, a last ditch effort to cope by denying the fact that they're severely depressed/utterly miserable and have little joy left to feel.
But that's hopeful in the sense that the only other choice available to them is to stop coping, make it their own problem to deal with, which as you can probably anticipate, doesn't end well. And that's something we don't want for them. Hence why I try to explain and help.
The challenge is to imbue an Antinatalist with a reason to live that is better than just telling everyone else they should die. Because that's entirely ineffective as an argument strategy. No one who wants to live, enjoys living, wants to agree that they should die. That's obvious. And so all an Antinatalist will ever get in return is fierce rejection from happy, more hopeful, more omtimistic people or agreement from others that are severely depressed.
There is proof in the argument itself that others want to help an antinatalist to feel happy. Because if we didn't we wouldn't argue with them about it. We would just ignore them even though we know they're helpless and vulnerable. And that wouldnt be very ethical of us. The only way to derail someone's helplessness is to educate them through conversation and help them identify their depression in themselves and try to empower them to make the right decision to save themselves. As none of us can save them without their consent.
Whether one chooses to accept help from someone who is trying to show them an interest in life, to show them some positivity, is entirely up to them. But from the point of view of their ideal any help offered is interpreted as the greatest imposition. It feels like theyre being forced by everyone to participate in life because they still hold onto that part of them that doesn't want to allow them to be happy despite suffering.
You don't have to give up the intention to reduce suffering to be happy. You can satisfy both (recognition of suffering and the desire to reduce it) by getting your happiness and fulfillment in life through helping others to feel happy, but it requires letting go of a fixation on a contradiction, by finally accepting that it is a contradiction, and living anyways to fight another day. Together.
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 12:49#7538580 likes
I'm handwaving it, because there is no reason whatsoever for an individual to feel any natural imperative. I don't feel any natural imperative.
You have simply decided to supress it, but it is still part of you, and it will revisit you at times. I have no children and imo, I am now too late in life at 58 to have any. You will see family units, having joyous interactions, especially parents and small infants, you will hear a parent talk about how their children are more important to them than their own lives. You will hear people talk about their long historical family legacy and such will make you think for a moment, and you will have to reinforce your suppression.
Even drama scenes like:
Demonstrate the 'natural imperative' and the suffering that can be caused by not reproducing.
Some people who cannot have children suffer very badly. Antinatalists also handwave that away as well with 'it's immoral to alleviate your own suffering by bringing new life into the world which can also suffer.' Which of course suggests that suffering is all that is on offer for newborns or any joys will be irrelevent because of the sufferings you will experience. Again, totally irrational thinking.
Simultaneously seeing that people using this "natural imperative" are using an irrational "end justify the means" argument (I explained why it is irrational) to excuse their individual actions.
So is asexual reproduction, in your mind, irrational, as well as 'unfortunate?'
You can't guarantee your fake immorality concern wont return again, and again and again.
universeness
I don't need to guarantee anything. The only thing I'm concerned with is the morality of the act of reproducing.
So, you have no interest in consequentials then? Even if those consequentials mean that the original goal of your protest remains unfulfilled and the issue is never solved because it returns again and again, ad infinitum?
Morality is about individuals and individual choices. I can point to many individuals who made the conscious decision not to reproduce, thus disproving - yes, disproving - any allusions to the existence of a "natural imperative" that we are somehow all magically subjected to.
I can point to such people as well and their decision is not normally an antinatalist one and is more likely to be an economic or lifestyle choice or even a 'not until the world becomes a better place,' or 'the world is overpopulated' choice which is also not necessarily based on an antinatalist viewpoint.
I have no idea what is in your head that connects the natural imperative to reproduce with the word 'magic.'
Clearly this is not the case. Humans have many instincts, violent ones, sexual ones, etc. that are clearly not moral.
And when these 'unpalatable thoughts' surface in you, is your established morality able to cope and ensure you dismiss such thoughts as just the mere random musings of your mind that are based on your primal fears, formed from the fact that our species came through a 'jungle rules' phase?
In what way is the human potential for random, controllable, suppressible, immoral thought an aspect of humanity that warrants antinatalism and the extinction of our species?
No, really what I'm doing is applying a very common moral principle - do not impose on others - consistently, and I view your position as special pleading to excuse your inconsistency.
But you are trying to constantly impose your antinatalism on others, consistently! Why is that not special pleading and immoral?
No I can't, because clearly you're responding to some generalized idea you have about antinatalism, and not reading what I am typing to you.
Oh, I am reading exactly what you are typing, and I understand every word, as your thinking is not exactly complicated. I find the very few, different flavours of antinatalism, typed about on this thread to be equal only in how irrational they are.
So, you are not an antinatalist, based on the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority (utilitarianism). You are an antinatalist because you think it's immoral not to be such, as you think reproduction is an imposition on those who are born, as you did not have their consent. You choose to ignore the fact that obtaining such consent is not possible and that simply means, by default, we must not reproduce and anything that reproduces asexually now or after our extinction is just unfortunate. It that basically you position? Is that the antinatalism you want to sell to everyone? Which includes people like me? What estimate do you place on your chances of success?
Do you in fact need the buzz you get from the incredulity you receive?
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 13:18#7538640 likes
1). People with a fundamentally good intention (to address suffering, to find an ultimate ethical/moral solution for suffering).
But the antinatalist @Tzeentch has just posted that he does not care about reducing human suffering so does your number 1 here apply to his/her flavour of antinatalism?
In this way it is a paradoxic cycle alternating from subjectivity (concept of an ideal), to the implications of that ideal if it was objective (actually the case). In which case the intent (ideal) violates its own existence if it were to be real (objective).
They only articulate a pointless contradictory principle and flounder helplessly by fixating on it. One needs to identify their ability to act (their agency, the fact that their life can and does matter, and they can make a positive differenve against suffering) rather than just talk about sufferings inability to be abolished entirely.
Being someone who exists (but has an ideal of not existing) signals serious concern to me for their wellbeing. Because to me it sounds like a state of helplessness and impotency - inability to reconcile their purpose (core ideal) with the fact that they exist as a person. So the only other option is to project the need for non existence onto others (in other words make it everyone elses problem).
In short, a last ditch effort to cope by denying the fact that they're severely depressed/utterly miserable and have little joy left to feel.
It certainly seems that way but perhaps some of them do get an actual buzz out of the incredulous responses they get. Attention seekers? Some dishonest interlocuters live on the buzz of contoversy.
Look at characters like Alex Jones (recently fined a billion dollars for his BS about the horrific Sandy Hook school attack), Ben Shapiro, who loves and lives off being controversial, Piers Morgan is exactly the same as is Donald Trump.
There is a horrible organised group in America called the ANI(Antinatalism International). To me even their name seems backwards. I won't post any of their nonsense here, but they should not be merely ignored. TPF member @DA671 already posted some awful but relevant footage from organised American antinatalists and it is material that should raise flags of concern. Having typed that, I do think that antinatalism remains gnat sized in the big human picture.
I hope the anti-life posters appreciate the olive branch you offer them.
I would just still watch who you invite into your world.
schopenhauer1November 04, 2022 at 13:19#7538650 likes
Which of course suggests that suffering is all that is on offer for newborns or any joys will be irrelevent because of the sufferings you will experience. Again, totally irrational thinking.
So is asexual reproduction, in your mind, irrational, as well as 'unfortunate?'
Red herring. Applying morality to things that by definition can't be moral is a category error, including most animals. Not only is it a category error, it is simply besides the point he is making.
So, you have no interest in consequentials then? Even if those consequentials mean that the original goal of your protest remains unfulfilled and the issue is never solved because it returns again and again, ad infinitum?
Yes, that is part of his central ethical argument. It's deontological, not consequential. Unnecessarily imposing on others for X reason, is wrong he is saying. Thus, obviously, imposing on many people EVEN in the hopes of preventing unnecessary impositions would by logic, also be wrong.
I have no idea what is in your head that connects the natural imperative to reproduce with the word 'magic.'
That's because there is no "natural imperative to reproduce" in HUMANS. We are a creature that has "reasons" that are shaped by a multitude of things, and are generally shaped by the general culture around us and simply personal preferences- anything from not wanting to miss out, to simply boredom with life, loneliness, and a host of other non-instinctual reasons.
In what way is the human potential for random, controllable, suppressible, immoral thought an aspect of humanity that warrants antinatalism and the extinction of our species?
You choose to ignore the fact that obtaining such consent is not possible and that simply means, by default, we must not reproduce and anything that reproduces asexually now or after our extinction is just unfortunate. It that basically you position? Is that the antinatalism you want to sell to everyone? Which includes people like me? What estimate do you place on your chances of success?
Do you in fact need the buzz you get from the incredulity you receive?
A truth isn't how successful it sells to an audience. People often don't see "truth" at all, and certainly not right away.
So, you have no interest in consequentials then? Even if those consequentials mean that the original goal of your protest remains unfulfilled and the issue is never solved because it returns again and again, ad infinitum?
If the means are flawed the ends won't justify them, so my interest is consequences is secondary.
And what exactly do you believe my "original goal" and or "protest" consist of?
I can point to such people as well and their decision is not normally an antinatalist one and is more likely to be an economic or lifestyle choice or even a 'not until the world becomes a better place,' or 'the world is overpopulated' choice which is also not necessarily based on an antinatalist viewpoint.
Seems like these individuals were able to put rational considerations before instinct - excellent.
In what way is the human potential for random, controllable, suppressible, immoral thought an aspect of humanity that warrants antinatalism and the extinction of our species?
It is not. It reveals your appeal to "natural imperatives" as simply an act of cherry-picking.
You are choosing to ignore the fact that obtaining such consent is not possible ...
I have actually pointed that out specifically as the focal point of the dilemma.
All I'm doing is pointing out that procreation violates a common moral principle, and waiting patiently for a weighty argumentation as to why that should be ok.
You gave extinction as a reason, to which I replied:
- I am highly skeptical of individuals who profess the prolongation of the human race as their reason for procreating.
- Ends do not justify means.
You haven't really moved beyond this, and instead are seeking refuge in personal attacks.
But the antinatalist Tzeentch has just posted that he does not care about reducing human suffering so does your number 1 here apply to his/her flavour of antinatalism?
Well it wouldnt be true antinatalism then, if that's actually the case. If he doesn't care to reduce human suffering he doesn't behold an ultimate ethical principle for ending all suffering.
But if he believes all people should not reproduce that contradicts him claiming he doesn't care about reducing suffering because if people don't reproduce we go extinct and suffering cannot occur. So it would just lead back to the actual true antinatalist belief that we shouldn't exist to prevent suffering.
If he really doesn't care for reducing suffering perhaps he has let go of his antinatalist absolutism/fundamentalism and believes he deserves to exist despite the existence of suffering. Which is good as we can only fight suffering through existing, I think though that we ought to care a bit about suffering and not totally disregard it as doing so disregards ethics altogether.
I would see that this new view as an improvement on just repeatedly reiterating antinatalist idealogy in its endless contradictory cycle, but can be further improved by establishing a balance between one's worthiness to exist and an ethical imperative to minimise suffering.
In otherwords having the wisdom to acknowledge yourself as worthy and just do your best to fight suffering in a capacity that doesn't deny your own right to exist. That is harmony and balance.
It certainly seems that way but perhaps some of them do get an actual buzz out of the incredulous responses they get. Attention seekers?
I wouldnt say buzz so much as a minute "hope" that their belief is valid - the antinatalist one that is. The controversy in itself serves to validate their "hope-rock" that they're clinging to to justify their existence. As engaging in debate about it validates its worthiness of debate in the first place.
The buzz is the same buzz as all the buzzes in life that maintains our hope, ambition, satisfaction, enjoyment, a reason to like living. And so that buzz is not something we should extinguish in someone, as to take away someone else's last shred of hope is to condemn to their own self annihilation.
All we can merely offer is a change in the quality of the buzz - how someone gets their pleasure in life, a step away from something absurd/toxic/dangerous and towards something worthwhile, meaningful and wholesome.
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 13:43#7538800 likes
Yes, that is part of his central ethical argument. It's deontological, not consequential. Unnecessarily imposing on others for X reason, is wrong he is saying. Thus, obviously, imposing on many people EVEN in the hopes of preventing unnecessary impositions would by logic, also be wrong.
Oh sure, let's go Kant. I think the clue might be in his name!
A normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, rather than based on the consequences of the action, is a very poor methodology to apply to the issue of species survival and progression.
Perhaps you need to switch your methodology to one which does consider consequences and by doing so you might finally see that the natural imperative to reproduce and continue the human story is a better choice that pausing the story, returning to the beginning and starting the process again to arrive at the same point with perhaps a different sexual reproduction method such as parthenogenesis.
That's because there is no "natural imperative to reproduce" in HUMANS. We are a creature that has "reasons" that are shaped by a multitude of things, and are generally shaped by the general culture around us and simply personal preferences- anything from not wanting to miss out, to simply boredom with life, loneliness, and a host of other non-instinctual reasons.
Not true, based on the examples I have already given. If you are correct that humans do not experience a natural imperative to reproduce, then why do so many humans feel unfulfilled if they don't?
I agree it can be suppressed but you have to work at that and maintain it. If someone claims they can suppress the natural imperative to reproduce with no effort at all, with no conflict arising ever, in their mind and body then I say they are lying.
I hope the anti-life posters appreciate the olive branch you offer them.
I would just still watch who you invite into your world.
I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing really. Its very kind of you. I think that they have good reason to accept the olive branch and perhaps they do. It's hard to tell other than observing a change in their attitude and what beliefs they support and propagate.
If you fight antinatalism and suddenly they are suggesting more rational, reasonable arguments that are harder and harder for you to reason against (because they are less extreme and contradictory) then chances are you were successful in your goal, to steer them away from that vicious cyclical contradiction. You may feel defeated, but in actual fact that's only because you had a great effect - they accepted the beliefs you offered them and are now using them as their rock - a healthier one, in which to continue discourse.
You've tipped the balance back to the middle.
Given them your insights as a tool to defend themselves against the tendency to drift back towards antinatalism (depression). No longer then do you have the upper hand because you gave it away to help them.
"it's equally important to know when the fight is already won than to continue arguing beyond the point at which you already helped, for the sake of it, because you run the risk of role reversal where you yourself drift towards antinatalism.
At some point we must leave the table of argument knowing we instilled what we needed to in others, wisdom is knowing when the point was taken on-board, and you can then move onto the next crisis in need of your insights and help them out of that nosedive the same way you did previously. "
A job well done is just that - done.
You should feel proud of that fact, and move on.
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 14:36#7538930 likes
If there is no decision being made, then it is not irrational. It just "is".
Unfortunate, yes, because now individuals don't have a say in whether they reproduce, and they still have no say in whether they are born.
So, do you agree that if an intelligent species reproduced asexually then antinatalism as an option dies?
So, would the morality issue you champion. Does that not give 'nature, evolution, natural selection,' the upper hand over your morality issue? Natural selection can and has produced asexual species showing that antinatalism, as irrational as it is, is only applicable to species who reproduce through sex or through some future transhuman process. We also have the evidence that the universe has already passed the event of life creation. This, to me, makes antinatalism very unlikely to succeed even if we were imbalanced enough to all vote for it.
You are an antinatalist because you think it's immoral not to be such, as you think reproduction is an imposition on those who are born, as you did not have their consent. You choose to ignore the fact that obtaining such consent is not possible and that simply means, by default, we must not reproduce and anything that reproduces asexually now or after our extinction is just unfortunate. It that basically you position? I
Seems like these individuals were able to put rational considerations before instinct - excellent.
I agree, but we are not currently in danger of extinction due to lack of reproduction, so they are able to make such choices and overrule the natural imperative to reproduce but they may have to experience some suffering due to having to make that choice. Is it moral that the rich and powerful have more choice over reproduction that the poor? The poor used to have lots of kids as they believed the more kids you have the more chance you will be looked after when your are old. That didnt work out well either, it mostly failed. Desperate, poorly conceived solutions like antinatalism or having 20 kids will normally fail.
If you feel threatened by a philosophical discussion to the point it feels like people are imposing on you, maybe discussion forums are not for you.
Right back at you, I can confirm to you that your antinatalism is no threat to me, but it is perhaps a threat to any here who are more mentally vulnerable than I.
I have actually pointed that out specifically as the focal point of the dilemma.
All I'm doing is pointing out that procreation violates a common moral principle, and waiting patiently for a weighty argumentation as to why that should be ok.
You gave extinction as a reason, to which I replied:
- I am highly skeptical of individuals who profess the prolongation of the human race as their reason for procreating.
- Ends do not justify means.
You haven't really moved beyond this, and instead are seeking refuge in personal attacks.
Skeptical in what way? 'Ends do not justify means' is not an objective universal truth!
If I break the law and kill a killer who was planning to kill you and your loved ones.
If I killed that killer by breaking into their house and killing them before they carried out their plan to kill you then I would most likely be convicted and jailed for it. Well OK! That's the price I may have to pay under the law/rules of human morality. But perhaps many would feel that the Ends I achieved DID justify the means I employed. You and your family might indeed feel that way! Such is personally subjective, yes?
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 14:47#7538960 likes
Well it wouldnt be true antinatalism then, if that's actually the case. If he doesn't care to reduce human suffering he doesn't behold an ultimate ethical principle for ending all suffering.
I dont know if you have read through his recent posts on this page regarding his flavour of antinatalism.
It is based on a moral dilemma, not the issue of human suffering. I think his main posit is simply that it is immoral to bring a newborn into this existence without its consent and as its impossible to obtain its consent, the moral default position must be applied which MUST be, the decision not to procreate.
That's my attempt to 'steelman' his bizarre logic.
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 14:50#7538970 likes
All we can merely offer is a change in the quality of the buzz - how someone gets their pleasure in life, a step away from something absurd/toxic/dangerous and towards something worthwhile, meaningful and wholesome.
We can but try! :strong:
universenessNovember 04, 2022 at 14:58#7538990 likes
A job well done is just that - done.
You should feel proud of that fact, and move on.
I do appreciate what you are saying and I broadly agree with your advice, BUT when you are dealing with those who post in an evanhellical style then they will not desist as long as they have a platform, and we cannot remove all their platforms because that would suggest we cannot deal with them in a civilised manner and still defeat them. If the antinatalist fountain keeps spouting, then I for one will keep trying to bail out our ship. Better that, than trying to save some if we all end up in the water as I can't swim and would be too busy drowning to help save anyone else.
I do appreciate what you are saying and I broadly agree with your advice, BUT when you are dealing with those who post in an evanhellical style then they will not desist as long as they have a platform, and we cannot remove all their platforms because that would suggest we cannot deal with them in a civilised manner and still defeat them. If the antinatalist fountain keeps spouting, then I for one will keep trying to bail out our ship. Better that, than trying to save some if we all end up in the water as I can't swim and would be too busy drowning to help save anyone else
Quite right Universeness, we must continue bailing that ship. Its a noble act of you to do so.
However we must recognise the point when one stops pumping the fountain and instead picks up a bailor and bails the ship with us. For then they're on our side. We can only do our best to convince the fountainists to become bailors. The rest is up to the fates.
I dont know if you have read through his recent posts on this page regarding his flavour of antinatalism.
It is based on a moral dilemma, not the issue of human suffering. I think his main posit is simply that it is immoral to bring a newborn into this existence without its consent and as its impossible to obtain its consent, the moral default position must be applied which MUST be, the decision not to procreate.
That's my attempt to 'steelman' his bizarre logic.
2h
Well one can only say that the default to not procreate as we cannot ask the unborn if they'd like to be born is merely based on the belief that we don't think we can raise that potential child to be good and to fight suffering. If we can raise such a child then we ought to (morally speaking).
If we are sure we would create a monster instead then we ought not to (again morally speaking). It speaks to a direct reflection on one's own capacity to be good and thus train their children/teach them to do the same.
But as we cannot know for certain how our children will turn out we do take a chance by procreating. But we do know ourselves - as parents - we may be sure that we have the best intentions to do right by our children. That is usually enough to convince them (their agency) to be good because our children usually respect us as parents, as the ones that brought them into the world.
universenessNovember 05, 2022 at 09:07#7540650 likes
But as we cannot know for certain how our children will turn out we do take a chance by procreating. But we do know ourselves - as parents - we may be sure that we have the best intentions to do right by our children. That is usually enough to convince them (their agency) to be good because our children usually respect us as parents, as the ones that brought them into the world.
Yes, you summarise the moral issue quite well. But my argument regarding the moral dilemma peddled by @Tzeentch is that his issue of 'common morality' is extensively overblown by him and it does not have the force behind it that he is trying to peddle. Human morality is not as significant as the natural imperative to procreate, as a defence against extinction. The natural development of asexuality in many flora and fauna species is evidence for this, as is the fact that natural selection will maintain those aspects of a species which best equips it for survival within the environment it finds itself in, regardless of any issue of what humans label, morality. In fact, evolution through natural selection will even alter species over evolutionary time to assist a species to survive in its environment, regardless of any issue related to the human concept of morality. I think these biological facts, push the comparative human morality issue peddled by Tzeentch, towards a gnat sized concern. I think it does the same to schopenhauer1's human suffering flavour. The theistic antinatalism flavours and propositional logic conflations used by Bartricks are just too ridiculous to need much effort to combat. He can only get the fountain to slightly drip onto the deck of the ship.
One bailer could put his pail down for most of his/her life before having to take a moment to bail bartricks out of our progressive human ship.
as is the fact that natural selection will maintain those aspects of a species which best equips it for survival within the environment it finds itself in, regardless of any issue of what humans label, morality
Could natural selection not also operate on a cultural, linguistic and neurological level? I fail to see how the process is limited to biology and cannot be extended to other things like concepts, the words that represent them and the cultures that use them.
For example if a concept is useful (logical and or ethical) in explanation of something it will be used by an individual to articulate themselves (articulation being the spreading of that concept to others).
Similarly such new concepts require new words right? To condense their meaning into something useful - a short hand explanation for quicker/more efficient spreading of the information.
For example: Instead of saying "we should like totally be friends with that four legged animal that seems pretty nice and does stuff for us in return for food" we can just call it a "dog" and refer to it as "man's best friend". The information is the same, the number of words is condensed.
Languages evolve out of usefulness. Slang and tech words are the new most useful terms accepted to describe ideas and that's why they gain popularity.
I can now "Google it". It's now a verb in the dictionary. Instead of before where I had to say "I can now search for the information using the digital world wide network". A mouthful for sure.
universenessNovember 05, 2022 at 10:09#7540800 likes
Reply to Benj96
There is clear space between natural selection (no intent) and human selection (intent).
Human selection is directly responsible for the evolutionary direction of almost every dog/cat/domesticated animal species alive today. This is also true for many flora/plant species.
I think you are referring to human selection rather than any aspect of natural selection.
I think you are referring to human selection rather than any aspect of natural selection.
In that sense you outlined, yes I'm referring to human selection. However humans are natural - born of nature itself. At what point does natural selection convert into human selection? And how arbitrary or definitive is this boundary?
I suppose based on your distinction of "intent" and "no intent" you're referring to "choice" which pertains to agents/that which is conscious.
So the difference then between natural selection and human selection would be the emergence of conscious agents with intent right?
Does that mean then that humans are the only conscious agents with intent? Or is it perhaps a continuum graduating stepwise from a system with no agency or choice towards one that does have agency and control. And where would other animals, plants and life fall on this continuum of emergent "intent"?
universenessNovember 05, 2022 at 10:36#7540870 likes
In that sense yes in referring to human selection. However humans are natural - born of nature itself. At what point does natural selection convert into human selection?
Natural selection still affects humans, humans continue to evolve related to their environment, but human science will have a far more significant effect and far faster effect on human physiology/biology than evolution through natural selection. So human intent via human science creates human selection but it does not replace evolution and natural selection, that will continue until universal entropy, returns the Universe to nothing but energy.
I suppose based on your distinction of "intent" and "no intent" you're referring to "choice" which pertains to agents/that which is conscious. So the difference then between natural selection and human selection would be the emergence of conscious agents with intent right?
Yes, but I think it's more important here, to use a concept of intent, akin to 'the imposition of an individual or group human will.'
Does that mean then that humans are the only conscious agents with intent? Or is it perhaps a continuum graduating stepwise from a system with no agency or choice towards one that does have agency and control. And where would other animals, plants and life fall on this continuum of emergent "intent"?
No, I think many animals demonstrate intent. Even instinct can have an aspect of intent imo.
We don't know if extra-terrestrial intelligent life exists, if it does, then we are not even the only conscious agents with intent at our level of intellect. So, absolutely yes, there is a gradation or range of ability to demonstrate and impose intent, within all living entities.
Down The Rabbit HoleNovember 05, 2022 at 11:15#7540930 likes
Why do you think so many people work so hard to alleviate suffering? Such as the whole medical profession and those involved in medical research and why do you think so many people get involved in protest, political movements, philosophy, debate about how we might live better lives? Is it not to reduce the number of lives of unbearable suffering?
It would be science as opposed to antinatalism that beats lives of unbearable suffering. Although this is likely to take hundreds of years.
I wouldn't say people get involved in politics etc with the goal of reducing the number of lives of unbearable suffering. Many people have other goals that take precedence, and there are those that take a deontological approach, preferring personal freedom etc, despite the consequences. Look at America electing Trump, and Brits voting overwhelmingly for the Tories who cut the NHS killing tens of thousands in only a few years, according to the Royal Society of Medicine.
I wouldn't say people get involved in politics etc with the goal of reducing the number of lives of unbearable suffering.
Martin Luther King got involved in politics, to reduce or stop minority groups living lives of unbearable suffering, due to racism and a lack of human/civil rights.
Gandhi got involved in politics to free the people in his subjugated nation from the unbearable suffering being imposed apon them, due to British imperialism.
I could cite many more examples.
Many people have other goals that take precedence, and there are those that take a deontological approach, preferring personal freedom etc, despite the consequences. Look at America electing Trump, and Brits voting overwhelmingly for the Tories who cut the NHS killing tens of thousands in only a few years, according to the Royal Society of Medicine.
I broadly agree, but the people you describe above are the ones I continue to combat, by trying to convince their supporters, through reasoned debate/dialogue/discourse, to stop supporting such nefarious, narcissistic and in some examples, evil people who peddle evil policies and evil ideas, which in political examples, have the hidden agenda of gaining new or maintaining the current wealth and power of the nefarious few.
Agent SmithNovember 05, 2022 at 15:47#7541510 likes
@schopenhauer1, do you really think it's the pain/the anguish/the suffering/the agony (dukkha) that's our enemy #1?
schopenhauer1November 05, 2022 at 15:51#7541530 likes
do you think it's really the pain/the anguish/the suffering/the agony (dukkha) that's our enemy #1?
I think yes, there is an inherent kind suffering (like dukkha) that is very much the heart of the whole enterprise of life. There is a sort of lack-of-something that motivates. The goal (trick) of societies is to try to harness this motivation for "productive" purposes. I simply see it as not "being" and succumbing to becoming. We can't help it. It is self-aware angst, projected as "reasons" in the name of survival, comfort, and entertainment.
Agent SmithNovember 05, 2022 at 16:05#7541550 likes
In that case, on what grounds are you judging the argument 'fair'? What would an unfair argument look like in this context?
That is a good question. How can we judge an argument, when there can be no correct answer.
For one, I would say ability to convince. I don't know how far you would agree on this point, but in my view the vast majority of people don't consider the philosophy of procreation, and having and raising kids is so engrained in society it would take some serious persuasion to remove their status quo bias. However, if presented with the question within The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a fair number of people would opt to walk away. It feels wrong to them that people's happiness is contingent on others suffering. In the context I was using fair, unfair wouldn't make a lot of sense as an antonym, but would mean not fairly convincing.
Yeah, I think all that is true, but there's a third option which I think is more significant, which is those who see the world as a bad place and see children as means of fixing that - ie ensuring there's a next generation, better than the last, to help those who still remain to live more pleasant lives.
Contrary to the archetypal antinatalist, we're not all selfish sociopaths. It's not always about me, me, me sometimes people spare a thought for their community as a whole and consider themselves (and others) to have a duty toward it.
Yes, that's a third option. A factual case that procreation is a better way to cut down on suffering than antinatalism. This is different to the other two in that there is a right and wrong answer to it.
Agent SmithNovember 05, 2022 at 17:19#7541850 likes
Don't want to get @schopenhauer1 banned but their posts helped encourage me to join. I was already familiar with the literature but didn't know the topic was so widely discussed.
Agent SmithNovember 06, 2022 at 01:35#7542640 likes
Don't want to get schopenhauer1 banned but their posts helped encourage me to join. I was already familiar with the literature but didn't know the topic was so widely discussed.
Quite the opposite for me - I know the topic's widely discussed (at least on this forum) but I didn't know so much work had been done on it!
... in my view the vast majority of people don't consider the philosophy of procreation, and having and raising kids is so engrained in society it would take some serious persuasion to remove their status quo bias.
I agree with this point, and I was hoping that by pointing out some of the moral dilemmas associated with procreation I could coax some of this philosophy out of the its defenders, but I've gotten little in the way of that.
here is a sort of lack-of-something that motivates.
A lack of perfection perhaps (whatever that entails for the individual), motivated by a need to improve circumstances from the imperfect towards to perfect, addressing flaws - in science, in philosophical thinking, in politics, economics etc one by one as they arise?
We can't help it. It is self-aware angst, projected as "reasons" in the name of survival, comfort, and entertainment.
There is always angst to survival I think. Very apt/poignant of you to point out. We have instincts - built in searching and evaluation of threats to our survival, "critical thinking" in a sense. Perhaps this is what society takes advantage of, to pursue improvement as a collective, each having a role in maintaining the stability of society.
What angst we cannot ameliorate through productivity in society we project/invest into entertainment. A sort of escapism so it were, to entertain catastrophe and the ongoing battle against adversity conceptually through media: film, literature, music, art etc it's an outlet for personal angst.
That being said, I think we are doing an alright job, we have the institutions in place to combat existential angst and each one is usually undergoing constant revision, ammendments and improvement.
It may not be perfect, far from it, but it certainly is motoring on towards a slow steady progress towards a future idealised as getter than the past we came from.
schopenhauer1November 06, 2022 at 16:00#7543940 likes
A lack of perfection perhaps (whatever that entails for the individual), motivated by a need to improve circumstances from the imperfect towards to perfect, addressing flaws - in science, in philosophical thinking, in politics, economics etc one by one as they arise?
Nah man, it doesn't go away. That is the point of the perennialism of Schopenhauer. it's a reason he was very opposed to Hegel's upward spiral notion.
There is always angst to survival I think. Very apt/poignant of you to point out. We have instincts - built in searching and evaluation of threats to our survival, "critical thinking" in a sense. Perhaps this is what society takes advantage of, to pursue improvement as a collective, each having a role in maintaining the stability of society.
It starts with two people who decide on behalf of someone else, that a new person needs to deal with the world and deal with survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment. They are creating another source of angst, in other words. The social institutions are like a pyramid scheme.. It can't be gotten rid of or changed easily as it's all the society has to allow the forced contestants to survive, find comfort, and entertainment.
What angst we cannot ameliorate through productivity in society we project/invest into entertainment. A sort of escapism so it were, to entertain catastrophe and the ongoing battle against adversity conceptually through media: film, literature, music, art etc it's an outlet for personal angst.
People used to call some of that sublimation. But basically I consider entertainment anything that isn't survival or comfort seeking. Meditation and reading philosophy for pleasure can be entertainment. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's something you are doing outside of working to survive or finding ways to get more comfortable with your environment.
That being said, I think we are doing an alright job, we have the institutions in place to combat existential angst and each one is usually undergoing constant revision, ammendments and improvement.
But YOUR preference for X institutions shouldn't become someone else's burden to bear, simply because YOU think this is the case.
It may not be perfect, far from it, but it certainly is motoring on towards a slow steady progress towards a future idealised as getter than the past we came from.
We are far from a utopia. Rather, we are a mediocre universe doing mediocre things. The main problem is we keep putting more contestants in the game, and thinking we are doing them a favor. It's just starting yet another game on behalf of someone else, because YOU like something. I never heard of something where MY preference requires OTHERS to be forced into a game that cannot be changed. Where MY preference for what choices are meaningful or good (e.g. working to survive apparently people must love because they keep putting more laboring units into the workforce and shoving the drivel that work is meaningful so don't despair) are what OTHER people should experience.. Somehow the limited choices that life offers of survival and comfort, somehow the intendant harms of existing are what OTHERS should experience. OR, guess what they can do if they don't like it? You know (kill themselves!)...Real gaslighting if you ask me.
. I never heard of something where MY preference requires OTHERS to be forced into a game that cannot be changed.
This is where our agreement departs. We are assuming the rules of such a game are fixed. Those rules being that the game cannot be changed, we must then flounder helplessly, and we must suffer/be of inherent angst thus. I think any game player can change the status quo if they want to. Not an easy pursuit by any means but a possible one.
Otherwise why bother with politics or accruing any power whatsoever - If that power cannot change circumstances in any meaningful way?
It's equivalent to outlining a game where the rigid/fixed rules are "the climate will change to such a point where earth will be uninhabitable and you will all die".
Naturally a player will ask "well in such a game is it possible to navigate away from climate doom". If the answer is "No" then the game is pretty pointless isn't it?
Except that is not the game we play in real life. The rules are changeable en masse. Science tells us "here is the path away from these rules and towards a new set of more optimistic ones where the game-play can continue".
Any sensible game player would opt for that path.
So the actual rules of the gameplay of humanity are not as rigid as you believe. Just as the gameplay was previously changed from combating infectious diseases without antibiotics/vaccines to one where they are permissable in the game.
Fundamentally it reduces to pessimism vs. Optimism. You're free to choose which game format you choose. But you're not allowed to choose on behalf of other players.
schopenhauer1November 06, 2022 at 16:27#7544000 likes
This is where our agreement departs. We are assuming the rules of such a game are fixed. Those rules being that the game cannot be changed, we must then flounder helplessly, a
I CANNOT in good conscience FORCE you to start a game because I think there is some chance you can change the rules (which is extremely hard), and this doesn't address the point that the rules are already in place, and they are simply ACCEPTED (or kill yourself.. a shitty bargain).
I think any game player can change the status quo if they want to. Not an easy pursuit by any means but a possible one
Not good enough to FORCE OTHERS into a game because YOU like it.. Still not fair. Not just. Not right. Etc. I realize that isn't how people understand things because they never had it framed that way. Re-framing perhaps is most what I am after. Perhaps that's what @Down The Rabbit Hole found intriguing.
Naturally a player will ask "well in such a game is it possible to navigate away from climate doom". If the answer is "Np" then the game is pretty pointless isn't it?
I'm not talking about climate change or things such as that, though it is an example of a greater understanding that there are only a LIMITED amount of choices this universe allows for the human. The parent thinks that these choices are "good" and thus must be lived out by yet another person as well. That's what I am speaking to.
So the actual rules of the gameplay of humanity are not as rigid as you believe. Just as the gameplay was previously changed from combating infectious diseases without antibiotics/vaccines to one where they are permissible in the game.
Fundamentally it reduces to pessimism vs. Optimism. You're free to choose which game format you choose. But you're not allowed to choose on behalf of other players.
Yeah, I am not talking about the onward march of scientific phenomena.
Not good enough to FORCE OTHERS into a game because YOU like it.. Still not fair. Not just. Not right. Etc. I realize that isn't how people understand things because they never had it framed that way. Re-framing perhaps is most what I am after. Perhaps that's what Down The Rabbit Hole found intriguing.
What if I force someone into a game that they enjoy? They have a great time and vibe despite the fact I gave them no choice but to play? What would you say then?
What harm was done when they turn around and say "so I know you forced me into this game without my consent but I'm actually really glad you did as I didn't realise how much I would enjoy it, so thank you for taking that initial decision for me."
What if I force someone into a game that they enjoy?
The best you'll get out of this line of argument is something along the lines of "There's a higher chance that they'll enjoy it than that they will not enjoy it," and ultimately amounts to little more than playing a gamble with someone else's life.
If you believe that's a sufficient justification for procreation, then have at it.
The problem with this argument in my opinion, is that the parents do not have any knowledge of what they're about to impose. The life of a new person is a complete unknown. Nor do they have much influence over the outcome - that is determined by many other factors than the parents' goodwill and expertise.
The best you'll get out of this line of argument is something along the lines of "There's a higher chance that they'll enjoy it than that they will not enjoy it," and ultimately amounts to little more than playing a gamble with someone else's life.
No it doesn't. I just outlined the conditions. Person A forced person B into existence and they happened to love it and be grateful to person A for forcing them to participate.
With respect to those exact conditions what would you say?
Instead of re-writing it to a position in time when person A hasn't yet forced B to participate as I clearly did not outline. Its not a speculation or gamble when it has already happened.
So ill repeat myself, in the case that we assume person A has already committed person B to existing. And person B LOVES IT. And is happy, and grateful for being born. (as is the case currently with many parent child dynamics)
In that case... What argument do you have exactly?
What if I force someone into a game that they enjoy? They have a great time and vibe despite the fact I gave them no choice but to play? What would you say then?
A good state of affairs, but the result of a bad moral choice.
This.
But I have some more to add, and I'm wondering what Tzeentch thinks of these ideas.
First off, I think that life is way more nuanced than the binary "Good life, bad life". It is much more analog than digital. The problem is a "gift" as you are implying here about life, is not a gift if it comes with burdens one would have not asked for or wanted. If I gave you a "gift" that lasted a lifetime, you could not get rid of unless you kill yourself, is pervasive, and has many burdensome impositions that you would have not wanted, BUT it comes with some good stuff too.. You have every right to say that this is not a gift, this is an imposition DESPITE any good aspects that go along with it. Again, just because I like a game, doesn't mean OTHERS must play it and like it too. Liking it "enough" isn't an EXCUSE to go ahead and force others to play it. It was NOT NECESSARY to start yet another contestant.
You would only have a point if the life you are starting is perfectly aligned with what the contestant wanted.. it was easy to move to a different option if you didn't like the game, etc. That is not the case.. It is comply with the already set-up universe we have (go to work to survive, go homeless, live off others, consume, find entertainment, find relationships, etc.) or kill yourself.
So my point is saying that the game is "good enough" is not enough reason to go ahead and impose on others because YOU deem it to be good enough. It is the disconnect between what you like and what others SHOULD like. Do not PRESUME for others regarding an inescapable imposition. That is aggressively paternalistic.
If anything about my posts on Pessimism, they are to reveal what are pervasive and intractable negatives that go along with life. You can look back on any of my previous posts on the matter. Overlooking this with a simple line of "But what if they say life is good!" is wishful folly that doesn't take into account the full story. One does not have a right to impose such significant things on another. One is perpetuating suffering needlessly for another. Saying that life is a statistical phenomena of degrees of good and bad doesn't negate that there are negative aspects to life that are not what people would have wanted and are entailed with life. It is not unnecessarily starting THESE negatives for another that is the problem. This is what is being overlooked.
It is now up to the "pronatalists" to argue why procreation is a special case that deserves special logic.
There is no 'special case of logic' involved or required, that's just another fake claim you make.
Life was formed in the universe without intent and without any 'permission' or 'consent.' This was the original natural happenstance. Evolution and natural selection has demonstrated the reproduction system as the means by which a species may continue to exist whether or not that reproduction is asexual or sexual.
These systems were established, regardless of any aspect of human morality. Antinatalists may make as many appeals to their own conflated notions of human morality as they like. You are the ones making special pleads to a logic that is only valid in your own heads.
I am not a pronatalist, I don't think such a term has much important meaning behind it. Any intelligent person understands the danger of over population. I am pro species survival. I am for continuing the human species, as I know that we give a significance and purpose to the universe that it would not have if we (or our like,) did not exist. A significance which is so fundamental to the universe that it would be ever recreated by means of evolution, if events caused a return to a lifeless universal phase.
It is now up to the antinatalists to prove that their suggested solution would work and to also prove that humans are incapable of reducing human suffering to an acceptable level, no matter how much time they have to increase their knowledge of the structure and workings of the universe and their tech.
I don't care about antinatalists who use such words as 'that's not good enough.' My answer to such is the same one as I would give a child, constantly pestering for more candy.
'Well, that's all you're getting for now, you will just have to wait under we have more knowledge and better tech.'
Person B dodged a bullet, because person A took a gamble with B's life and it happened to turn out ok.
A good state of affairs, but the result of a bad moral choice.
Who says they dodged a bullet? This assumes person B is completely vulnerable and helpless in the world. And person A is equally vulnerable and helpless and inept at parenting.
But actually they have a great father/mother (Person A) one that protects them when they're infants, teaches them to be wise as they grow up, gives them exceptional tools to combat adversity and call out the BS of people trying to make them suffer (perhaps those suggesting they ought to die or never have children) and instills in them a sense of pride at being able to fend for themselves, to be independent, masters of navigating a world of suffering without allowing it to impact their happiness, their purpose being a moral one - teach others to do as their own parents did for them.
This person B:
1). Doesn't blame/despise their parents for creating them, doesn't see themselves as the victim of some horrible "forced" thing.
2).Experienced just enough suffering to know what it is and by contrast what happiness is. To learn a valuable lesson.
3). Were given the tools by their parent to maximise the stability of their own happiness/find fulfilment in life.
4). Cannot be made feel ashamed or guilty for living by others because the fulfillment they found was helping others mitigate their own suffering. Their intention is to reduce the suffering of others so they can polite ignore any attempt of someone to punish them for that as that woukd be irrational. Why should someone suffering punish someone who clearly demonstrates the skills to be happy and the willingness to show how its done?
That...... is why Person A didn't gamble with Person Bs life.
They knew they were good people (wise, kind, resourceful etc - many a virtue) , thus knew they would be good parents (applying those virtues/skills) and thus knew they would be able to raise good children (despite experience disagreements, arguments and a bit of suffering in the learning curve of growing up, they turned out as their parents did - grateful, appreciative and accepting of those skills passed down to them).
These systems were established, regardless of any aspect of human morality.
This won't do.
There are many behaviors that have existed prior to notions of morality, and many of such behaviors are universally regarded as immoral now, regardless of their prior existence.
You are the ones making special pleads to a logic that is only valid in your own heads.
"Don't impose (unless there are pressing reasons to do so)," is a common, almost universal moral principle.
You may claim this is not a moral principle, and that imposing is perfectly fine. Probably you realise that would lead you down a slippery slope. So what you have left is explaining why there is a pressing reason to impose in this particular instance - special pleading.
It's the procreators who are behaving inconsistently.
Why? It's not something you have power over, nor have a stake in. Whether the human race survives for another thousand years or another hundred thousand, you won't be around to witness it.
Besides, do you expect me to believe there is even a single person on this globe that procreates not for the simple reason that they want to have children, but because they so selflessly care about the survival of the human race?
But actually they have a great father/mother (Person A) one that protects them when they're infants, teaches them to be wise as they grow up, gives them exceptional tools to combat adversity and call out the BS of people trying to make them suffer (perhaps those suggesting they ought to die or never have children) and instills in them a sense of pride at being able to fend for themselves, to be independent, masters of navigating a world of suffering without allowing it to impact their happiness, their purpose being a moral one - teach others to do as their own parents did for them.
Whether someone has a great or terrible life is not solely a product of parenting. It's also a product of the environment, and a good amount of luck. There are many things the parents have no influence over, thus it is still a gamble, no matter how capable and well-intentioned the parents are.
If you believe that's a sufficient justification for procreation, then have at it.
I do. I believe in myself as a caretaker. I had very good parents to teach me how.
The only possible reason I can imagine for an anitnatalist ideology is that the person who holds it - just hates life. Simple as.
The idealogy is literally about desire to not procreate/self annihilation/end of humanity and everything that comes with it.
Just an abject denial that joy can ever be more suffering in one's life.
And if antinatalist logic is perfectly sound from your point of view and the other is nonsense. And if our (pronatalist) logic is perfectly sound from our point of view and the other is nonsense.
I guess pronatalists still win. Because we have the opportunity to do whatever we want in life, a diversity of things and feel good about it so long as we have the intention to improve things/help sufferers. While antinatalists are reduced to only one thing - begging everyone to stop living because its so pointless and worthless and awful. Torturing themselves and attempting to (and failing) to torture the rest of society which literally would never ever commit a mass suicide or sterilisation.
Whether someone has a great or terrible life is not solely a product of parenting. It's also a product of the environment, and a good amount of luck. There are many things the parents have no influence over, thus it is still a gamble, no matter how capable and well-intentioned the parents are
All down to a lack of potency. Lack of intelligence/wisdom/resourcefulness/lack of initiative/lack of creativity etc etc.
Put a parent and their child in the worst environment you can think of - famine, war, poverty etc and if that parent is extremely strong willed/intelligent/resourceful etc (all part of what it means to be "Good" (virtuous/highly adaptable/skilled etc), all the things opposite of what's outlined above...
... And I guarantee you they will turn a bad situation around. Whether that means escaping it spatially, moving to a better location with better lifestyle (refugees), hitting the problem head on (leadership, local politics, for example ghandi liberating India from oppression), or engineering a solution (all the very resourceful inventors eg.tesla many of which I'm sure were parents also.)
You just don't get it. You don't see the big picture. Luck exists for people who don't now how to make it themselves.
It's not random that some people seem to make the world happen for them.
Its not random that some people start with nothing and become successful and happy and have a family.
Bad environments only exist for those that are complacent and accept it as it is instead of finding a way, any way, to improve it. All of these things are excuses.
Take the excuses away, as a good parent is driven to do in order to protect the ones they love - their children, and you remove the whole basis for this pointless, floundering helpless, victim revolving antinatalist idealogy.
Just get on with it. Every other adult has to roll up their sleeves and work hard to make a good life for their family and friends. No one said combating suffering was a walk in the park but it's certainly worth the effort.
I've said what I have to say on the matter of antinatalism. You're free to disassemble and pick away at any and all parts of my argument if that's what you feel is going to get you places. In the meantime, I'll be vibing, and loving life with my friends and family and colleagues. Let us know if you fancy joining.
Happy to lend a hand if it's accepted (ie if you actually take on board and accept that maybe my points are valid and move away from antinatalism and towards the infinitely more interesting and useful discussions, otherwise, good luck with it I guess).
I won't ever agree with someone that wants me and my family and the rest the world dead. Simples :)
Put a parent and their child in the worst environment you can think of - famine, war, poverty etc and if that parent is extremely strong willed/intelligent/resourceful etc (all part of what it means to be "Good" (virtuous/highly adaptable/skilled etc), all the things opposite of what's outlined above...
... And I guarantee you they will turn a bad situation around.
You can't make such a guarantee, and while I like the positive outlook, it is not rational.
I'm glad I'm wrong then and you finally accept we are on the same side and both don't hate life. You made a good choice to re-evaluate and depart from the extreme.
It's not an ideology - at least not for me. It's about observing an inconsistency in human behavior and asking for an explanation.
Great again! Glad youre no longer fundamentalist and don't see it as an ideology but rather prefer to be open minded and discuss what issues we ought to, to clear up these inconsistencies. It's prudent to formulate an explanation to navigate such inconsistencies in a productive/constructive manner.
You can't make such a guarantee, and while I like the positive outlook, it is not rational.
I like my positive outlook too. I believe in it so it's rational for me. Just as everyone's personal concept of rationality is based on the beliefs they hold to be true.
Welcome back Tzeentech :)
Glad youre no longer fundamentalist and don't see it as an ideology but rather prefer to be open minded and discuss what issues we ought to discuss to clear up these inconsistencies.
I'm not sure what you think I've been doing this whole time.
and feel good about it so long as we have the intention to improve things/help sufferers
You cannot just do anything in the name above. Having "good intentions" isn't license to do what you want to someone else. You probably know this though.
Imagine my defense being "good intentions" to do any X act that causes someone else an imposition of harms and limitations.
When did I say do "anything? "
In case you weren't aware, helping someone out of suffering is a mutual effort. It takes both the hand offered and the hand accepted.
It takes agreement. Not force.
If someone decides they don't want anyone's help they just want to be miserable alone. There's not much we can do for them is there?
As I said, helping is a two-person dynamic. I can't help or reason with a wall so there is no imposition of anything. It's either ignored, actively told to go way, or accepted.
So yes "intention" is a license to approach someone you think is in need of assistance. If they tell you to leave them be, you leave them be. If theyre willing to discuss, you discuss, if they're will to agree on a course of action, you agree on a course of action.
That is a harmless process respecting their autonomy. You seem to obsess over the idea of "imposition".
And no you can't "impose" on a non existent potential that currently reside in your left nut. They have no personhood, no human rights, and no say in being born.
None of us ever had a say in being born, some of us were born intentionally and some by accident,
And some of us like the fact that we were.
That's how life works. Don't ask me ask mother nature.
universenessNovember 07, 2022 at 14:54#7547140 likes
This won't do.
There are many behaviors that have existed prior to notions of morality, and many of such behaviors are universally regarded as immoral now, regardless of their prior existence.
I have already asked you this before. Do you consider a universe without intent to start life but life started through happenstance to be immoral? If your answer is yes, then you are suggesting the universe had intent, as intent is a fundamental aspect of morality. If your answer is no, then you accept that this happenstance is beyond the jurisdiction of any notion of human morality. It is therefore way beyond YOUR mere opinion that 'this won't do.'
"Don't impose (unless there are pressing reasons to do so)," is a common, almost universal moral principle.
You may claim this is not a moral principle, and that imposing is perfectly fine. Probably you realise that would lead you down a slippery slope. So what you have left is explaining why there is a pressing reason to impose in this particular instance - special pleading.
It's the procreators who are behaving inconsistently.
A universal 'don't impose' is an illogical and unsustainable edict in human reality. Benevolent imposition is moral in the human world, such as preventing someone from fighting or imposing to break up a fight. If you would stand by and watch then, imo, YOU are immoral.
Imposition, which is immoral, can only be judged based on established moral guidelines, and by those involved on a case-by-case basis. I might impose suffering to remove an impaled limb to free a person, depending on the situation. I may have children to continue the experience of life and living. YOU have no right or power to judge me immoral as such a judgement would itself be immoral as you are not supported by any universal fact, BUT I AM, the fact that life started in this universe WITHOUT ANY PERMISSION OR CONSENT. You are the inconsistent special pleader with no answer to the natural happenstance of life creation. IT ALREADY HAPPENED.
I am pro species survival.
universeness
Why? It's not something you have power over, nor have a stake in. Whether the human race survives for another thousand years or another hundred thousand, you won't be around to witness it.
Besides, do you expect me to believe there is even a single person on this globe that procreates not for the simple reason that they want to have children, but because they so selflessly care about the survival of the human race?
I do have power over the survival of my species, we all do, as we can reproduce! That's the whole point!
I don't need to be around to witness it, my like being around to witness it, is absolutely good enough for me. Only a narcissist or sociopath would deny life a future just because they themselves must die and enter oblivion. Yes, everyday people do exactly that, as the 'want to have children' IS an act which results in the survival of the human race, regardless of the fact that you are unable to grasp the connection.
I'm not suggesting any solution. I'm pointing out an inconsistency in your behavior and asking for an explanation
Why are you preaching antinatalism then? As a solution to what? You claim you have identified a moral crisis and you then suggest that you are not suggesting any solution, so why are you pushing the antinatalist nonsense? I have explained my position to you quite clearly, its simply you who (panto style), claims I have not. So, to reflect back to you in equal panto style, your position on antinatalism is the position that 'just won't do.'
universenessNovember 07, 2022 at 14:58#7547150 likes
It is therefore way beyond YOUR mere opinion that 'this won't do.'
It's a matter of rational scrutiny - to demand a consistent argument from someone who chooses to impose on others. You've failed to provide that, and that's why it won't do.
Yes, everyday people do exactly that as the 'want to have children' IS an act which results in the survival of the human race, regardless of the fact that you are unable to grasp the connection.
And it's irrational for the reasons I've already given you, and I won't accept irrational reasoning as a moral basis for imposition.
It's a matter of rational scrutiny - to demand a consistent argument from someone who chooses to impose on others. You've failed to provide that, and that's why it won't do.
I accept your opinion that I have failed to provide such for you, and I have so far been unable to wipe the antinatalism fog from your mind. You claim it is due to the fact that my points towards you are inconsistent but you have not demosntrated where that inconsistency exists. I have consistently made the same points to you.
1. The natural imperative of reproduction as a method of species survival.
2. Life started in the universe without intent, consent or permission and therefore is immune to any human constructed moral crisis you may personally be having.
3. Evolution through natural selection is still happening and still has no intent and seeks no permission or consent from humans to do what it does.
4. Humans have intent and intelligence and can alleviate, reduce and possibly even remove all forms of human suffering.
These are some of my consistent points, where is this inconsistency you are complaining about.
I accept you dont find my 4 points above compelling reasons for you to abandon your antinatalist stance but hey ho, such is life. Some folks just prefer their misery to finding the strength to join us optimists.
Or they just can't conquer their pride! They can't admit they have been so wrong for so long.
Once again, I don't see any explaining going on here.
Why don't you start with coming up for a logically consistent argument as to why imposing is acceptable in this case?
I already have.
1. Life happened (was imposed if you prefer).
2. Some life became intelligent life.
3. Intelligent life is able to ask questions.
4. To understand the what, how and why of the universe, life that is self-aware and has intent and can ask questions is necessary.
5. The survival of such intent and ability to ask questions and discover answers is necessary.
6. A universe with no life has no purpose.
7. IF you accept 1 to 6 then imposing life on the universe is moral, If you don't accept 1 to 6 then you are probably an antinatalist who bizarrely does not wish to be an existent who can choose to label themselves an antinatalist. Antinatalism is self-defeating in every way you posit it.
I'm not preaching anything. I'm pointing out your inconsistency and waiting for an explanation.
You are not an honest interlocuter. You have preached antinatalism, as you have stated that it's the only logical solution to the 'common moral dilemma,' of immoral imposition through procreation. It's preaching because you have no evidence. My evidence starts with the fact that LIFE HAPPENED in this universe and that happenstance CANNOT be logically judged as immoral. Where is this inconsistency you claim is forcing you to 'wait for an explanation?'
You are simply refusing to accept any explanation you are offered in the same way a convinced theist will never accept there is no god or supernatural woo woo.
universenessNovember 07, 2022 at 15:51#7547280 likes
Reply to Tzeentch
Do you think a tsunami, or an earthquake is an immoral imposition?
2. Life started in the universe without intent, consent or permission and therefore is immune to any human contracted moral crisis you may personally be having.
Unless you wish to reject morality altogether, this is more nonsense.
If you do wish to reject morality, then what are you doing in a thread that's unmistakenly about a moral question?
My evidence starts with the fact that LIFE HAPPENED in this universe and that happenstance CANNOT be logically judged as immoral.
The choices of moral agents can be judged, which is what we're doing right here.
I'm getting the sense that you have some rather subjective views about man's purpose in the universe, and are willing to resort to imposition to press gang new people into this project - an "ends justify the means" type argument and a common moral pitfall.
Unless you wish to reject morality altogether, this is more nonsense.
If you do wish to reject morality, then what are you doing in a thread that's unmistakenly about a moral question?
You think in extremes! Why would I have to reject morality altogether? What utter nonsense!
I typed the word intent YOU decided that was synonomous with the term 'good intentions.' You further evidence your tendency to invent and attempt to misrepresent and misdirect when you are frustrated that you have no valid response.
The choices of moral agents can be judged, which is what we're doing right here.
I'm getting the sense that you have some rather subjective views about man's purpose in the universe, and are willing to resort to imposition to press gang new people into this project - an "ends justify the means" type argument and a common moral pitfall.
If you are living a purposeless life and have no sense of purpose in your life, then you have reaped what you sowed. If you believe that life and lifeforms have no purpose then you are left with time as your enemy and oblivion as your saviour. How sad. If you do have purpose in your life, then you are contradicting your own words that suggest you believe HUmans have no purpose in this universe.
universenessNovember 07, 2022 at 17:46#7547680 likes
Based on common understanding of human psychology.
But since you're the one claiming humans reproduce not out of personal motivations but some selfless act for the survival of mankind the burden of proof is on you.
If you are living a purposeless life and have no sense of purpose in your life, then you have reaped what you sowed. If you believe that life and lifeforms have no purpose then you are left with time as your enemy and oblivion as your saviour. How sad. If you do have purpose in your life, then you are contradicting your own words that suggest you believe HUmans have no purpose in this universe.
A thinly-veiled attempt at a personal attack, and not remotely related to what I said.
universenessNovember 08, 2022 at 11:59#7549730 likes
Based on common understanding of human psychology.
But since you're the one claiming humans reproduce not out of personal motivations but some selfless act for the survival of mankind the burden of proof is on you.
You are the one preaching antinatalism as a solution to your conflated moral issue, so the burden of proof is yours. I did not suggest that a couple looks into each other's eyes and discuss having children to ensure that the human race survives but they do exchange such comments as 'It would be great to have something that is of me and you that will carry on the bloodlines.' Especially in amongst the rich dynastic families or in the families of celebrity etc. But it happens in almost every family. It is the concept of legacy which just seems unable to penetrate through your fog. Even though the historical evidence for it is irrefutable. This is synonymous with the idea of reproducing to ensure the survival of the species as the end result of the compulsion to pass on legacy has the exact same result.
If you are living a purposeless life and have no sense of purpose in your life, then you have reaped what you sowed. If you believe that life and lifeforms have no purpose then you are left with time as your enemy and oblivion as your saviour. How sad. If you do have purpose in your life, then you are contradicting your own words that suggest you believe HUmans have no purpose in this universe.
universeness
A thinly-veiled attempt at a personal attack, and not remotely related to what I said.
But the point is that the origin of the reproduction choice a human has, had no inherent intent, so any moral question you impose based on the existence of that choice is a purely human construct and has no natural imperative.
You sought to dismiss my moral dilemma on the basis that the choice is purely a human construct.
All morality is a human construct.
So you're either consistent and dismiss morality altogether, or start cherry-picking (which is what you're doing) and are inconsistent, ergo a hypocrite.
No, I call it out for what it is: irrational ego-driven vanity.
You won't have a leg to stand on if your argument doesn't involve the well-being of the person you just forced to participate in your project, so I would suggest starting there.
universenessNovember 08, 2022 at 15:51#7550280 likes
You sought to dismiss my moral dilemma on the basis that the choice is purely a human construct.
All morality is a human construct.
So you're either consistent and dismiss morality altogether, or start cherry-picking (which is what you're doing) and are inconsistent, ergo a hypocrite.
Fogged logic. My main point is that life started in the universe without consent or permission and that is the evidence that defeats your moral dilemma. It has no relevance to the existence of life in this universe or its continuation.
No, I call it out for what it is: irrational ego-driven vanity.
You won't have a leg to stand on if your argument doesn't involve the well-being of the person you just forced to participate in your project, so I would suggest starting there.
So, was the moment life formed in the universe immoral? Is an earthquake or a tsunami or a rainbow immoral according to your logic? I would suggest you start there and then move towards the well-being and sustaining of the life which arrived in the universe regardless of permission or consent from any source.
And you don't seem to understand what a proponent of the problem of evil believes either.
You're right, I don't understand much of what you're saying. I'm trying, but there are many things which are not making sense to me.
Let's start with the definition of The Problem of Evil - I'm going to echo back to you in my own words what I think you're saying. You can tell me if I'm understanding you or not.
Here is your original: Imagine there is an omnipotent, omniscient, person.
and here is how I would phrase this: Imagine there is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being. [OOO-Being]
Omnibenevolent was not in your original OP, I think we both agree that your argument requires this - otherwise the "person" could be evil. I also prefer using the word "being" to "person, your use of the word "person" is far afield of any other definition I know of. And I can't imagine any proponent of the problem of evil using the word "person" - they would use the word "God". I don't think this alters what you're saying, but if "person" is essential to your argument, then I need some more details to understand it.
Otherwise, for purposes of this particular discussion I am assuming that the definition/concept of an OOP Being is well formed and makes sense.
Next we have this:
[b]Imagine as well that there is a sensible world, exactly like this one.
this sensible world is an incredibly dangerous place, full of all manner of dangers and just about every conceivable harm.
[/b]Well said, I'll go with that. Quoting Bartricks
My argument is addressed to those who believe that the evils of the world constitute evidence that God does not exist.
A proponent of the problem of evil [PPE] believes that it would be wrong for God to invest a world such as this one with innocent life. They point to the evils of the world and conclude that God would have prevented those. That's the basis upon which they believe God does not exist.
It seems like you're using the word "God" interchangeably with OOO Being, I'm OK with either, but if there is some specific context in which you use one over the other I'll need some more details.
Otherwise, I agree with this definition of the Problem of Eveil and what a PPE believes. However I want to expand a bit on this, just to make sure that my understanding is correct. Let's convert this into Ps & Qs.
Let P be the statement "God (an OOP Being) exists."
For purposes of this particular discussion I am assuming that this sentence makes sense and is either true or false.
Let Q be the sentence "The sensible world is free from all evil & violence"
So a PPE says this:
IF P THEN NECESSARILY Q.
NOT Q
Therefore NOT P
Here I'm assuming that P means the same thing as P IS TRUE
This could also be expressed as
IF NOT Q THEN NOT P
NOT Q
Therefore NOT P
Furthermore, there are countless numbers of religious people who acknowledge the evils of the world but still believe in God. These folks have numerous "hacks" to work around this contradiction, e.g., "We cannot understand the workings of God, what appears to be evil is just our mis-understanding the nature of God's goodness", etc, etc.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Before I move on, have I so far described your thinking with reasonable accuracy?
Reply to EricH No, you stumbled right at the first hurdle.
Why do you think I asked about an omnipotent and omniscient person and left off omnibenevolent?
Do you think it was a mistake? It wasn't.
Do you think you can understand me by deciding to change what I said rather than trying to understand why I said it?
If you want to understand someone, do not assume they don't know what they are saying. I mean, you'll never understand anyone if you do that.
I am not you. I do not think like you do. So try and understand why I left off omnibenevolent. Don't assume it was a mistake. Assume I knew exactly what I was doing
If an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being exists then we live in a utopia correct? (because they have all the knowledge and all the power to be good/establish goodness.)
But that is temporal in dynamic. No? So in theory such a being could exist in a world lacking knowledge (ignorance) therefore lacking potency (power) and therfore lacking benevolence (the choice to use knowledge and power for Good).
If this omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being just discovered their power, or was just born today, would it not take time for them to convince others (omniscience and omnipotence) to choose good (omnibenevolece).
As any good argument relies on omnipotency (irrefutable ethical imperative - no one can/ought to deny what's in their own best interests) and omniscience (irréfutable logic/reason- no one can/ought to deny what makes sense/is rational).
So really omnipotence and omniscience can be synthesised with one another into the statement "what's good for you to believe (ethics) and what's logical/rational for you to believe (reason) is harmless to you (benevolent).
I did not include omnibenevolence simply because the question was about how this person ought to behave. But I could have included it, it just would have meant rephrasing things.
OK, maybe I made a false assumption there.
But without omnibenevolence there is no Problem of Evil. It could simply be that your your omniscient omnipotent person allows evil to exist for her own reasons which are beyond our powers of comprehension.
Reply to EricH Look, this isn't hard. Ought an omnipotent, omniscient person do X?
if the answer is 'no'. then that means that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person wouldn't do it.
See?
Now, this is so basic - so simple - that I think you are just willfully misunderstanding as you find it amusing or something.
This is a valid argument form:
1. Either p or q
2. Not p
3. Therefore q
1. Either change the world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on innocents, or do not introduce innocent life into it.
Do you see how that says 'either p or q'?
do you also see how a proponent (that means defender) of the problem of evil must endorse it?
And do you see how this premise is true in respect of us:
2. We are not going to change the world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on innocents?
And do you see how it now follows that
3. Therefore, do not introduce innocent life into it?
3 is antinatalism.
So, to deny 3 you need to deny 2 or 1.
2 is obviously undeniable
So you have to deny 1.
If you deny 1, then there's no problem of evil. For there would be nothing wrong in introducing life into the world as it is. There would be no obligation on God to change it.
So, if - if - there is a problem of evil for belief in God, then there is also a problem of evil for the belief that procreation is morally persmissible.
On the other hand, if procreation is morally permissible, then there is no problem of evil for GOd.
Now, if at this point you still do not understand me - if the above just sounds like gibberish - then I'm afraid you need to work with your hands for a living and stop trying to do this thinking business: it's not for you.
change the world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on innocents
Mr. X is a proponent of the Problem of Evil. Mr X is a person who says that an OOO Being (God) does not exist. But there is nothing inherit in The Problem of Evil that states (or even implies) that Mr X should or must have certain moral beliefs. Mr. X has no opinion as to how this imaginary creature should behave.
Now this is not to say that Mr X is not an anti-natalist. He may or may not be. But his being a proponent of the Problem of Evil has no bearing on his decision.
In other words, your "p" above is false/wrong/incorrect before you even plug it into your equation. You are saying either p must be true or q must be true. And this is simply not the case. As several other people have already noted, both your p and your q are false.
Now, if at this point you still do not understand me - if the above just sounds like gibberish - then I'm afraid you need to work with your hands for a living and stop trying to do this thinking business: it's not for you.
And I also give you the last word in this particular discussion - should you want it.
So, was the moment life formed in the universe immoral? Is an earthquake or a tsunami or a rainbow immoral according to your logic?
Only individuals are moral agents. Life starting in the universe is not a moral question. The individual choosing to perpetuate it is.
Violence and many other "natural" tendencies have been around long before humans evolved. Does that mean that humans perpetrating violent acts are beyond moral scrutiny? I think not.
universenessNovember 10, 2022 at 10:34#7553960 likes
Life starting in the universe is not a moral question.
So, by what logic do you suggest that an antinatalist viewpoint, that would have the final effect of ending all life in the universe (as you claim all reproduction is immoral without consent, which must include asexual reproduction) is warranted, based on a human constructed morality issue, when you have just accepted that the origin of life, is not a moral issue of consent?
Violence and many other "natural" tendencies have been around long before humans evolved. Does that mean that humans perpetrating violent acts are beyond moral scrutiny? I think not.
Such issues are within the jurisdiction of 'human morality.' The existence of human life in the universe is not within the jurisdiction of human morality. That is the natural imperative you cannot reconcile with your fogged antinatalist thinking.
Do you think it's immoral for a Lion to kill and eat a baby deer?
So, by what logic do you suggest that an antinatalist viewpoint, that would have the final effect of ending all life in the universe is warranted, based on a human constructed morality issue, when you have just accepted that the origin of life, is not a moral issue of consent?
I'm a supporter of "ending all life in the universe" now? You're starting to sound a bit like a clown.
The origin of life is not a moral issue. It's not even related to this discussion.
When individuals (in this case parents) make choices that have major consequences for other individuals (in this case children) that becomes a moral question.
Try to be clearer than mud in what you are claiming then.
Which forms of reproduction do you think are moral without the consent of the life which is created?
I'm a supporter of "ending all life in the universe" now? You're starting to sound a bit like a clown.
The origin of life is not a moral issue. It's not even related to this discussion.
When individuals (in this case parents) make choices that have major consequences for other individuals (in this case children) that becomes a moral question.
I'm discussing that moral question.
Maybe you need to calm down a little.
Typed by the person who uses clown logic regularly. If no life reproduces then the universe would have no life. YOU stated that newlife must be consulted before being born. You further stated that such consent is not possible, so, by default human morality, human reproduction is immoral. BUT this must also refer to all unconsulted life Sherlock, or else YOU are cherry-picking, and you have already stated that you disapprove of cherry-picking.
The origin of life is very much related to this discussion as you wish to terminate it, although you seem to not understand that would be the final result of your antinatalist stance.
The moral question you wish to discuss does not exist in the small bubble you are trying to push it into. Antinatalism in all of it's unpalatable flavours, has many implications for all life in this universe. Try to travel outside of your bubble musings now and again. You will encounter much more depth of thought if you do.
You have not typed anything exciting yet, so I remain perfectly calm. Don't confuse my incredulity at your logic with any kind of emotive turbulence you imagine you are causing.
Do you think it's immoral for a Lion to kill and eat a baby deer?
universeness
No.
Do you think it's immoral for a Lion to reproduce?
If your answer is no, then what intelligence rating would you apply before your antinatalist radar/morality issue kicks in and you ban a particular lifeform from reproduction and cause it to go extinct in time?
Are dolphins safe from your antinatalism proclamations? How about chimpanzees or dogs or cats?
Do you think it's immoral for a Lion to reproduce?
If your answer is no, then what intelligence rating would you apply before your antinatalist radar/morality issue kicks in and you ban a particular lifeform from reproduction and cause it to go extinct in time?
Are dolphins safe from your antinatalism proclamations? How about chimpanzees or dogs or cats?
Humans are the only moral actors.
This is starting to sound a lot like that rejection of morality that I predicted.
I never stated that. You need to read more carefully, and stop the great strawman game.
Ok then state your position, clearly, now. You can't get the consent of a life not born yet, to be born. You have therefore suggested that the act of having a child is an unacceptable, immoral imposition on the child. You have proclaimed antinatalism as your imperative for solving this terrible injustice. Quoting Tzeentch
Impositions, even small ones, are generally regarded as immoral. Birth is one giant imposition.
Does it matter whether the imposition is made with the individual's best interest at heart? I don't think so.
Whether it's A and B's business to decide whether C shall live I find questionable. But at the very least C ought to be consulted, which is impossible, hence the dilemma.
Now you refuse to admit to, take responsibility for, and follow the logic of your own argument. If this imposition is fully founded on the fact that you cannot get consent from that which is to be born, then this must apply to all life. No lifeform can obtain such consent, so, your 'no consent, so unacceptable imposition,' morality issue must apply to all life, Including the original appearance of life in this universe.
All you are doing now is trying to squirm away from following your own logic.
I've stated that impositions - 'to force one's will upon another' - are generally regarded as immoral, following common moral principles. Procreation is an imposition.
Procreation seems to be at odds with this principle, and over the last couple of pages I have patiently waited for an logically coherent explanation as to why this should be ok.
So far you have tried:
- It is not a moral question, to which I replied: it certainly is. I don't see how individuals acting in ways that significantly impact other individuals is not a moral question.
- It is moral because if man would not procreate, man would go exitinct - an 'ends justify the means'-type argument.
- It is moral because the individual cares about their "legacy" and "bloodline" - in this argument new humans are instrumentalized to suit individuals' ego-driven vanity projects.
Neither of these mention the well-being of said new humans, which is odd to say the least.
Both arguments instrumentalize the individual for ulterior goals.
Both the second and third arguments are irrational.
The second argument is a moot point, since no human reproduces "for the survival of the species", and even if people did, they have no control over whether the species survives nor do they have a stake in what happens to the species in X years from now since they won't be around to witness it, ergo their preoccupation with the "survival of the species" is irrational. Additionally, it excuses imposition based solely on the idea that the outcome is desirable, which, without any type of explanation, implies that imposition can be excused whenever the imposer considers it would lead to a desirable outcome - 'the ends justify the means' is a notoriously slippery and hypocritical slope.
The third argument about legacy and bloodlines is similarly an 'ends justify the means'-type argument, but in this case the ends are completely selfish - vain ego fantasy. A preoccupation with illusory things like "legacies" and "bloodlines" as though they have some objective value is similarly irrational. Needless to say, that will not do as a basis to attempt to justify imposition.
I have patiently waited for an logically coherent explanation as to why this should be ok.
Do you not see how arrogant your words here are? You are not waiting for a logically coherent argument as to why this should be ok, as posters, including me, have already given you many. How about something like 'You have not found any of the logically coherent arguments presented to you so far, on this issue, compelling.' That would make you appear much less arrogant.
- It is not a moral question, to which I replied: it certainly is. I don't see how individuals acting in ways that significantly impact other individuals is not a moral question.
- It is moral because if man would not procreate, man would go exitinct - an 'ends justify the means'-type argument.
- It is moral because the individual cares about their "legacy" and "bloodline" - in this argument new humans are instrumentalized to suit individuals' ego-driven vanity projects.
You removed the issue of human suffering from your flavour of antinatalism, so what is the imposition you are concerned about?
Your 'end justifies the means complaint,' suggests that the means is something bad and immoral, which is what we are debating, so you are merely attempting to label the process of human procreation as immoral from the outset, which reveals that your approach is bias from the outset.
You are judging every human couple who decides to have children as ego driven and vain and you want others to consider such an argument as rational and I don't think such a position is in any way rational or logical.
You are trying to give precedence to YOUR interpretation of human morality over billions of years of happenstance since the big bang. Which leads to what is, imo, an irrational antinatalist viewpoint.
Human reproduction has a natural imperative which is NOT ONLY to do with mere ego or personal vanity but is more importantly to continue a species and prevent it going extinct.
You can try to handwave that away as much as you like, but you will be, as you have been, unsuccessful.
Neither of these mention the well-being of said new humans, which is odd to say the least.
Neither do you, you removed human suffering from your argument so the issue of individual well-being is not under consideration in your antinatalism flavour. YOU took it out. Your concern is about CONSENT (I capitalise here for the value of emphasis rather than as a rebellious act against common netiquette, so try not to feel attacked again, I know that can be a tender spot for you.)
The second argument is a moot point, since no human reproduces "for the survival of the species", and even if people did, they have no control over whether the species survives nor do they have a stake in what happens to the species in X years from now since they won't be around to witness it, ergo their preoccupation with the "survival of the species" is irrational.
This comes across as a cold almost narcissistic viewpoint which I think very few human beings agree with. Most people do care about the future of their own species, regardless of their own oblivion.
This is not a logical argument, it is just a manifestation of your personal misanthropy.
(Btw: Analysis of the psychology of an interlocuter is common in probably all examples of human discourse.)
Additionally, it excuses imposition based solely on the idea that the outcome is desirable, which, without any type of explanation, implies that imposition can be excused whenever the imposer considers it would lead to a desirable outcome - 'the ends justify the means' is a notoriously slippery and hypocritical slope.
You are just repeating the same arguments over and over again and they dont get any better each time you repeat them. I can do that to, as you have probably noticed. Anyone can do that.
Evolution through natural selection established the 'survival of a species imperative' and there is no intent behind it. Humans did not establish the natural imperative of species survival; they are simply compelled to comply with it. They can overrule it, yes, but there will be prices to pay, including extinction, if they employ something as destructive as antinatalism to their entire species.
The third argument about legacy and bloodlines is similarly an 'ends justify the means'-type argument, but in this case the ends are completely selfish - vain ego fantasy. A preoccupation with illusory things like "legacies" and "bloodlines" as though they have some objective value is similarly irrational. Needless to say, that will not do as a basis to attempt to justify imposition.
Again, you just repeat, and I have already responded to the content of the quote above, many times. Others have even offered other varied logical angles against the logic you are employing, but you only respond by repeating your arguments and making very poor attempts to dispel the counter points put to you. That is irrational.
Another restatement, which I have already given my opinion on. Shallow and arrogant!
No, but it has helped confirm and further exemplify your irrationality (not a personal insult, just an opinion on your brain fog regarding antinatalism).
Reply to universeness Hey universeness, I've been censored again. :( Baden had my last topic of discussion removed a second time because I didn't ask him if it was okay to repost.
What do you make of the situation? Any more insights on offer brother?
universenessNovember 10, 2022 at 17:00#7554850 likes
Best to have a chat by PM with Baden and see if you can understand his reasons. Overall, I have found the Moderators/administrator's very reasonable people. An administrator such as @jamal can talk to a moderator, if you are not happy with a decision they have made, but if the administrator backs the moderator, then there is nothing you can do except to accept their decision. But you can still moan at them a little.
1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. 2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil. 3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists. 4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil. 5. Evil exists. 6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesnt have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesnt know when evil exists, or doesnt have the desire to eliminate all evil. 7. Therefore, God doesnt exist.
This is my understanding of what a proponent of The Problem of Evil believes. And as far as I can tell step #4 requires omnibenevolence (or some equivalent) - and step #4 is essential to the arguement.
But you are asserting that your person/being is NOT omnibenevolent. Quoting Bartricks
Why do you think I asked about an omnipotent and omniscient person and left off omnibenevolent?
Do you think it was a mistake? It wasn't.
I have been trying to work within your conceptual framework - to figure out what exactly you are saying. Up to now I have not succeeded at this task.
So before going any further, you have to explain how The Problem of Evil works when your person/being is NOT omnibenevolent. It would be helpful if you could supply any references or links.
Best to have a chat by PM with Baden and see if you can understand his reasons. Overall, I have found the Moderators/administrator's very reasonable people. An administrator such as jamal can talk to a moderator, if you are not happy with a decision they have made, but if the administrator backs the moderator, then there is nothing you can do except to accept their decision. But you can still moan at them a little.
Thanks Universeness. You're precious. That's exactly what I did and exactly what happened. Oh well, it seems some questions are un-questionable.
I guess we just have to live in a world where all questions are not permissible.
Who knew!?
Onwards with hope I say. There's many ways to "skin a cat" so to speak.
Thanks for your support and suggestions
universenessNovember 10, 2022 at 18:05#7555050 likes
:up: Nae bother. I'm not sure I am comparable with Gollum's ring of power and its evil source, Sauron. :joke: and you type too many balanced words obout life and living to be going around skinning cats by various methods! :scream:
If I don't agree with the mods, I sometimes send their favourite song lyrics to them along with a related picture:
We arra mods
We arra mods
We are, We are, We arra mods!
universenessNovember 10, 2022 at 18:10#7555070 likes
Reply to Benj96
What's life without whimsy?
Without a wee giggle now and again, we could all turn antinatalist :scream:
Live, Love, Laugh Brother Ben!
universenessNovember 10, 2022 at 21:36#7555410 likes
Reply to Benj96
Btw, I stole the combination of those three words 'Live, Love, Laugh, from a line in an Al Jolson song from 1926! This song was part of the legacy his life left to people alive almost a hundred years after he recorded this. A great wee song.
Evolution through natural selection established the 'survival of a species imperative' and there is no intent behind it.
It's irrelevant. Individuals have intentions, and individuals aren't subjected to evolution, natural selection or any "natural imperatives". Your issue is that you're attempting to have a moral discussion about "the human species", but the "human species" as a whole is not a moral agent, and not part of a moral discussion.
universenessNovember 11, 2022 at 10:52#7556470 likes
It's irrelevant. Individuals have intentions, and individuals aren't subjected to evolution, natural selection or any "natural imperatives".
Yes, they do, and they can, and do, use that intent to reproduce for many reasons, all of which serve the natural imperative of the survival of species. Your moral objection and the consent reason you give for it are not compelling. How many support your position on this thread so far? Maybe you should take a poll.
Your issue is that you're attempting to have a moral discussion about "the human species", but the "human species" as a whole is not a moral agent, and not part of a moral discussion.
Perhaps you should make yourself clearer here. The human species is made up of individual humans who are moral agents, but you now suggest that they have no moral agency as a totality.
The universe applied no discernible morality or intent towards creating humans. It is from that angle that I refer to the immorality you assign to your lineage of immoral parents, all the way back to the point where life formed in this universe. The logic of your 'blame game' fails miserably as you journey back along that path. In what way does this also suggest that the human species as a totality, has no moral agency?
The human species is made up of individual humans who are moral agents, but you now suggest that they have no moral agency as a totality.
Precisely so. Since "the human species" cannot act, intend, etc.; it is not a moral agent. To claim as much is to personify an abstract representation of what is actually a conglomerate of individuals.
What makes you think I care? :chin:
I'm not here to convince anyone.
Then you admit you just enjoy preaching; you don't accept the burden of trying to convince others of viewpoints that you think will help them in their lives?
No, it's interpreted by YOUR logic. National and International laws are informed by human past and present political debate, which certainly includes morality issues. If we ever unite as a single global species and establish a world government, then planetary law will be informed by human morality.
This would then represent the agency of the entire species. I agree that there would be very few, if any, global laws or moral standpoints which would be fully accepted by every human alive but I think we can still label the likes of a global human law, as having human species agency.
I also think the national or international laws we have now, hold up as examples of the representation of the morality of our species as a totality. 'It is immoral to rape,' for example or 'child abuse is unacceptable and immoral.' These are pretty close to being aspects of the current moral agency of our entire species.
No, it's interpreted by YOUR logic. National and International laws are informed by human past and present political debate, which certainly includes morality issues. If we ever unite as a single global species and establish a world government, then planetary law will be informed by human morality.
This would then represent the agency of the entire species. I agree that there would be very few, if any, global laws or moral standpoints which would be fully accepted by every human alive but I think we can still label the likes of a global human law, as having human species agency.
I also think the national or international laws we have now, hold up as examples of the representation of the morality of our species as a totality. 'It is immoral to rape,' for example or 'child abuse is unacceptable and immoral.' These are pretty close to being aspects of the current moral agency of our entire species.
In philosophy it is of great importance to use accurate language.
All of what you just wrote is generalized (inaccurate) language - shortcuts to convey practical ideas. Useful as practical tools for every day conversation, but not for philosophy.
"The human species" does not think with one mind or acts with one body. It is never a moral agent. Speaking of what "the human species" does or thinks is a gross oversimplification of the huge variety of thoughts and actions by individuals.
universenessNovember 11, 2022 at 12:05#7556540 likes
In philosophy it is of great importance to use accurate language.
All of what you just wrote is generalized (inaccurate) language - shortcuts to convey practical ideas. Useful as practical tools for everyday conversation, but not for philosophy.
I agree with your comments about the importance of the accuracy of language and I have the language skills I have. I have not found your use of language, demonstrates a higher skill level in accuracy that I have. I was a teacher of Computing Science for 30+ years. Philosophy has been around since we came out of the wilds, people philosophise in pubs, clubs and taxis as well as the Egyptian or Greek philosophers every did. I think you might gain more access to the thinking of a wider range of humans, if you stopped trying to paint such an aloof portrait of YOUR interpretation of what philosophy is and who is qualified to engage in it.
"The human species" does not think with one mind or acts with one body. It is never a moral agent. Speaking of what "the human species" does or thinks is a gross oversimplification of the huge variety of thoughts and actions by individuals.
I think this example of your philosophy is shallow and rather misanthropic. Humans are quite capable of networking and thinking as one, close enough to act as one, in mimicry, of how a single mind might think and act and who knows what future networking level humans might achieve, as we enhance longevity and ability through transhuman technologies.
universenessNovember 11, 2022 at 14:36#7556850 likes
Some human efforts to improve the human experience and reduce human suffering.
Posted by another member in the shoutbox, copied and pasted here by me, as I thought they were good examples, relevant to this thread.
Some human efforts to improve the human experience and reduce human suffering.
Posted by another member in the shoutbox, copied and pasted here by me, as I thought they were good examples, relevant to this thread.
I will always be in awe of such people: applying their intelligence and talents to revolutionising our fight against suffering. I will always commend them, their courage and persistence. Long live the good amongst us.
schopenhauer1November 12, 2022 at 21:46#7559320 likes
I will always be in awe of such people: applying their intelligence and talents to revolutionising our fight against suffering. I will always commend them, their courage and persistence. Long live the good amongst us.
That's not @Tzeentch argument at all in this current argument. In fact, it wouldn't matter what people do or don't do in terms of technological breakthroughs with his argument about impositions.
universenessNovember 12, 2022 at 22:20#7559400 likes
Reply to Benj96
The antinatalist viewpoint is a weak jelly, in comparison with such people. Past, present and future.
schopenhauer1November 12, 2022 at 22:29#7559430 likes
But you are asserting that your person/being is NOT omnibenevolent.
Why do you think I asked about an omnipotent and omniscient person and left off omnibenevolent?
Do you think it was a mistake? It wasn't.
Bartricks
I have been trying to work within your conceptual framework - to figure out what exactly you are saying. Up to now I have not succeeded at this task.
I think the problem here is twofold; a) you are a bad faith interlocutor and b) IQ
If we reflect on what an omnipotent, omniscient person ought to do in circumstances X, we then learn what an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person would do in those circumstances.
I will repeat things I've said in the past. You're a smart person and you are obviously well educated in many aspects of philosophy. You are not a troll. I find your ideas bizarrely fantastical and illogical, but I keep trying to figure out what (if any) logic is underlying your posts. This is why I take this step by step approach to try to echo back to you what I think you're saying.
If we reflect on what an omnipotent, omniscient person ought to do in circumstances X
And here's where you are just not making any sense. In the absence of omnibenevolence there are no constraints on the actions of your person. There is no aught for such a person. Your person is free to do whatever she pleases.
You have not given any explanation or description of (in the absence of omnibenevolence) what an omnipotent, omniscient person ought to do in any circumstance.
I have given you an account of my understanding of The Problem Of Evil and what it means to be a proponent of this problem. You have not done so.
I find it hard to believe that you can re-formulate The Problem of Evil without omnibenevolence, but I keep an open mind. Maybe you have some unique approach. But in the absence of any explanation your argument fails.
If there is no problem of evil then you never even get to your Ps and Qs.
If we reflect on what an omnipotent, omniscient person ought to do in circumstances X
So one last time, if your argument is to succeed you have to successfully resolve this issue.In the absence of omnibenevolence, how does an omnipotent, omniscient person decide what to do? What ought she do?
And here's where you are just not making any sense. In the absence of omnibenevolence there are no constraints on the actions of your person. There is no aught for such a person. Your person is free to do whatever she pleases.
I don't understand your reasoning. I think you are confusing descriptive claims with normative ones.
Moral constraints do not prevent you from doing things. If it is immoral for me to do X, that doesn't mean I am being somehow prevented from doing it.
Now, again, try and understand the point: if an omnipotent, omniscient person 'ought' to do x, then an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenvolent person 'would' do x. Not because they have do, but because they're omnibenevolent.
So, if an omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to introduce innocent life into a dangerous world without first removing the dangers, then that's what an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person would do.
It really doesn't matter if an omnipotent, omniscient person will, by dint of being omnipotent, also be omnibenevolent, for the same point would apply
I find it hard to believe that you can re-formulate The Problem of Evil without omnibenevolence, but I keep an open mind. Maybe you have some unique approach. But in the absence of any explanation your argument fails.
Again, you're just saying stuff. You have not explained why my argument fails. You have just stated that it does, though you admit that you don't actually understand what I am saying. You don't understasnd why premise 1 of my argument is a premise that any proponent of the problem of evil must endorse, do you?
Now, do you think I don't know what I am talking about? Just out of interest. Do you think I know a lot about the problem of evil, or not much at all?
Reply to EricH Perhaps you should explain your reasoning.
Premise 1 of my argument states:
Either remove the evils from the world before subjecting innocent persons to live in it, or do not subject innocent persons to live in it.
Now, my claim is that a defender of the problem of evil - so, someone who thinks the evils of the world imply God's non-existence - has to endorse premise 1.
In the Muslim and Jewish traditions God is not omni-benevolent. Yet theodicy still exists; see book of Job. One can be good without omni-benevolence. God lays down the law but he is fundamentally beyond us.
I like sushiNovember 14, 2022 at 00:00#7561210 likes
@Bartricks The confusion yiu talk about is likely due to struggling to take on some completely intangible alien position and then stating aught to as if it is a given.
I like sushiNovember 14, 2022 at 04:56#7561420 likes
You will find there is more relation to asking What an Ant aught to do? and any answer from such a hypothetical is just as relevant as from an omnipotent being (who we cannot relate to as much as an ant).
If you just ask if a human had the choice to end all suffering by stopping procreation in some fashion or another then aught they do so? Then there is the question of how this would be done.
Antinatalism is merely a thought to ponder not a realistic position to take as we are not omnipotent nor if any being omnipotent exists can we shoehorn in human sensibilities.
In the Muslim and Jewish traditions God is not omni-benevolent. Yet theodicy still exists; see book of Job. One can be good without omni-benevolence. God lays down the law but he is fundamentally beyond us.
I've read Job, and I while I am not an expert in these matters I get the basics. But AFAICT that's not what B is saying.
If B had said that a person who believes in God in spite of the problem of evil (either via theodicy or some other explanation) should be an anti-natalist, then that would have made some sense.
In fact that was my initial assumption as to what he was saying, since simply denying God's existence due to the problem of evil does not oblige one to take any moral position about how an imaginary God/person aught to behave. But AFAICT that's not what B is saying. B is saying that by virtue being a proponent of the problem of evil (one who denies God's existence) it logically follows that such a person must also be an antinatalist.
However, as if that weren't illogical enough, B goes one step further and asserts that the problem of evil does not require omnibenevolence. I have asked B to explain this, but he keeps repeating that it's obvious and that I'm not getting it.
This week's homework assignment in Philosophy 101 was to explain the problem of evil. I went back to the primary sources and here is my understanding of the standard definition:
1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is omnibenevolent, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesnt have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesnt know when evil exists, or doesnt have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God doesnt exist.
Please grade my homework. If I have gotten anything wrong, please correct me.
Now, my claim is that a defender of the problem of evil - so, someone who thinks the evils of the world imply God's non-existence - has to endorse premise 1.
If you think they don't, explain why.
I cannot answer your question set until you explain how YOU define/explain the problem of evil (POE) and what it means to be a proponent of this problem.
Just to recap where we are in this discussion:-
- You have stated that omnibenevolence is not required for the POE.
- This does not even remotely correspond with any standard definition of the POE.
Now maybe there is some formulation of the problem within the writings of one of the medieval philosophers about which you are highly knowledgeable - or - maybe you have your own explanation.
But either way, you need to clarify your question before it can be answered.
1) How do you define/explain the POE without omnibenevolence?
2) What does it mean to be a proponent of this problem?
3) In what way does your definition require that a proponent of the POE must agree with AN?
In the course of our conversation I have asked you these same questions multiple times in a variety of different ways, but for some reason you choose not to answer them. This I do not understand, but I am still trying.
BTW - if you are realizing that you made a mistake and you now agree that the POE does require omnibenevolence, I will not hold it against you to change your mind.
Either remove the evils from the world before subjecting innocent persons to live in it, or do not subject innocent persons to live in it.
Then I'm afraid I consider you the intellectual equal of the crow that is currently strutting about on the lawn outside. I think you're just trying to be annoying.
You can't begin to explain, can you, why you think a proponent of the problem of evil does not have to endorse that principle? Like I say, you haven't a clue - not a clue - what you're talking about. You don't understand the problem of evil or anything I have said. It's just noise, yes?
if you can't understand why a proponent of the problem of evil has to accept this principle
If you can't understand that without omnibenevolence there is no problem of evil, then I'm afraid I consider you the intellectual equal of the crow that is currently strutting about on the lawn outside. I think you're just trying to be annoying.
You can't begin to explain, can you, how the problem of evil requires omnibenevolence? Like I say, you haven't a clue - not a clue - what you're talking about. You don't understand the problem of evil or anything I have said. It's just noise, yes?
You have failed. Like I say, you're a bad faith interlocutor and then there's the IQ thing.
This is my last exchange to you on this topic. It's been most revealing.
It has revealed that you do not understand the problem of evil. Or how to reason.
You think that there is no inconsistency in thinking that God could have introduced innocent life into this world without removing any of its evils and not thereby have done anything wrong and also thinking that God would not introduce innocent life into a world like this without first removing some or all of its evils as that'd be wrong. That's quite something. Good job! What an excellent thinker you are.
Again: someone who thinks that the problem of evil is a problem is someone who thinks that principle is true:
Either remove the evils from the world before subjecting innocent persons to live in it, or do not subject innocent persons to live in it.
You can't see why. That's somewhat astonishing, given how blindingly obvious it is. But it doesn't affect the matter.
I like sushiNovember 15, 2022 at 07:41#7563610 likes
Reply to Bartricks The question remains how we are meant to relate to some hypothetical omnipotent, omniscient person when we are neither.
You can pretend to know what you do not know but I do not see how such is at all relevant as a foundation to build a argument from. As a place to explore from and create new ideas maybe there is something there for someone with an extremely open mind and/or a more fluid interpretation of the terms used.
People often get offended by antinatalism, as a position, rather than antinatalism as an idea. The former appears as a personal dogma whereas the later is merely a place to think about what it means to bring life into the world, how we were brought into the world and how we can apply/should/might apply terms such as responsibility, ethics and innocence.
This has all been pointed out to you before though and remains unanswered, ignored and/or attacked with vitriol.
Antinatalism is certainly an idea worthy of contemplation. As a doctrine to be applied to a humanitarian lived life it has no foundation. Believing that procreation is not the best idea is fine too. Trying to provide ethical evidence for it is complete nonsense though.
It may or may not be better not to live a life (assuming such can be judged by some hypothetical omnipotent being) but we as mere human beings have sparing insight into that we cannot do more than attach a highly sceptical and unrealised concept to - the concept of omnipotence.
universenessNovember 15, 2022 at 10:30#7563830 likes
Antinatalism is certainly an idea worthy of contemplation. As a doctrine to be applied to a humanitarian lived life it has no foundation. Believing that procreation is not the best idea is fine too. Trying to provide ethical evidence for it is complete nonsense though.
Antinatalism IS an ethical idea that that is what is being contemplated. There are many arguments of various takes on the matter. Why wouldn't it be any different than other human behavior in its evaluation as an ethical question?
I like sushiNovember 15, 2022 at 18:07#7564770 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 I never once said it was not an ethical idea. Do not bother quoting my words back at me just read them in the context written.
An ethical idea can be turned over without it being taken as wholly applicable to real lived lives - like with the trolly problem.
There are no real ethical arguments. They are just positions to consider and jostle with because there is no way of drawing a clear line under some item that is universally right or wrong. Antinatalism as an idea is on par with the trolley problem it is just dressed up differently.
universenessNovember 15, 2022 at 18:16#7564790 likes
Reply to EricH
It's fair play to fire some arrows back in the direction they are coming from towards yourself or towards others unjustly.
A proponent of the problem of evil must believe this disjunctive moral principle is true:
1. Either remove the evils from the world before subjecting innocent persons to live in it, or do not subject innocent persons to live in it.
EricH can't understand why this is, but that's why he has to eat everything with a plastic spoon.
Now, in respect of us this premise is also true:
2. We are unable to remove the evils from the world before subjecting innocent persons to live in it
From which it follows:
3. Therefore do not subject innocent persons to live in it.
Now totally ignore the argument and say some stuff that occurred to you while you looked at it. That seems to be the policy of most around here.
It's a highly significant argument. Why? Because loads and loads of philosophers - probably the bulk - would agree that the problem of evil is a significant problem for the existence of God.
Yet none of them have noticed that this commits them to affirming antinatalism.
One could run the argument in the other direction of course. One could argue that as it is clearly morally permissible for us to procreate despite our inability to rid the world of its evils, then it is not wrong for God to subject innocents to life in it either.
But either way, we have something of an earthquake: either most philosophers have to accept that the strongest objection to theism fails, or most philosophers have to accept that antinatalism is true.
I like sushiNovember 16, 2022 at 06:42#7566170 likes
Reply to Bartricks I can only assume you frame evil as suffering. If life exists therefore evil must exist. So then, should all life be exterminated so rid the world of evil/suffering or does committing such an act (that many would label as evil) okay if the end result is the complete annihilation of evil?
I know that people overtly fond of the antinatalist idea do not wish death and extinction on the human race, but at the same time they effectively are shifting towards that result if procreation itself is regarded as propagating evil.
The buddhist belief is more or less that it is a lie that life must contain some suffering this is perhaps partially true but it depends exclusively on how one defines and delineates suffering and evil.
If the base argument you are offering up is simply that people born will inevitably suffer to some degree then I cannot disagree. I would also add that suffering is tied into learning, change and growth so one either opts for change, learning and potential growth or they opt for oblivion and death that is where any serious dogmatic application of antinatalism falls down.
As a means of questioning our existence it is a worthy idea to ponder on and see where our personal sense of responsibility lies.
It is not at all clear cut to everyone what the difference between ending a life, taking a life or even defining what life is in the first place. That is why there is so much contention around items such as abortion and euthanasia.
Surely you know what I am on about now and why it is an intrinsic part of what antinatalism is bringing into question. What can we do about suffering? Yet, why not ask if we should look to eradicate suffering completely if the price paid is effectively the end of all life now and in the future? Clearly there is a wide area of middle ground that for some reason is difficult for us to realise and explore.
schopenhauer1November 16, 2022 at 12:43#7566550 likes
Clearly there is a wide area of middle ground that for some reason is difficult for us to realise and explore.
Depends on a lot more than you are saying. First off, many arguments being made here are ones about impositions. What kind of impositions are acceptable if at all? Procreation is problematic as it isnt just a gift but comes with many burdens and can never be consented. One cannot get out of this universes setup to some better one, and even if one thinks theyd rather not comply with this worlds standards, limited choices of how to survive, and harms one must endure, self-harm/suicide is still a big enough fear that its not a realistic option as just a casual and accessible alternative. It would be gaslighting to and wrong to even use that as an excuse for why life must be good then.
At the end of the day, is it acceptable to create impositions onto others unnecessarily that are significant and not easily escaped? The only way out is ITSELF a significant traumatic harm to the person (death) or the only way out is to comply. Comply or die seems to then be the only two alternatives.
If this world always ended up being a utopia, individualized for every individual- where even the boredom of everything being good was not in the equation, wed perhaps be having a different argument. Then truly it was purely a gift with no burdens or other agendas. But life isnt just that and so theres always some excuse as to why someone else needs to be burdened.
I like sushiNovember 16, 2022 at 13:04#7566620 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 I believe it is an error to talk about consent for a force of nature. Not consenting to live is like not consenting that gravity keeps my feet on the ground.
The question of whether it is better to abstain from procreation may have some credit to it but even then I cannot fathom how we can say one way or another given that our scope and understanding of life is rather limited.
To argue not to have have children is an action that may or may not reduce suffering. We are in no position to say with any real authority what is better only to make personal judgements that sit well with us as an individual among other individuals.
We do not consent to breath, nor do we think about breathing every second of the day, yet this does not necessarily mean we are forced to comply. There are certain situations where the term comply can be readily applied but I cannot see how you can bring me to agree that comply applies to living a life. It just does not make sense to use that term here. I can understand why you can, with some force, make it appear as wholly applicable to living but it is just a term used loosely and no matter how hard it is forced it does not hold up for me.
schopenhauer1November 16, 2022 at 15:29#7567050 likes
Not consenting to live is like not consenting that gravity keeps my feet on the ground.
Just wrong/error in thinking because this isnt addressing that consent cannot be had. That doesnt negate this fact. Just because its post facto also doesnt negate it. It is the non ANs that have to address the issue. its not simply handwave it away as inevitable. Someone ELSE made the decision on behalf of someone. That is the fact of the matter.
To argue not to have have children is an action that may or may not reduce suffering. We are in no position to say with any real authority what is better only to make personal judgements that sit well with us as an individual among other individuals.
This is not addressing the argument from imposition that @Tzeentch and I have been presenting.
It just does not make sense to use that term here. I can understand why you can, with some force, make it appear as wholly applicable to living but it is just a term used loosely and no matter how hard it is forced it does not hold up for me.
Comply means here, having to do the actions necessary to survive in a social setting. You cannot live by simply being, you must do certain things you might otherwise not have wanted to do. Your only recourse if you dont like ANY of the options is to kill your self- hence comply or die.
I like sushiNovember 16, 2022 at 15:41#7567100 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Given that these threads have been thrown into one thread (mistakenly/stupidly imo) I cannot readily see the propositions laid out.
Your definition of what is means to live simply does not fit with my understanding of what life is. This cannot be resolved so any disagreement is moot because they do not even start on the same footing because neither of us is willing to give up such key terms and neither see enough flexibility, in terms of being generous with these terms, to make much headway.
If we can at least agree that the conflict between our views is due to having almost entirely oppositional uses of terms like life, living and comply then that is good enough for me. That is how I see it.
Antinatalism is an interesting item to explore. I wish the mods would not be so silly and lump several completely differing points together making it more than difficult to tease out what each person is trying to communicate.
Thanks for your responses :)
Andrew4HandelNovember 17, 2022 at 15:46#7571030 likes
I think choosing to have children is a denial of causality.
I don't think parents believe they are responsible for the things they are causing.
I don't think parents believe they are responsible for the things they are causing
Scary. Either they think they are responsible for things they haven't caused or they think they aren't responsible for anything at all. Glad I'm not a parent.
schopenhauer1November 25, 2022 at 15:07#7586640 likes
Reply to Cuthbert
Theres always a starting point from which one is trying to overcome. Buddhists and mystics will say this life is an illusion. Yet why is there an overcoming of the illusion in the first place? At that point its word games. The overcoming points to a real situation. That situation (the supposed illusion) came about through a cause- reproduction.
L'éléphantNovember 27, 2022 at 18:33#7589100 likes
I guess some people oppose anti-natalism because the followers of anti-natalism explain their reason as if it's universal or true of all people. The choice to not reproduce is still only accepted so long as the reason is personal, rather than universal moral claim. Some people shouldn't have children simply because they're too young, too poor, or too irresponsible, or addicted to drugs and alcohol.
Andrew4HandelNovember 28, 2022 at 11:30#7590680 likes
I was thinking about the validity of an argument I wanted to make concerning antinatalism and it made me think how I could frame an argument in the most coherent or formal way to examine it for flaws.
Here is one way of framing the argument I was going to make.
Premise 1: You cannot be responsible for something you didn't cause
Premise 2: You didn't cause your own existence
Premise 3: Your actions are caused by what caused your existence
Conclusion your parents are responsible for your actions because they caused you existence
However this leads to the ad absurdum that no one is responsible for their actions because of their parents actions.
We are all not here by consent. But I want to differentiate between the responsibility of the person creating human life and the person who never creates another human life.
I usually resort to a notion of causal responsibility. Your parents caused you which caused your actions. It might not be a moral responsibility but they were a causal necessity for your actions. Nevertheless in a purely causal deterministic world their actions were forced by their parents actions.
Is there a way to frame all this to something beneath the concepts involved like a mathematical equation?
Andrew4HandelNovember 28, 2022 at 11:38#7590700 likes
In response to my own post I think you can have the belief in free will and blame people for all their actions but the parents actions have added weight because different actions have differing degrees of harm or potential harm attached.
universenessNovember 28, 2022 at 17:04#7591250 likes
AnsiktsburkDecember 02, 2022 at 10:32#7601010 likes
Two kids maximum is my policy, my wife raised havoc going for a third. But it seems probable that the world´s population should decrease nicely if you had a maximum of 2. A lot of gus would go for 0 or 1.
Any reasoning on whether people should live or not per se is beyond me. Sometimes I hate myselt and humanity and sometimes i love those two groups. Cant make up my mind. But 2, thats a good sound limit.
schopenhauer1December 02, 2022 at 14:08#7601430 likes
By imposition vis-à-vis life do you mean no one was/is/will be asked whether s/he wishes to be born?
I mean the following:
A) Imposition- foisting one's will onto another.
B) Imposition- creating a burden for another.
Both of these definitions can apply here. In the case of the utopia example, the absence of B makes the the case a bit murkier, but this existence never has a case where there is not B, it it wouldn't matter. In my argument I had three things here:
1) The range of choices are limited to the physical-cultural arrangements of this existence and circumstances of time and place. This was assumed to be an appropriate set of choices for another.
2) Known harms are assumed to be enough for others to endure.
3) Unknown harms are simply had by a person through collateral damage of being born. The parent knows there are unknowns but they can't say what they are.
2 and 3 are certainly a violation of B.
1 may seem to not be a violation of B, but besides just the fact one is imposing one's own will (A), the fact that the choices are limited to what existence currently has to offer, B is still relevant too in that the choices may not be wanted if otherwise one could choose so. A and B are violated in all three parts of the argument.
schopenhauer1December 02, 2022 at 14:09#7601450 likes
Parents have a responsibility; true, they're imposing themselves on their kids. A reasonable person wouldn't bring children into the world. Why start families at all?
Agent SmithDecember 02, 2022 at 16:54#7601970 likes
It doesn't matter as far as I am concerned, towards the imposition (comply or die) argument.
Are you sure?
schopenhauer1December 02, 2022 at 17:04#7602000 likes
Reply to Agent Smith
You tell me. As long as life is non utopian for that individual, the question becomes irrelevant as to whether it is objective or subjective. I am not making an argument of good or bad, but whether someone should create an imposition on others. I refer you then back to my previous response
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/760143
Agent SmithDecember 02, 2022 at 17:13#7602040 likes
that the issues brought up by pessimists do seem true, yet life is getting better because of these truths and the work our forefathers and science and the new age positivists are making the world better off.
I agree that life on Earth is not an idylic Garden of Eden, but as you implied, we human care-takers are assiduously working to improve a less-than-perfect situation. We haven't eradicated suffering and unequal distribution of benefits, but Philosophical Pessimism is not going to produce a Utopia. On another thread, I've been engaged with pessimists in a Science vs Religion debate. Whereas most Religions put their faith in all-powerful gods or nature spirits to alleviate their suffering, modern Science is learning to control the vicissitudes of nature directly via Technology. Even so, some posters remain pessimistic in the face of implacable & all-powerful thermodynamic Entropy driving the world toward destruction. However, I am endorsing Enformy*1 as an inherent positive counter-agent to Entropy.
I'm not sure who you are referring to as "new age positivists", but most New Age religions are still relying on Nature to fix its own shortcomings in human relations. On the other hand, modern ecologists, both science-based and religiously-motivated, are espousing a return to human caretakers working hand-in-hand with Nature to keep the Garden and its inhabitants healthy. Unlike the anthro-morphic gods who supposedly answer prayers, Nature/Entropy seems to be deaf to human pleas. However, impassive Nature is inherently balanced between positive & negative forces as it evolves toward more complexity and intelligence. So, you could say that Nature has bred its own race of gardeners. :smile:
*1. Enformy : "My own interpretation of Enformed history is not based on divine revelation. Yet I remain somewhat optimistic that the self-organizing natural force of Enformy will prevail over disorganizing Entropy in the end (Omega Point)."
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13862/the-self-under-materialism
*2. Ecologist : a person who studies the relationship between living things and their environment.
Reply to Shawn Life is getting better for whom? Whose pessimism is being overcome but at what cost and to whom? "Progress" if there's such a thing is just not evenly distributed yet (W. Gibson). The Epicureans and Stoics, Cynics and Pyrrhonians, as examples, strove against the tragedy of daily life as existentialists and absurdists have in our time. And yet dukkha remains despite the high-tech hedonic treadmill of modern mass consumerism and televangelism. "Sisyphus" is still our promethean avatar. Existential dread, my friend, of which pessimism is an expression, is the ineluctable condition to be endured and not a (technoscientific or psychiatric) problem to be solved (by "progress").
Well, I just wanted to raise the issue of positivism as the antithesis of Philosophical Pessimism. In that positivists seem to have a strong desire to alter brute suffering and lack that some of us have experienced in our daily lives.
The new age positivists label was directed at entrepreneurship and huge stores of money in Silicon Valley to alleviate said lack and suffering, through technology.
Whose pessimism is being overcome but at what cost and to whom?
The question seems incoherent. As I posted elsewhere, pessimism is an attitude. So, for some pessimists who view reality with dukkha and all the suffering of the world or even the senseless samsara that we undergo, until we break through the karmic cycle, then no matter what kind of progress technology has to provide they probably wouldn't change their attitude. I say it is an attitude because Buddhists don't fall into that mood for example. Furthermore, it also seems that if what the Philosophical Pessimists profess as hard truths or brute facts about reality, then doesn't that make their point universal?
And yet dukkha remains despite the high-tech hedonic treadmill of modern mass consumerism and televangelism.
Yet, the Buddhists didn't just advocate complacency with dukkha, they professed non-attachment to desiring things or goods that we hear from self-help gurus from the Eastern tradition.
Existential dread, my friend, of which pessimism is an expression, is the ineluctable condition to be endured and not a (technoscientific) problem to be solved (by "progress").
Progress, as defined wouldn't solve the issue but alleviate the degree to which it is apparent in ones condition.
But as you well know, some people aren't born with "reality-agreeing" lenses and choose the "rosy-picture" one instead and remain with them.
My intuition is that pessimism (which I share many sympathies with) is very much person dependent. Some people are more predisposed to such views, others are not.
And in the latter case, existential dread is at most covered by an hour long visit to the church on Sundays - if that.
My intuition is that pessimism (which I share many sympathies with) is very much person dependent. Some people are more predisposed to such views, others are not.
Interesting. Probably right. I sometimes wonder if there is intellectual pessimism and emotional pessimism. Personally I have usually taken pessimism for a disposition. Generally my answer to existential angst has been the same as Pablo Casals', "The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step.' Is this just a version of Camus' insistence that we must see Sisyphus as happy? Even pessimism comes with choices.
I'd guess that it depends on how hard-wired the pessimism is on that particular person. If it's not too deep, then surely Sisyphus could simply go up the mountain and enjoy the view and forget about the bolder for a while.
If it's more deep-seated, you still have options, but they're drastically reduced. Which further feeds into the whole pessimistic scenario. It has its own logic and lived experience can be a very powerful force in terms of how deeply felt such feelings are held.
Agent SmithJanuary 16, 2023 at 11:25#7731240 likes
Read the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page on philosophical pessimism. All in all, to ascribe a negative value to life; in vernacular, the game ain't worth the candle.
Reasons for philosophical pessimism
1. Suffering (greatly) exceeds happiness
2. The universe on the whole and even our dear ol' planet earth is on the whole anti-life; imagine having to navigate a boobytrapped übercomplex maze.
3. Life is meaningless
As the OP correctly identifies, these hard facts mirror the Buddha's distillation of what life is in the 4 Noble Truths (dukkha). It's quite odd that the pessimism that prevailed in 500 bC ancient India rang true in 17[sup]th[/sup] century Europe and that it still makes sense to be pessimistic in the 21[sup]st[/sup] century. Not much has changed then, oui?
This, however, may be a mistake, one that is all too easy to make. There's been a sea change in our circumstances - science and technology have drastically reduced suffering and that's not all, the duo has promised even greater prizes such as ... :zip: not a word, ya hear! ... resurrection, immortality, mind uploading, etc.
To get right to the point then, there are problems, but a few of them if not all at some point seem remediable. Pessimism then is a defeatist attitude - it fails to take into account the subtleties and nuances of the problem of suffering and also the solutions.
schopenhauer1January 16, 2023 at 12:05#7731330 likes
To get right to the point then, there are problems, but a few of them if not all at some point seem remediable. Pessimism then is a defeatist attitude - it fails to take into account the subtleties and nuances of the problem of suffering and also the solutions.
The problem of burdens in the first place. Forced situations that one would otherwise not have wanted to deal with. We are always put in a deprivation to get out of. That doesn't go away due to economic circumstances. Also, if this is considered "ideal" state of being, then maybe we should reassess how we are measuring the situation at hand.
. @Shawn why do you bring this topic of philosophical pessimism up every so often in this forum? I am the only one who identifies as one here so it is oddly pointed, even if broadcast to "everyone".
@Baden if you want to be consistent, you should probably throw this in the Antinatalist thread bin where you merged the "Life Sucks" thread. If you are going to be thorough about the more recent policies against philosophical pessimism and antinatalism threads, do it consistently.
Agent SmithJanuary 16, 2023 at 13:33#7731440 likes
Gracias, I was finding it difficult to explain pessimism in the modern world after what I wrote in my last post. Suffering is no longer a viable reason, it has lost its force as a convincing justification, for pessimism as the OP suggests and I concur (statistics clearly show an upward trend in overall well-being).
This, to me, weakens your forced-to-play-the-game argument. The game is (going to be a whole lot of) fun! Who wouldn't want to play; nevertheless, choice is a basic sentient right. Even if I were to be taken to paradise, I would prefer to be asked "paradise, yes/no? A quick question though: Would you rather be offered a cake even when you don't want it or would you prefer not to be asked at all, whether you would like some cake?
schopenhauer1January 16, 2023 at 13:58#7731470 likes
A quick question though: Would you rather be offered a cake even when you don't want it or would you prefer not to be asked at all, whether you would like some cake?
Id rather the option to decline the cake, and if the cake came with limiting choices to just cake and then causing a plethora of harms not even ethical to give that cake.
schopenhauer1January 16, 2023 at 14:00#7731480 likes
@Baden@Jamal@Hanover, just put this in the Life Sucks thread please. Remember, we dont tolerate speech about philosophical pessimism. Or is that only for arguments defending it?
These dont deserve independent threads remember?
Agent SmithJanuary 16, 2023 at 16:52#7731760 likes
I agree this - what we have here at the moment - is for sure not paradise. You forgot to mention progress with regard to the problem of suffering - life expectancy for example went up from, what?, 40s to now 70s (global average) and how long you live is a pretty good measure of well-being if you ask me. You shouldn't ignore this proven fact if you base your argument on dukkha, oui?
Like I admitted, it's hard to disagree with your forced-to-play-the-game argument. It is, how shall I put it?, the little fly in the ointment, the David that brings Goliath down. However, it just dawned on me, pessimists/antinatlists, for the exact same reason, can't advocate for abstaining from having children. They, in this case, are being forced-not-to-play-the-game, oui monsieur? It seems we're at an impasse. The card you've always been playing is not exactly to your advantage.
schopenhauer1January 16, 2023 at 17:39#7731830 likes
They, in this case, are being forced-not-to-play-the-game, oui monsieur? It seems we're at an impasse. The card you've always been playing is not exactly to your advantage.
There is no they prior to existence being forced into anything. The parent is deciding to impose something and that is what is relevant.
Agent SmithJanuary 16, 2023 at 17:47#7731860 likes
The new age positivists label was directed at entrepreneurship and huge stores of money in Silicon Valley to alleviate said lack and suffering, through technology.
The innovative & pioneering & super-rich entrepreneurs (go-getters), including Elon Musk, do indeed seem to be optimistic about their technological innovations improving life conditions for all of mankind. But their risk-taking positive attitude may be based on a "trickle down" economic theory, in which the rich get richer and the poor get less-poor. But, in practice the 1 or 2% at the top get richer faster than the 98%, upon whose shoulders they are standing . That's why political progressives are impatient with the long wait for signs of progress at the bottom of the pyramid.
Regarding the question of "better for whom", abstract statistics seem to tell a different story from emotional politics. Gradual natural evolution took 13 billion years to get us to the point of primitive human culture. Since then, various technologies have been incrementally chipping away at the inequities of the economic pyramid. However, because human societies seem to be inherently hierarchical*1, instead of egalitarian, we may never reach the ideal of total eradication of poverty & suffering. But, we should be grateful for any changes that put more power in the hands of people-in-general to control their own conditions of life.
The site linked below*2 provides statistics on progress using various measures : economic status, literacy, health, mortality, etc. Unfortunately, the charts are typically based on raw population numbers, instead of percentages of the global community. Also, Steven Pinker's Skeptical Inquirer article, Progressophobia*3, provides lots of reasons for informed optimism, instead of news headline pessimism regarding social progress.
Admittedly, it's mostly those near the peak of the socio-economic pyramid who feel optimistic about their own future, and for the trickle-down improvement for all of mankind : "better living through technology"*4. Those near the bottom typically require some kind of supernatural promises, or a turtle-shell shield like meditation. So, it may be up to us philosophically-inclined thinkers to focus on the long-term evolution of human culture, and for short-term Stoicism, to keep us keeping-on toward the goal of improvement in living conditions for our fellow men. :smile:
*1. Human Hierarchy : The presence of a drive for dominance is clearly present in humans and has been documented through various psychological constructs.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/dominance-hierarchy
*2. STATISTICAL EVIDENCE FOR PROGRESS ON POVERTY
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/23/14062168/history-global-conditions-charts-life-span-poverty
*3. Progressophobia : Why Things Are Better Than You Think They Are
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/progressophobia-why-things-are-better-than-you-think-they-are/
*4. Better living through technology :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Living_Through_Chemistry
schopenhauer1January 16, 2023 at 19:10#7731940 likes
The word has been explained in recent times as a derivation from Aryan terminology for an axle hole, referring to an axle hole which is not in the center and leads to a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. According to Winthrop Sargeant,
The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning "sky," "ether," or "space," was originally the word for "hole," particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan's vehicles. Thus sukha ... meant, originally, "having a good axle hole," while duhkha meant "having a poor axle hole," leading to discomfort.[5]
The philosophical up-shot of dukkha is that off-center axel holes can be fixed.
Philosophical pessimists, riding (not trudging along with the peasants and cattle) would rather complain about the annoying thud which accompanies every turn of the wheel then get the fuck off the wagon and fix the damned axel hole.
Pragmatists have a positive, practical view that bad axel holes can be fixed.
technogurus in Silicon Valley, Stanford, and Caltech who seem to be the positivists of our day and are creating new gadgets and devices that sustain and improve our daily lives.
Hey, I like a Mac, iPhone, or iPad as much as the next consumer, but let's not get carried away with paeans to Silicon Valley. [paean = song of praise] Technogurus are hired hotshots who think of things to sell, NOT sustain and improve our lives.
I like the Economist; it's a good source of information, but it isn't the Oracle of Delphi. Of course it takes an upbeat tone when talking about Silicon Valley. It's pro-capitalism. Surprise, surprise.
And yet, what occured to me as rather peculiar about humanity is that we do not submit to this pessimism about life or not all of us at least.
Unlike the funny characters in a Monte Python sketch, digging in the mud who pause to discuss political philosophy. we are more or less programmed to keep on keeping on. It's the needs of the organism that drive us onward, not philosophy--that comes after we have made it to a safe harbor and can pause to philosophize.
Shawn why do you bring this topic of philosophical pessimism up every so often in this forum? I am the only one who identifies as one here so it is oddly pointed, even if broadcast to "everyone".
As you say, the topic was directed at everyone and didn't have anything to do with antinatalism, go figure.
I honestly do not think life is getting worse. Progress, is a difficult measure to calculate and there doesn't seem to be a lack of it. I also doubt that trickle-down economics works by any measure. Elon Musk is addressing some hard problems nowadays, with neuroimplats that will possibly enable a person to walk again or solve depression for the depressed
Regarding progressives, I live in a highly progressive state that is handing out money to build shelter for homeless people, and direct funding for the bottom of the economic spectrum. So, I have no doubt that things are getting better for those who are most in need in my corner of the world.
I might start a thread inspired by your post regarding, How do we define progress? I hope you can join.
I might start a thread inspired by your post regarding, How do we define progress? I hope you can join.
My personal philosophical worldview, Enformationism, is not exactly Pollyanna optimism, but it does have a positive outlook, based on the evidence for upward-trending cosmic complexification, due to the self-organizing ability of Nature. Moreover, one offspring of Nature : human Culture, in modern times, is accelerating the progression of life-sustaining organization -- even as it creates more ways to dominate each other.
From that pragmatic perspective, things are looking-up. But, for me personally, my economic status varies with the general economy of the US, and in step with worldwide recessions and booms. So, my Stoic attitude gets me by whenever I'm scraping the bottom of the economic middle class. Compared to the "huddled masses", though, I have no reason to complain. :smile:
PS__I just noticed the new heading for this thread. So, I see that some on this forum don't share my Stoic optimism that, if we learn to control our unruly emotions, Reason will forge a path to a better life. But, some of us seem to be so depressed by life's imperfections that species suicide is an attractive option.
Agent SmithJanuary 17, 2023 at 02:30#7733440 likes
Reply to rossii Focus on things that you enjoy in life. Good food, good movies/TV shows, good books, et cetera. Try deriving as much joy from these things as possible.
Also, go on anti-depressants if necessary because a lot of times people unfortunately can't will themselves to stop being depressed due to it apparently involving biological factors in their brain or something like that.
Reply to Baden Frankly, anti-natalism for high-IQ people has struck me as being rather stupid since this would only contribute to dysgenics for future generations. If future generations will, on average, become duller, than this would be worse for humanity as a whole. Even the people who want to curb their fertility for the sake of the planet are being stupid IMHO because this would simply mean that there would be fewer people in future generations who will intensely care about this topic because such people will simply be weeding themselves and their own political views out of the future gene pool.
Even if one doesn't want to personally raise children, one can still have them and then give them up for adoption in the form of an open adoption. But of course this is easier to do for women than for men. A man would need to hire a surrogate and use an egg donor for this (in order to be the child's sole legal parent so that he could subsequently unilaterally give the resulting child(ren) up for adoption), and even Mexican surrogates cost a lot of money for Americans. One would be expected to spend tens of thousands of one's own money in order to improve the future human gene pool, and that's too altruistic to expect from most anti-natalist/childfree people. I myself might not mind doing this if I actually had the money for this, though. I'm a huge fan of *voluntary* eugenics.
Frankly, anti-natalism for high-IQ people has struck me as being rather stupid since this would only contribute to dysgenics for future generations. If future generations will, on average, become duller, than this would be worse for humanity as a whole. Even the people who want to curb their fertility for the sake of the planet are being stupid IMHO because this would simply mean that there would be fewer people in future generations who will intensely care about this topic because such people will simply be weeding themselves and their own political views out of the future gene pool.
Totally missing the point of most antinatalists' stance against creating suffering for future generations. Also, a lot of ANs aren't even consequentialists. There is something about being aggressively paternalistic and creating suffering and choices on behalf of others for X cause that violates deontological principles.
Reply to schopenhauer1 There's suffering but there's also a lot of joy. A lot of people consider the suffering to be worth it due to the joy.
And are a lot of anti-natalists from financially well-off backgrounds? If so, then that means that their kids are likely to suffer less than normal children. Unless I suppose the anti-natalists just beat them up to a bloody pulp or something, but that would be against anti-natalists' ethical code since anti-natalists want to *prevent* suffering.
schopenhauer1February 16, 2023 at 09:35#7814950 likes
There's suffering but there's also a lot of joy. A lot of people consider the suffering to be worth it due to the joy.
From at least two perspectives, this is not a good moral justification. One reason its not is that not being born means no person experienced the collateral damage of no joy. No one is sitting in nothingness regretting no joy. However, collateral damage is created the other way. When someone is born there is always at least some regrettable harms that will befall people- sometimes (and not infrequently) quite burdensome for that person.
It is also simply a violation and an insensitivity to the dignity and worth of the person you are procreating to assume on behalf of another person, that they need to live the X number of years of limited choices that this game of life offers and that they need to experience known and unknown harms. It assumes this game (the limited survival game of this life) is what another person must experience and play. This stance is aggressively paternalistic in that it assumes one can and should create unnecessary harms and assumes choices for other people. Rather, prior to the potential childs birth, is one time when one can perfectly follow the non-harm principle, and not have to mitigate greater violations of harm for lesser ones. One can perfectly follow the duty to not unnecessarily cause harm to others.
One would be using the other person and violating their dignity by indeed causing unnecessary harm, and for x cause (even to see the possibility of a happy child). The overlooking of the harm caused, for X result is indeed violation of someones dignity in this situation where no one needed to be caused harm in the first place and where no one needed to assume for another what set of choices is appropriately good for others to have. With this last point I might elaborate that perhaps this lifes set of choices is not one they would have chosen. Perhaps this games limited ways of surviving of being in the world would have been less optimal than their preference. The assumption that other self-reflective beings would agree that the parameters of this world are what they would have chosen is aggressively paternalistic. Indeed even if someone experiences joy (whether frequently/deeply or not) might still regret many aspects of this particular setup. They may have preferred a world where survival through work/labor (or otherwise destitution, free-riding, hacking it in wilderness, and death) are not the de facto parameters.
Reply to Agent Smith What progress do you speak of? A lot of the progress I see is in the ability to support more and more sentient beings. But I'm not sure if that's justifiably progress for the individual. We're still largely the same animal. Not to mention the horrors of prolonged life. Which if considered to be fun to impose on a person by another person would mean that imposer is a psychopath.
Thanks, I guess there is some value in asking the question at the same time.
A little history for youThe moderators here on the forum decided to lump all anti-natalism discussions into this one thread because they annoy some people. I mean the threads annoy some people, not the moderators. Well, the moderators annoy people too. So, anyway, you might find yourself responding to posts that are really old. Alsoif you start a new anti-natalism thread, the moderators will likely move it here without telling you.
For your information@schopenhauer1 is our resident anti-natalism expert.
schopenhauer1March 12, 2023 at 17:36#7884580 likes
This argument strikes me as at best indentured servitude to a hypothetical or slavery to a hypothetical at worst. Am I off the mark?
"You must exist and suffer because some hypothetical beings might have it better as a result."
Slave owners had it better than their slaves.
Yeah I think I agree here. The argument was: Quoting Xanatos
There's suffering but there's also a lot of joy. A lot of people consider the suffering to be worth it due to the joy.
My response was basically:
It is immoral to be aggressively paternalistic- that is to say, to assume
a) others should experience a certain existential arrangement that you deem as good (like having to survive in this universe in some socio-economic way)
b) causing known harms (you know this is part of almost all human lives)
c) causing unknown harms (you know of harms that you cannot predict)
All of these assumptions would be violating the dignity of the person, as forced choices and forced, unnecessary (avoidable) harm was caused on behalf of someone else when this situation could have been avoided (by not procreating).
So my argument rests on deontological considerations of duties towards others not to violate their dignity or use them.
Xanatos also implied that it is okay to do X negative to someone (that could have been avoided) as long as it is with the intention or the hunch that the person being harmed would appreciate it post-facto. Using someone, by causing avoidable harms unto someone, EVEN with the intention that they will have positive experiences from it as well, is still a violation of dignity, the violation of not using people, and a violation of the principle of doing no harm.
Once born, the situation changes whereby there is no WAY to both live and avoid harm and pursue interests. It would in fact be a violation to prevent certain goals and such that might cause harm because the person born now has interests, values, and such. At that post-birth stage, it becomes using heuristics whereby one respects the goals, values, and worth of others while still trying best to exercise ones own will.
However, prior to birth, this is the only time someone (a potential parent) can avoid doing harm 100% towards someone else (by not procreating a child that will be forced and harmed). Thus, really, the decision to not procreate is one of the only ethical decisions where someone can "perfectly" follow the rule of not causing avoidable harm, not using someone, and not violating someone else's dignity by forcing your will on their behalf.
Its nice to be in such a diverse environment where some wanna die whilst others wanna live forever.
Existential HopeMarch 13, 2023 at 12:28#7886950 likes
Reply to universeness Your characteristic generosity is greatly appreciated. However, with all due respect, I don't think that I possess either the eloquence or the breadth of knowledge that S1 does. I can only hope to present the other side of the coin.
Reply to DA671
Good people have such thrusted upon them. Your judgement of yourself is often not as important as how others might judge you. In my opinion your views are far far more balanced, and show more insight, into the very fringe issue of anti-life(natalism), compared to posters such as schopenhauer1.
Existential HopeMarch 13, 2023 at 12:53#7887040 likes
schopenhauer1March 13, 2023 at 14:19#7887270 likes
Done patting yourselves on the back? I find it funny that some styles of debate here are to be very unpleasant, but then use that to say how pleasant life is. Demonstrating unpleasantness as a way to justify life's pleasantness seems a bit more than odd to me.
Anti-natalism is pointless. It's not like mother earth wouldn't reestablish life if it was snuffed out, as it has many times before. Mass extinctions occur. But life as a whole, persists.
I have made a similar point many times when discussing antinatalism. Life existing in the universe is, has, and always will be, a natural consequence of very large variety in every combination possible and my main evidence, is the fact that it has already happened that way.
The antinatalists on TPF don't seem to be concerned with the general existence of 'life' in the universe, they just think that the best cure for human suffering, is no more humans, it's as banal and irrational as that.
Antinatalism preaches that we are all better off dead than alive because it avoids suffering.
I don't think so. Assuming that the occasional joys of life do not justify or compensate for life's inexorable and useless suffering, antinatalism proposes that it's better not to be born in the first place, and failing that, therefore, we who are already born and suffer should not breed any more generations of 'innocents' who will uselessly suffer as we have and do. For the antinatalist, it's (hypothetical) never-borns which are "better off", not "the dead" (especially since the prospect of an 'afterlife' remains an open question perhaps the dead can suffer?! (which is, for some, another precautionary / paranoid reason not to breed)).
Btw, I'm an antinatalist in principle at least until a viable mode of Abolitionism is invented but not by policy (i.e. ideology). I am far more concerned with reducing the suffering of actualalready-borns (naturalized ethics) than preserving the 'hypothetical bliss' of never-borns (speculative inexistence).
To make it a bit easier to respond, here was the original post by Benj96:
Antinatalism preaches that we are all better off dead than alive because it avoids suffering.
However the dead cannot suffer. Nor have they any agency, choice, power, authority or intellect to subvert suffering. So the goal of antinatalism is one of irrelevance and impotence.
Secondly, life, albeit harmful and treacherous indeed at times, is also full of beneficial/benevolent phenomena like love, nurturing, support, care, joy, peace, prosperity, triumph, opportunity, optimism, kindness/generosity, control, choice and agency.
Antinatalism declares that life is the greatest of impositions. But to the living, and especially to those that enjoy life, antinatalism is the greatest of impositions. Not to mention that the state of livinghood was imposed on all by abiogenesis. The universe brought about life whether one likes it or not. This imposition applies to everyone, and yet not everyone feels "imposed" upon by that fact. Many indeed feel grateful instead. Myself included.
Who has more choice? The living or the dead? And thus who has the most authority and capacity to engage and diminish suffering; the living or the dead?
The dead do not impose, control nor have a say. The living do. And because the living are the only faction that can suffer, perhaps the decision to endure it or opt for an escape, is for the living not the dead.
The final statement, is that the living are the only faction that can be antinatalist. There are two things their views must be reconciled with: a). Why do they continue to live if their sole objective in argument is total mass anhilation?This seems hypocritical. You're living to tell people not to.
And secondly, how do they reconcile those that enjoy their lives, and wish to be benevolent, or contribute benefit to the living status, with their beliefs that everyone is better off dead, just in case any suffering should occur.
This gives little to know autonomy to those that accept a bit of suffering in their endeavours to improve and progress the condition of living towards a state of diminished harm.
Anti-natalism is pointless. It's not like mother earth wouldn't reestablish life if it was snuffed out, as it has many times before. Mass extinctions occur. But life as a whole, persists.
Antinatalism preaches that we are all better off dead than alive because it avoids suffering.
However the dead cannot suffer. Nor have they any agency, choice, power, authority or intellect to subvert suffering. So the goal of antinatalism is one of irrelevance and impotence.
Well that's a strawman based on a mischaracterization of the argument. I believe 180 Proof already addressed this though.
Secondly, life, albeit harmful and treacherous indeed at times, is also full of beneficial/benevolent phenomena like love, nurturing, support, care, joy, peace, prosperity, triumph, opportunity, optimism, kindness/generosity, control, choice and agency.
You are bringing up every anti-antinatalist fallacy there is and that I have dismantled over the years. The latest argument is here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14291/the-ethics-of-burdening-others-in-the-name-of-personal-growth-when-is-it-justified/p1
Antinatalism declares that life is the greatest of impositions. But to the living, and especially to those that enjoy life, antinatalism is the greatest of impositions.
If I do something that burdens you but also brings you joy, that doesn't excuse burdening you, especially when I can't get your consent, de facto. Its breaking a deontological principle of making burdens for other people, and deciding for another what burdens another person should endure. Its creating the problem that another person has to solve but it did not have to be made in the first place.
Who has more choice? The living or the dead? And thus who has the most authority and capacity to engage and diminish suffering; the living or the dead?
This argument is specious and a strawman. It is not about "living or dead" but living and "not yet born", huge difference. One has a potential to actually come into existence, and that choice is indeed made by those who are already born. And what of it? This seems like a red herring point. The people already alive are deciding for others what kind of burdens they should endure. See my response above. Also, gambling with people's lives is not so great either. Not existing hurts nobody. No one is obligated to create joy, preventing harm however, is something. Also, creating joy with incumbent burdens is not a purely good act, and creates harm on top of the intended good. See my thread about creating burdens unnecessarily, with no mitigating reason for that person being affected.
Why do they continue to live if their sole objective in argument is total mass anhilation?This seems hypocritical. You're living to tell people not to.
This might be the worst argument when debating antinatalism. Not starting a life and preventing harm for a future person, and not killing yourself are two separate things. Just because upon birth, people don't immediately jump off a cliff, doesn't mean that one is caused harm. Fear of death, etc. are a very real thing. This is the worst strawman.
And secondly, how do they reconcile those that enjoy their lives, and wish to be benevolent, or contribute benefit to the living status, with their beliefs that everyone is better off dead, just in case any suffering should occur.
Is this a joke? This is like a parody of a bad natalist argument. Antinatalists don't believe people should be kill themselves! So uncharitable I'm not even going to take this further. Go back and read what antinatalism really believes. Read some proper philosophers like David Benatar even or Gerald Harrison! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism#:~:text=Antinatalism%20or%20anti%2Dnatalism%20is,humans%20should%20abstain%20from%20procreating. Come back when you at least know what you are debating.
This gives little to know autonomy to those that accept a bit of suffering in their endeavours to improve and progress the condition of living towards a state of diminished harm.
It is about causing suffering/harm/negatives on behalf of others. This can be both negative utilitarian and deontological for NOT violating the principle of harm and autonomy. But also creating the least amount of harms, with no consequences to an ACTUAL person (see Benatar).
Anti-natalism is pointless. It's not like mother earth wouldn't reestablish life if it was snuffed out, as it has many times before. Mass extinctions occur. But life as a whole, persists.
This is the naturalistic fallacy. "Mother Earth" does a lot of things that don't fall into the ethical realm.
My suggestion is at least to read some of my past discussions on this. You can look them up in my profile if you'd like. They go back pretty far. I've seen every argument you can think of, so be careful what you want to rehash. It's been said, believe me.
Reply to Benj96
"that I have dismantled over the years."
This is how delusional some antinatalists are.
You are attempting to use rational argument against fundamentalist style ossification.
The continued existence of humanity and it's future expansion into space, is the best answer to antinatalists. The best aspect of the antinatalist position, is if the human race ever does go extinct, for whatever reason, we wont have to ever endure their exclamations of 'we told you so,' as they will all be extinct.
They are an utter irrelevance, to the vast vast majority of people deciding whether or not to have children.
I have NEVER heard any young couple say 'well we chose to not have children, because of the global power of the antinatalist movement.' :lol: I don't think I ever will hear such!
They are an utter irrelevance, to the vast vast majority of people deciding whether or not to have children.
I have NEVER heard any young couple say 'well we chose to not have children, because of the global power of the antinatalist movement.' :lol: I don't think I ever will hear such!
This topic is meant for you since you display an example of it here so well.
Reply to schopenhauer1
Yeah sure, I will click on YOUR recommendations. :lol:
I am seeking more wisdom and enlightenment so, no thanks, I have no such spare time to waste.
I think that creating children is the source of all human harm. It is the only way human harms can enter the world and creating a new child is not a solution. People will always die and experience an array of harms they didn't consent to before hand.
It would be good if there was somekind of positive afterlife to reward struggling through this.
No children equals no genocides,wars, murder,famine misogyny, slavery, racism, cancer deaths, MS, inequality and so on. It is a positive philosophy that says no to suffering and false hope.
I think that creating children is the source of all human harm.
When is a human a human? In the sense of gradual slight changes over evolution?
Presumably if we have a strict set of conditions that determine us as homo sapien, then there was a point in time in which a predecessor homo species that failed to meet this criterion gave rise to the first sapien that did meet it. The parents = not sapiens, the offspring = sapiens.
In that case if there is "harm" in giving birth to children. The harm is not human. But from other animals that "imposed our humanness on us". Should we then go out and blame all human hardship on australopithicus?
Maybe we take it back further and blame everything on LUCA (last universal common ancestor).
If we are to take this sharp delineation, then creating human children was not harm done by humans. As the parents were originally not human. But rather pre-human animals. Should we then blame all the primates or extinct homo genus groups for harming us in their contribution to birthing us?
You can blame away if it helps you have peace of mind. But it seems totally pointless.
The universe gave rise to life. It imposed living on itself. Through biogenesis, evolution and speciation.
Should we just blame the entire universe then? And if we do, what comes of it? The universe doesn't give a rats ass. Nature operates the way it does. Nothing will change this.
Is there any point in exterminating life in a universe hellbent on its emergence? What is to stop life from rekindling. It is the law of chemistry and physics that dictates the emergence of biology. You cannot swim against that tide.
It is a positive philosophy that says no to suffering and false hope.
Just like many a tyrant has claimed on the past. Ironically they pursue obliteration and/or various forms and extensions of human suffering rather than tempering them. An aim with an absolute solution is always fanatical and often antithetical to its proposed purpose.
I have a lot of anecdotes about my life but they are usually relevant so excuse me if I seem to overshare. I am a frank person.
I think philosophy should be based on real life and lived experience and not exist in a closed off abstract domain.
My dad worked in hospitals and I once asked my mum if he ever worked on a children's ward and she said something like "No because he doesn't have an affinity with children" I asked if she knew that before she married him and she replied yes.
She then went on to have six children with him. Neither of them were good parents and he was particularly unreasonable.
For example when my late oldest brother left the Plymouth Brethren for a Pentecostal church he soon after developed MS and my dad told him he developed MS as a punishment from God for leaving the Brethren. My mother also told me that her cousin died in a bike car collision because he left the brethren and had a career in music. My aunt later told me an open bible was found next to the bed in my deceased cousins bedroom.
The church we grew up in focused on original sin and hell and damnation so like a lot of Christians my parents believed in the principal of total depravity and that they were giving birth to children cursed from birth and heading for hell unless they become religious drones.
So I don't see how you can justify having children with someone that doesn't like them and like a lot of religious people under the premise they are cursed from the outset. The bible and other religions also have a built in narrative to justify human such as the Adam and Eve story.
As a child I asked my mum why brambles had prickles on them that could hurt humans and animals and she said it was all to do with the fall of man. That any suffering and problem in nature was to blame on Adam and Eve.
So parents do give rationalisations for having children that can be and examined and are not just like animals in the wild spontaneously procreating.
Just like many a tyrant has claimed on the past. Ironically they pursue obliteration and/or various forms and extensions of human suffering rather than tempering them. An aim with an absolute solution is always fanatical and often antithetical to its proposed purpose.
It should be a personal choice not to create a child based on conscience. I don't know which tyrants tried to obliterate suffering. A lot of current western governments claim to want to end human suffering in contradiction to their policies. The same with the general public who's actions go against their alleged moral stances.
You can have a (transhuman?) policy of ending human suffering without advocating antinatalism. We just know it is not working and is unlikely to work. It also flies in the face of the natural cycle of change and decay - call it entropy if you will.
I don't see why people get angry about antinatalism considering it is a minority held position that is having no impact as far as I can see and their are billions of humans a live to day and many more being born all the time.
In that case if there is "harm" in giving birth to children. The harm is not human. But from other animals that "imposed our humanness on us". Should we then go out and blame all human hardship on australopithicus?
I believe in free will based on my own experience and as I have pointed out in one of my last posts humans give reasons for having children and have stated beliefs that can be examined unlike any other animal.
Human society is built on reason not on blindly responding to natural urges. I am gay so I am not going to accidentally impregnate a woman whilst drunk or in a fit of lust so I can sympathise with heterosexuals maybe succumbing to wild lust. But strangely most humans are successful at controlling family size ( and even some species restrict population size).
Parents are causally responsible for harm because they are a necessary component in human harm occurring what ever their intentions.
However much I am enjoying an aspect of life (Like the music of Handel or a takeaway) It doesn't make me consider forcing it on someone else. I know most people don't listen to baroque music and I don't like sport and don't like that being forced on me. Having some niche tastes and viewpoints and cognitive issues like ASD and ADHD I can see how one size does not fit all. I cannot just assume other people are like me and replicate that.
We are all going to die anyway and barring an afterlife scenario go extinct and be unaware that we ever existed. I am personally frightened of suddenly ceasing to exist. But when you are in the thick of life it is hard to imagine nothingness and having no concerns and never seeing anyone again. This is one area where I think the religious and other believers in an afterlife have an advantage. They are offering their children eternal life. But unfortunately I see no evidence for the major religions claims.
Reply to Andrew4Handel I think people have problems with it due to low resolution understanding and/or because fanatics of antinatalism also possess low resolution views.
As a thought experiment it has value. As an ethical template it is both irrelevant and contrary.
If you had the ability to give the gift of the following to a friend:
Creating or experiencing art and music that inspires and moves you.
Accomplishing personal goals and achievements.
Falling in love and experiencing deep emotional connections.
Building meaningful relationships with family and friends.
Exploring new cultures and traveling to different parts of the world.
Embracing adventure and taking risks
Appreciating nature
Reading/writing good literature
Learning X thing and mastering Y ability
Experiencing technological innovations
Flow states
Games and hobbies
But then, in order to gift the above positives to a friend you also definitely had to give that person at least several of these things below:
Chronic illness - cancer, disease, mental illness, breakdowns, etc.
Acute illness- bed bugs, disease, mental illness, parasites, food poising etc.
Accidents and misadventures (everything from broken limbs and car accidents, to getting eaten by a lion)
Disasters
Betrayal
Loneliness
Anxiety
Trauma
Addiction
Financial hardships
Poverty
Loss
Practically unavoidable, unwanted and tedious situations
Abuse
Discomforts of great and small variety that adds up when combined (everything from mistreatment by others in small ways, to traffic jams, to stubbed toes, to uncomfortable situations, to embarrassment, etc.)
Would you feel comfortable and moral providing the group of positives if you knew you will 100% also be giving some variation of the group of negatives?
I think you would not feel comfortable nor think that this was moral. But procreation is not seen this way. And here lies the misguided and wrong-headed thinking regarding procreation. It's no different.
Existential HopeJuly 08, 2023 at 09:08#8209850 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1@Tzeentch@plaque flag Many of these positives do exist at the same time with a number of the negatives enumerated here. There is heartbreak , and yet there is a spirit of adventure that can lift one from it.
If one is absolutely sure that the harms would be outweighed by the good, then it would indeed be better to focus on the latter. However, procreation is certainly different because one's actions are not affecting an already existing person who may have interests that diverge from our perspective and who may not require the positives for living a life they value. In this case, one's purportedly benevolent act would either be unnecessary (if the person is already in a state they cherish) or downright detrimental (if it carries overwhelming risks that would destroy the good that is present). When it comes to procreation, there isn't pure knowledge about the future, which is why one has to think about the risks as well as the opportunities. Universal anti-natalism is, I think, obstinately misconceived.
Reply to Existential Hope
This makes no sense. There is no difference in the scenario I provided except one is a friend that exists. The form is the same for both. You give one you give the other.
The point is that you would not be comfortable in one of them, but it should be both because they are essentially doing the same thing. A gift is not truly a gift if you burden someone. Thinking it is would be its own problematic idea of gifts and/or ones megalomaniac idea that you are the bearer of someones burdens because you think this is somehow good to cause for someone else. Again, problematic.
Existential HopeJuly 08, 2023 at 09:38#8209880 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 It makes all the difference. For a friend (a sentient being with a well-being that deserves protection), one has to act in a way that they do not experience any loss of a good that they never needed to bring sufficient value to their lives. It would be problematic to make someone run a marathon so that they can experience the relief of sitting. The struggle becomes acceptable if the good (like the bliss of relaxing) is absent. Only when we can establish that the benefit would actually be greater than the harms and would not put the person in a worse state than they were before does the action become justifiable. It is evident that non-existence helps (or hinders) nobody. But if preventing suffering is good in an impersonal sense, then providing happiness is also important.
benefit would actually be greater than the harms and would not put the person in a worse state than they were before does the action become justifiable.
This is still wrong. If I give my friend a car and they might get into an accident is a different calculation than if I give my friend a car but they will get various pains and woes of life. I would never make that trade off on behalf of a friend,
But if preventing suffering is good in an impersonal sense, then providing happiness is also important.
Happiness giving is not ethical but supererogatory. If I dont give someone happiness in my daily life but dont cause suffering I have done nothing wrong. If I cause suffering, at least potentially I have. Circumstances matter.
Existential HopeJuly 08, 2023 at 09:48#8209930 likes
This is still wrong. If I give my friend a car and they might get into an accident is a different calculation than if I give my friend a car but they will get various pains and woes of life.
An accident would qualify as a woe, but the car can also save one's life as one is attempting to reach the hospital or enable one to spend time with their significant other, even if they live far away. Unless all the concomitant pleasant aspects of existence are sitting in the car alongside the woes, it would undoubtedly be immoral. And it's not as if the benefits alone are adequate. What also matters is whether these positives would put the person in a preferable state to the one they would have found themselves in without them.
Happiness giving is not ethical but supererogatory. If I dont give someone happiness in my daily life but dont cause suffering I have done nothing wrong. If I cause suffering, at least potentially I have.
A society where people were constantly being bombarded for gifting happiness would be sawing off the branch it was sitting on. For most existing people, not directly harming them is surely enough for them to live lives that they find worth living. However, when one is creating people (a state which nobody prefers), the positives matter as much as the negatives.
Unless all the concomitant pleasant aspects of existence are sitting in the car alongside the woes, it would undoubtedly be immoral. And it's not as if the benefits alone are adequate. What also matters is whether these positives would put the person in a preferable state to the one they would have found themselves in without them.
Its not ethical to judge for someone else the amount of harms is appropriate for the treat of goods. In fact, thats perverse. You are playing god of misery and pleasure on behalf of someone. Remember this gift is given, its not requested. And they cant tweak it beforehand to their liking or predict what it is.
A society where people were constantly being bombarded for gifting happiness would be sawing off the branch it was sitting on. For most existing people, not directly harming them is surely enough for them to live lives that they find worth living. However, when one is creating people (a state which nobody prefers), the positives matter as much as the negatives.
Not understanding so no comment.
Existential HopeJuly 08, 2023 at 10:04#8209950 likes
Its not ethical to judge for someone else the amount of harms is appropriate for the treat of goods. In fact, thats perverse. You are playing god of misery and pleasure on behalf of someone. Remember this gift is given, its not requested. And they cant tweak it beforehand to their liking or predict what it is.
It is not ethical to judge for someone else that a good they could be deeply grateful for should not be bestowed because one has been tempted by the religion of pessimism. Gifting something that cannot be requested is not unethical.
This literally is the scenario on both cases . Future conditional in both cases. Youre non-identify argument is weak and special pleading. Id drop it.
It isn't. In one case, one's actions are affecting a real person. In the other, nobody is being left in a more desirable or less desirable state as a result of what we have done. And if the prevention of harms can be good without a person being there, the prevention of happiness is also bad, even if there is no experience of hankering for the positives. Consistency and consideration for the range of applicability should not be hastily dropped. Although, their robustness is not something to be trifled with.
Fair enough (and apologies for possible equivocation). All I meant was that the nature of giving happiness differs to existing beings who already have varying levels of well-being differs from those who are yet to exist.
It is not ethical to judge for someone else that a good they could be deeply grateful for should not be bestowed because one has been tempted by the religion of pessimism. Gifting something that cannot be requested is not unethical.
I'm sorry it doesn't work that way. I can't assume someone wants me to do a "happy" thing for them. But I can safely assume, and in fact am morally obligated not to purposefully harm someone when I don't have to. Certainly, not because I think the pain intendent with whatever happiness I bestow will be "worth it" in my own estimation. You can't keep doing this reverse role and think it comes out the same. It doesn't.
When that person is born, it will be real. That is how the future works. Do you believe in a state called "the future"? Sounds like you don't. I wonder why :roll:.
nobody is being left in a more desirable or less desirable state as a result of what we have done.
Future conditionals exist. If you do X, then Y will happen. You are preventing Y from happening. You don't need someone for the statement "Y will happen" to be true, because there will be a person who exists. Get over this argument. It's not a good look. It really shows special pleading and lack of common language usage.
And if the prevention of harms can be good without a person being there, the prevention of happiness is also bad,
No because as stated earlier, happiness-giving is not an ethical act but a supererogatory one. Not causing avoidable suffering is ethical though. Even more so, willingly wanting to cause suffering because it brings about good is more than negligent, and certainly misguided.
Fair enough (and apologies for possible equivocation). All I meant was that the nature of giving happiness differs to existing beings who already have varying levels of well-being differs from those who are yet to exist.
I don't think so on any substantive level. The person presumably to be born will have varying amounts of happiness just as your friend. The scenario is the same for each so it's not even considering individual levels, just broad experiences like "appreciating friends, art, achievements, etc.".
Existential HopeJuly 08, 2023 at 16:11#8210380 likes
I'm sorry it doesn't work that way. I can't assume someone wants me to do a "happy" thing for them. But I can safely assume, and in fact am morally obligated not to purposefully harm someone when I don't have to. Certainly, not because I think the pain intendent with whatever happiness I bestow will be "worth it" in my own estimation. You can't keep doing this reverse role and think it comes out the same. It doesn't.
I am sorry, but I am afraid that it does. No matter how many times it is repudiated by some, the fact that the good is relevant is inescapable. Just as one may choose to rescue someone based upon their judgement of the perspective of that person and then find out that they wanted an end without making their action wrong when it occurred, one can also decide to do the right thing for someone else when they cannot attain the positive themselves. In the end, your worldview is far too narrow due to the pessimistic biased that fuel it and restrict it to risks and burdens, not opportunities and gifts. And, once again, for those who exist, not directly harming them can, usually, be enough. This is not a about reversal; it is about not being obsessed with one dimension of life. I think that it is far too deficient of a worldview.
When that person is born, it will be real. That is how the future works. Do you believe in a state called "the future"? Sounds like you don't. I wonder why :roll:.
And then, when they do possess the capacity to be harmed and benefitted, we will hopefully behave in an ethical way. I have little time for imaginary goodness or inconsistent ideas.
Future conditionals exist. If you do X, then Y will happen. You are preventing Y from happening. You don't need someone for the statement "Y will happen" to be true, because there will be a person who exists. Get over this argument. It's not a good look. It really shows special pleading and lack of common language usage.
They certainly do, but this does not automatically lead to the manifestation of value for someone. If X does not happen, then Y will have absolutely no significance for anybody who is absent. "Common language" and intuitions can be wrong. It is not a good look to arbitrarily argue that the absence of harms can be good sans true benefits, but the lack of happiness is not a worse state of affairs simply because nobody can ask for it.
No because as stated earlier, happiness-giving is not an ethical act but a supererogatory one. Not causing avoidable suffering is ethical though. Even more so, willingly wanting to cause suffering because it brings about good is more than negligent, and certainly misguided.
Giving happiness is an ethical act. If you do not cause me pain, you have allowed me to live a happy life, which is good (though, admittedly, it isn't the same as actively doing something for others). The mere fact of practical limitations of providing happiness does not diminish its worth. Not creating positives is unethical. Willingly wanting to prevent all of it because one is unable to look beyond their obstructed perspective is even more wrong-headed.
I don't think so on any substantive level. The person presumably to be born will have varying amounts of happiness just as your friend. The scenario is the same for each so it's not even considering individual levels, just broad experiences like "appreciating friends, art, achievements, etc.".
However, I think otherwise and believe that you are mistaken here. It isn't the reality of happiness that is pertinent. Rather, the point is that there is a non-trivial difference between doing good for one who already exists and has a particular state of well-being, and someone who does not. In the former case, current positives should compel us to rethink the necessity of risks, whereas in the latter case, the dearth of any existing level of happiness and interests put the harms and the benefits on equal footing.
one can also decide to do the right thing for someone else when they cannot attain the positive themselves
Getting someone a traditional gift, and handing someone a box of gifts with tremendous burdens are two very different things, and to equivocate the two is rhetorical obfuscation.
Only totalitarian regimes would force people into opportunities and post-facto justify it. It is totalitarian thinking to think that one forces another's hand in the name of "opportunities" and then say, "Well, let's get the suicide machines out" as a consolation prize. Cringey.
And then, when they do possess the capacity to be harmed and benefitted, we will hopefully behave in an ethical way. I have little time for imaginary goodness or inconsistent ideas.
That capacity exists as a real state of affairs. Again, that is what we mean by "future conditionals". It's not inconsistent to understand how future conditionals work. You are denying a whole range of states of affairs don't exist.
It is not a good look to arbitrarily argue that the absence of harms can be good sans true benefits, but the lack of happiness is not a worse state of affairs simply because nobody can ask for it.
You are confusing how epistemology works. Future conditionals are only understood by someone who exists to know "If then statements". It is from the POV of someone who can comprehend "If then statements" that we know this to be true.
If you do not cause me pain, you have allowed me to live a happy life, which is good (though, admittedly, it isn't the same as actively doing something for others).
Oddly, this is just bolstering the AN point. This is how it works when someone is born (they just live their life without your negative interference). However, from the future conditional perspective, you are not going to start negatives for another. It is not letting known harms occur (that could have).
Willingly wanting to prevent all of it because one is unable to look beyond their obstructed perspective is even more wrong-headed.
But we are not talking about unmitigated good are we. Perhaps if a paradise only universe existed and guaranteed you might have some argument. So hey, at least I'm giving you that point! But alas, we know this world is not that. But I'd even argue, EVEN in that scenario, though it is perfectly permissible to go ahead and start that life, not starting it isn't unethical. As you admit, not starting something does nothing for no one. Nothingness doesn't "hurt" anyone.
Existential HopeJuly 08, 2023 at 16:46#8210440 likes
Getting someone a traditional gift, and handing someone a box of gifts with tremendous burdens are two very different things, and to equivocate the two is rhetorical obfuscation.
Receiving a pointless burden that stands in the way of a free and happy life is quite different from being given the very ability to experience the positives (and not by dragging inexistent souls from a superior state of existence). Evasion resides on many territories.
Only totalitarian regimes would force people into opportunities and post-facto justify it. It is totalitarian thinking to think that one forces another's hand in the name of "opportunities" and then say, "Well, let's get the suicide machines out" as a consolation prize. Cringey.
Your usage of the word "force" despite the absence of any evidence that demonstrates the desire of non-existent beings to avoid existence is indicative of your excessive faith in the negative. Only dictatorial dispensations would seek to eradicate all potential good due to their failure to observe value in it. It's myopic to think, "Well, I can see that you sincerely love your life, but since you were not there to ask for it, they ultimately mean nothing and, if given the chance, I would have prevented your existence." Is it "cringey"? I cannot answer that. Nevertheless, I believe that it is unfortunate. It's also not as frivolous as getting the machines out. It is undeniably tragic that people have to go through terrible afflictions. Our efforts to address this have to be incessant and multifaceted (without annihilating the good). If no other option remains, being able to find a graceful exit should not be an unconscionable demand.
That capacity exists as a real state of affairs. Again, that is what we mean by "future conditionals". It's not inconsistent to understand how future conditionals work. You are denying a whole range of states of affairs don't exist.
I am denying that the absence of states of affairs can be better/worse in any meaningful way without a being. More importantly, I reject the double standard that attempts to devalue that which is positive.
That's the point. Don't bring about X so Y doesn't happen. Cause and effect. Future conditional. If this, then that could happen. Don't do this.
X not happening results in A happening instead, which is good for Z. When Z is not there in the first place, the absence of X or A means nothing to Z. However, if it does in one case, I don't see any good reason to think that it doesn't in the other.
You are confusing how epistemology works. Future conditionals are only understood by someone who exists to know "If then statements". It is from the POV of someone who can comprehend "If then statements" that we know this to be true.
Not really. It is you, I think, who is projecting value judgements onto nothingness by conflating the absence of a being and the presence of some good that supposedly comes from it. Also, if/them statements stretch beyond the negative.
Existential HopeJuly 08, 2023 at 16:54#8210510 likes
Oddly, this is just bolstering the AN point. This is how it works when someone is born (they just live their life without your negative interference). However, from the future conditional perspective, you are not going to start negatives for another. It is not letting known harms occur (that could have).
Which is a mirage. Negative interference and positive intervention both have a role to play. The only thing is that an existing person can live a decent life without the latter, whereas there is no life at all before birth.
But we are not talking about unmitigated good are we. Perhaps if a paradise only universe existed and guaranteed you might have some argument. So hey, at least I'm giving you that point! But alas, we know this world is not that. But I'd even argue, EVEN in that scenario, though it is perfectly permissible to go ahead and start that life, not starting it isn't unethical. As you admit, not starting something does nothing for no one. Nothingness doesn't "hurt" anyone.
I am thankful to you for your magnanimous attitude. However, I cannot but continue to disagree. If, hypothetically, we lived in a hellish landscape devoid of all love and beauty without any hope, your view would have had immense worth. But as we are not discussing boundless harms, ignoring the good cannot be ethically justifiable. Your next statement about that possible utopia further reflects your deep-rooted pessimistic bias by forgetting about the fact that procreation can also have unimaginable value for those who exist. Finally, not starting anything benefits nobody either.
I'm reposting part of my question from another thread here, since it was one of the questions that "started" this thread. I still cannot answer myself - why (and how) should an antinatalist live?
I came across this article, and the following is an excerpt from the linked article:
... Jiwoon Hwang, Rafe McGregor, and Ema Sullivan-Bissett (last two are not antinatalists) have all persuasively argued that promortalism is the core of antinatalism. ... For all three individuals, if you accept that life is suffering, it is reasonable not only to want to cease the propagation of life but to end life. Sullivan-Bissett and McGregor offer the analogy of smoking if you think smoking causes harm, you dont only think people shouldnt start smoking. You believe that people should stop if they already smoke ...
So, is there really no reason for an antinatalist to live
That is answered from where the premises are being framed. Most AN arguments are about notions of starting or imposing suffering onto others. Not starting does not necessarily entail thus ending ones life once born. Indeed part of the suffering and imposition to begin with is even being put in a position where once must decide if life is worth living, and thus where Ciorans quote encapsulates a sort of resigned mindset of the living pessimist:
Cioran:It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
Meaning, suicide is an impossible wish of undoing the suffering that has already occurred. What we really want is to never have suffered in the first place. Annihilation after the fact doesnt negate this.
ChristofferDecember 31, 2023 at 12:45#8668470 likes
What we really want is to never have suffered in the first place. Annihilation after the fact doesnt negate this.
Doesn't non-existence in the first place leave the equation absurd? To not have existed is to never have had a will to not suffer. The relief from suffering cannot exist for something that does not exist. We have to exist with suffering in order to want to be free from suffering. This paradox makes the will to never have existed an essentially meaningless yearning. Since it is with even less meaning in its fundamental emptiness than a meaningless existence that actually exist.
schopenhauer1December 31, 2023 at 15:34#8668880 likes
Not quite. Too clean cut and dry, people commit suicide for all sorts of reasons not because they "never really wanted to have suffered." The one subject Camus is actually worth reading for.
Can you explain your objection? At the end of the day my point is antinatalism doesnt entail promortalism, whatever the reasons great or small for suicide. Camus asked if we should kill ourselves if life has no meaning and of course his answer was live rebelliously with the absurdity. Not causing suffering for others, by imposing life doesnt mean one ought to not choose to continue with the burdens foisted upon them by continuing to live.
schopenhauer1December 31, 2023 at 15:37#8668910 likes
We have to exist with suffering in order to want to be free from suffering. This paradox makes the will to never have existed an essentially meaningless yearning. Since it is with even less meaning in its fundamental emptiness than a meaningless existence that actually exist.
That strengthens Ciorans point in suicide. We are put in an impossible situation. The nostalgia for unbirth can never be attained. It doesnt negate choosing not to impose the very dilemma on another.
schopenhauer1December 31, 2023 at 15:49#8668990 likes
That strengthens Ciorans point in suicide. We are put in an impossible situation. The nostalgia for unbirth can never be attained. It doesnt negate choosing not to impose the very dilemma on another.
But we do impose the dilemma on others by acknowledging that the suffering of existence exists, putting a spotlight on ideas that in themselves lead to the suffering. And we also need to interact with the ideas in order to process suffering and find a way past it. To interact with the ideas require interaction with others over these ideas.
I think that when adding our biological drives into the mix, people find social bonds meaningful, regardless of their meaninglessness intellectually. We have this vague feeling of meaning when with others. So in that sense, imposing the ideas that lead to suffering on others is impossible to avoid, but equally required for us in order to find meaning and a will to exist. So we can't be free from imposing these things on others because we need to interact with the ideas about our suffering to process it through our social bonds.
schopenhauer1December 31, 2023 at 16:14#8669200 likes
I just happen to see that as a bit of a reductionist way of viewing suicide.
Suicide is multifaceted. My point was how its not entailed with antinatslism. We can discuss peoples reasons for suicide but the quote was to point the paradoxes associated with it. It ends suffering, but for whom? The suffering has already occurred by the time it is committed. I believe life to entail suffering, both necessary and contingent. Suicide in some way is a response to this in some way, whether philosophically driven regarding meaning or acute reasons like specific circumstances.
schopenhauer1December 31, 2023 at 16:16#8669210 likes
So we can't be free from imposing these things on others because we need to interact with the ideas about our suffering to process it through our social bonds.
Yes what fdrake said, please. Evolutionary as in truth is evolutionary? In what way? how does it fit in that schema of truth? Evolutionary as in the biological mechanism of change via natural selection and adaptation over time for an ecological niche?
Reply to schopenhauer1Reply to fdrake I recall reading somewhere that for some, truth comes to be by evolution, where X is true because we would not survive by believing non-X I cannot for the life of me find anything on it online however.
Adopting that view, antinatalism has to be false, at least after a few generations.
I am not here to argue that view of truth by the way :100:
schopenhauer1December 31, 2023 at 17:18#8669630 likes
Adopting that view, antinatalism has to be false, at least after a few generations.
I am not here to argue that view of truth by the way :100:
Ok got it, you meant the latter definition I asked about- evolution, the biological mechanism. Well, this to me just stinks of the naturalistic fallacy. We evolved a lot of things, and culture has shaped our beliefs in ways that perhaps, originally, it was not physically intended for. I type here on this keyboard, not because my ancestors 100,000 years ago needed it, but because human biological makeup allows for tremendous general learning capacities (as compared with other animals), we can often reason out logical, moral/psychological, and empirical conclusions that are wildly varying "contradictory" to the if/then programming of other animals where things like, "Is it okay to kill?" or "Is it okay to impose suffering by procreation" is not even amenable to their psychological programming.
That is to say, just because "it's in nature", doesn't mean it is morally right, simply. And there are thousands of examples to speak against this naturalistic fallacy thinking. And also, contrary to this view, humans being so culturally "plastic", are naturally able to pose and try to answer various moral questions, so what of that fact?
Reply to schopenhauer1 It seems to me you are making a moral argument, where that was not my intention.
My point was more of, if we accept that truth is determined by the universally held views of the surviving group, antinatalism will soon enough become false, and it will do so every time, as the holders of that view will eventually extinguish themselves.
schopenhauer1December 31, 2023 at 18:11#8670270 likes
My point was more of, if we accept that truth is determined by the universally held views of the surviving group, antinatalism will soon enough become false, and it will do so every time, as the holders of that view will eventually extinguish themselves.
Ok, so you are trying to pose a hypothetical scenario and treat it like a "meme" that gets phased out. But the problem is the same as the naturalistic fallacy as applied to humans.. Humans are so plastic that it is possible that humans have the ability to refrain from procreation and discontinue humans for ethical reasons, like suffering (that those future humans might face if born). Humans are not if/then enough to count out those possibilities. Granted, the likelihood is low, that is not due to some fixed law, simply people's preferences which rather than fixed by physical or innate mechanisms, are largely social, personal, and existential depending on how you look at it.
Ok, so you are trying to pose a hypothetical scenario and treat it like a "meme" that gets phased out. But the problem is the same as the naturalistic fallacy as applied to humans.. Humans are so plastic that it is possible that humans have the ability to refrain from procreation and discontinue humans for ethical reasons, like suffering (that those future humans might face if born).
Right, but even then, under evolutionary truth, antinatalism turns out to be false, even if there are no humans around anymore especially when there are not more humans around. The truth value of something does not depend on whether there is someone there to state it.
That is to say, just because "it's in nature", doesn't mean it is morally right, simply.
Of course, but I will not pretend that the moral argument works either. Antinatalism can be rejected by default in frameworks such as virtue ethics and deontology, as well as ethical egotism. Being that AN works under the premise that suffering outweights joy in life, it could also be rejected within consequentialism, as most people would reject that premise.
schopenhauer1January 01, 2024 at 01:23#8671890 likes
Right, but even then, under evolutionary truth, antinatalism turns out to be false, even if there are no humans around anymore especially when there are not more humans around. The truth value of something does not depend on whether there is someone there to state it.
What makes it truth? It seems a category error to apply truth to a process. You havent explained how this term is meant to be used in this context. It seems like a misuse.
Of course, but I will not pretend that the moral argument works either. Antinatalism can be rejected by default in frameworks such as virtue ethics and deontology, as well as ethical egotism. Being that AN works under the premise that suffering outweights joy in life, it could also be rejected within consequentialism, as most people would reject that premise.
This is all false. Antinatalism can be supported in almost any normative theory, including deontology.
What makes it truth? It seems a category error to apply truth to a process. You havent explained how this term is meant to be used in this context. It seems like a misuse.
schopenhauer1January 01, 2024 at 02:18#8672020 likes
Reply to Lionino
The pragmatist theory of truth is about practical consequences based on their success in solving a problem, and thus is an argument for pluralism for methods that lead to an outcome. As far as I see, it has nothing to do with what outcome is deemed as successful. If we are going for someone not suffering in the future, that would be antinatalism.
Right, but if we are going for survival, which was my initial premise, natalism would be the answer.
Sure. But obviously one could contend that "survival" is some moral mission, especially above and beyond that of imposing the conditions of suffering for a future person.
But obviously one could contend that "survival" is some moral mission, especially above and beyond that of imposing the conditions of suffering for a future person.
Well, everything can be contended in ethics, which is why I use more common sense than a philosophical approach when I am faced with a dilemma in real life not my intellectual topic of interest.
But to talk about, the future conditions of suffering are an unknown, which is an argument against suicide. Not only that, but the conditions of suffering are also relative. A young adult athlete might end up killing himself after a tragit accident that puts him on a wheelchair. People born without movement in their legs do not kill themselves over being on a wheelchair, because that is all they have known, and they make do without being able to walk, and sometimes they make do wonderfully. Of course, there is a limit to this, such as Harlequin disease or glass bones, but we do put down Harlequin disease patients and always have they end up dying shortly after birth anyway.
schopenhauer1January 01, 2024 at 19:55#8674860 likes
But to talk about, the future conditions of suffering are an unknown, which is an argument against suicide. Not only that, but the conditions of suffering are also relative. A young adult athlete might end up killing himself after a tragit accident that puts him on a wheelchair. People born without movement in their legs do not kill themselves over being on a wheelchair, because that is all they have known, and they make do without being able to walk, and sometimes they make do wonderfully. Of course, there is a limit to this, such as Harlequin disease or glass bones, but we do put down Harlequin disease patients and always have they end up dying shortly after birth anyway.
My response is not based on the empirical per se, but the empirical can be added to it. Rather, it is contra the paternalistic idea that imposing the limitation of life's choices (as life can only provide a range of choices one may have ultimately never wanted to choose from), known suffering (one knows of suffering but is willing to expose others to it anyways), and unknown suffering (one doesn't know ALL the forms of suffering), is acceptable. Rather, it indicates that procreation is in fact a violation of a deontological sort against the person who is so affected by this decision (the child born).
In Kantian terms, it is violating the principles of non-malfeasance which ultimately has its basis in not using people for a means to your ends.
As I said before, I don't think that most people would accept that the duty of sparing the person of suffering trumps the duty of bringing someone to life and not depriving them of all joys.
In any case, my original comment was mostly playful. As a personal dogma, I don't think antinatalism is a serious idea that has to be debated. So I will just hide this thread. Cheers.
QuixoticAgnosticFebruary 23, 2024 at 07:32#8831350 likes
What are antinatalist counterarguments to a more stoic perspective on life? I.e., one that values self-improvement and a sort of indifference to suffering, such that avoiding suffering isn't necessarily a primary tenet of living a good life. In general, antinatalism seems to focus so heavily on the aspect of inevitable suffering, but if one doesn't think suffering is necessarily bad, what leg do they have to stand on?
And the argument would go like this: you are delusional.
QuixoticAgnosticFebruary 23, 2024 at 10:14#8831500 likes
Reply to AmadeusD A bad (negatively feeling) experience =/= badness overall. It's kind of the whole point of resiliency and growth: you fight through temporary displeasure to become a stronger person. You seemed to gloss over the argument I was making to nitpick a mostly semantic issue. Plus, it's kind of ironic that you seem to dismiss discussion right after ridiculing someone else for the same thing.
Reply to QuixoticAgnostic in reverse, I did no such thing. Please dont make accusations like that up.
I didnt miss anything. I agree, but thats not what suffering consist in. Suffering is not a bad feeling. It is the state of being emotionally perturbed by an experience to the point you cannot integrate it. It precludes a silver lining type framing, without further fact.
Negative experiences can be sublimated. Suffering is the end state of failing to sublimate an experience. Most people choose to do this first, unfortunately. But nevertheless I am not nitpicking at all. Suffering and having a bad time are not synonymous and can be separate in some sense
schopenhauer1February 24, 2024 at 16:58#8833490 likes
Negative experiences can be sublimated. Suffering is the end state of failing to sublimate an experience. Most people choose to do this first, unfortunately. But nevertheless I am not nitpicking at all. Suffering and having a bad time are not synonymous and can be separate in some sense
I must begrudgingly comment that you make a good point here.
schopenhauer1February 24, 2024 at 17:04#8833510 likes
A bad (negatively feeling) experience =/= badness overall. It's kind of the whole point of resiliency and growth: you fight through temporary displeasure to become a stronger person. You seemed to gloss over the argument I was making to nitpick a mostly semantic issue. Plus, it's kind of ironic that you seem to dismiss discussion right after ridiculing someone else for the same thing.
So there are a lot of points to make, that it is hard for me to distill it in a concise way. However, I'll try from the perspective of deontology...
So deontologically, if one believes that others should not be used as means to an ends, it would be wrong to put others in a situation whereby they have to be put in harms way in order to "grow". Thus, knowingly putting someone in harms way so that they can grow, when that situation could have been avoided, is still wrong, even if they "grow" from it.
Of course, there are mitigating factors for this. If someone is already in a situation where it is judged they will be harmed if you do not take care to mitigate the harm in some way with a less harm, then this is permissible. For example, it is better to give children shots to immunize them against disease. It is better to put children in some form of education so they an survive well in society etc. However, that is only due to the fact that the children were put in that situation in the first place. It is a different question whether they should even be put in the situation for which one must mitigate greater harms with possibly lesser negative experiences/harms/suffering.
See this thread for more detail as it is almost exactly to do with this discussion of purposefully putting people in harms way for "growth":
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14291/the-ethics-of-burdening-others-in-the-name-of-personal-growth-when-is-it-justified
LeontiskosFebruary 28, 2024 at 00:01#8841120 likes
(I will use your term "burden" rather than "harm's way")
So deontologically, if one believes that others should not be used as means to an ends, it would be wrong to put others in a situation whereby they have to be put in harms way in order to "grow".
The Kantian deontological maxim is something like, "Do not use others as a means to your own ends." If a parent teaches a child a skill, then arguably, according to your ideas, they are "burdening" the child. So when Honest John teaches and forces Pinocchio to perform, he is taking advantage of him and using him as a means for his own selfish ends. But suppose that Geppetto teaches Pinocchio to make toys in order that Pinocchio might make a living. In this case he is using Pinocchio as a means to Pinocchio's own ends, and it is actually a parent's duty to educate their children in this manner. A relation between a parent and child is different from a relation between two adults. Thus your means/ends analysis is flawed.
Your distinction between example 1 and example 2 does not hold water given the fact that example 2 also fits your definition of "necessity" (Reply to schopenhauer1). In example 2 the burden was not created "just to see that person overcome the burden," but rather to provide the child with skills of survival and independence. Further, the duty of the parent to educate includes more than helping the child survive. If a parent teaches their child to dance for the sake of the child's happiness, they are not violating Kant's morality. It doesn't matter that dancing is not necessary for survival.
Kant's maxim does not include a dispensation for cases where the end is necessary for survival. The maxim is not, "Do not treat others as a means to an end unless the end is their own survival." Your Kantian argument and your survival argument are therefore two different arguments, but neither one succeeds.
(Another odd presupposition here is that everything a parent subjects their child to is necessarily a burden.)
Reply to Leontiskos No need to overthink it mate - nothing is factually less of a burden than something. How you feel about that could be considered depraved. But I didn't say how I felt :)
LeontiskosFebruary 29, 2024 at 02:48#8844360 likes
"Nothing" excludes boredom or stasis. Clearly. So, not sure how you think I would respond, but im laughing.
QuixoticAgnosticMarch 05, 2024 at 05:01#8854800 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 I regrettably can't argue too strongly against the imposition of will against potential humans argument. The only way I can logically get around it is if the parents had altruistic motivations for creating a child, like wanting to allow a child to experience the joys of existing, and if existence itself wasn't inherently burdensome, as it seems to be, even by the most optimistic of folks. I suppose I'll continue to hold the stance that anti-natalism is a rational position, but one that I simply don't feel compelled enough to act in accordance with. Although, now that I think of it, I think I may agree for the previous reason that natalism is ethically questionable, but that life and existence isn't inherently bad or suffering, because I think suffering can be overcome, even if it isn't right to impose it on a potential human.
schopenhauer1March 08, 2024 at 15:15#8863440 likes
My argument against antinatalists -- you're still here, so you think Life is worth living. The end. Just a bunch a weak individuals who don't want to hold themselves accountable for their life sucking.
Antinatalism is not promortalism. It's a strawman. Antinatalism is about not creating new life, not about whether, once born, it is moral or "worth it" to continue.
schopenhauer1March 08, 2024 at 15:48#8863530 likes
It's about "whaa my parents had no right to give birth to me." Well, they did, get over it.
That can be said about literally any moral topic- not well-thought out or philosophical. Very internet trolling though, so not surprised on an internet forum...
And they drone on and on about how shitty life is, fact is they're just cowards who actually can't embrace nothing, once they've already tasted life. They want life to end AFTER theirs runs to completion. Like a Last Man. Pathetically dissonant.
Fear of death/dying is not cowardly, nor again, has it to do with antinatalism. Think of better arguments.
schopenhauer1March 08, 2024 at 16:06#8863570 likes
Dude, saying "Well they did it get over" can be inserted against any claim against an ethical rule. Someone murders someone or steals.. "Well get over it" is not an answer to whether it was ethical to murder or steal. You don't get that?
It can, but equating them as the same would obviously be a fallacy of equivocation.
That doesn't make sense and you are just arguing to argue now. Do you have an actual argument or is that it? Because I already said why that can be said about anything, and it can, so what specifically do you have other than hyperbole and ad hominem?
... suffering is the crucible in which all great things are born, through overcoming that suffering. Not by avoiding it.
I've neither claimed or implied otherwise. Obviously, as an existential fact, suffering is not avoidable; morally, however, suffering is a reducible exigency, the reason, in fact, for flourishing (i.e. overcoming) by non-reciprocally non-instrumentally helping others to reduce, not "avoid", suffering. Of "all great things", human flourishing comes first and last, otherwise the rest (including "great things") are merely decadent detritus. Easy sleep is not proposed by me as a "virtue" but as the daily reward for and restorative of strivings to flourish even as a measure of good health: eine Ja-sagen zu Leiben. :fire:
The eternally recurring choice: blue pill (passivity) or red pill (actively affirming there is no ultimate choice: amor fati what Spinoza calls blessedness) ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/726159
A person can also not want to reproduce without being an Antinatalist, and for several reasons. I find antinatalist as people who want to deflect from reasons why they can't actually have kids because it would bring THEM more suffering. They don't want to hold themselves accountable for how they feel. So they say it's immoral instead.
Its the same, I'd say, for every person who considers themselves 'moral' or having fulfilled their moral duties as proven by some 'justification' so that they can take a break to 'live life' as they so desire it (most every person including you and me). Its an ad hoc excuse being masked in rational language to seem more palatable and less emotionally weak as it really is. At least, I speculate as much.
schopenhauer1March 09, 2024 at 16:00#8865460 likes
But then, this belies the very point that one even should be in a place where they should be overcoming. One is simply descriptive. Every day is a sort of overcoming of death, if nothing else. But to force others to conform to this system of overcoming- the problem of initiating (this whole system OF) harms on others, is the one at hand.
Someone ELSE deemed it, that this is "good" (and God said "it was good"). People want to be gods in their decisions that others should even BE overcoming.
But more likely, people don't think that grandiosely. Rather, if they are benevolent (and not just capricious or cruel), they are thinking of some positive outcomes, usually selfish vision of future familial X. If it is for someone else's "sake" (the future person born), it might be simply thinking of the good things that might occur. The negatives get downplayed. At worst, it is used as an excuse as it is seen as necessary for the good. Even if we were to say that is a true statement, "That good comes from struggle", that belies the question of whether one should force others to endure the struggle. That will always recenter the question, and not let the issue at hand slip away.
QuixoticAgnosticMarch 09, 2024 at 22:29#8866440 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Surprised you engaged with him as long as you did. But also, do you mind giving your opinion on this point I made earlier: Even though it may be wrong to introduce life, because you are forcing them to bear the burden of suffering, that doesn't imply that life itself is inherently suffering. Perhaps thats a strawman though to say the antinatalist claims life is just or predominantly suffering. In fact, this may be in favor of your point that, for the people living, there's no urgency to end your own life because there is still value to be had in it. But just because there is value, that may not outweigh the prevalence of suffering, nor the nonconsensual thrusting of children into potential suffering.
I think Vaskane is in a trough at the moment. Regularly devolving into a pissing match with himself. Last time he did this he apologised directly to me.
In the original position, you are asked to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society. This choice is made from behind a "veil of ignorance", which prevents you from knowing your ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially in Rawls' formulation, your or anyone else's idea of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally.
If this was applied to antinatalism, imagine a prospective parent/society is behind the veil of ignorance. They would not know what position any potential child will occupy, what their quality of life will be, their potential for suffering or happiness, or their genetic/biological predispositions.
Rawls' Veil of Ignorance (aka Original Position) asks us to consider the full range of possible lives a new person could lead. This includes the best possible scenarios as well as the worst- thus extreme suffering, disabilities, mental illness, or life in poverty and conflict, amongst a whole host of other negatively balanced lives.
Since behind the veil, individuals do not know if their offspring will be born into a life of mostly joy or mostly suffering, they must weigh the potential risks of severe harm and suffering against potential benefits of a good life.
Combining this with Benatar's asymmetry, it may be rational to view the prevention of harm as a greater moral priority than the creation of happiness, especially when consent cannot be obtained.
Thus, under the veil of ignorance, where the outcomes of a new life are unknown, the ethical priority of avoiding potential harm and respecting the impossibility of obtaining consent presents a strong argument against procreation.
An inversion is occurring where consent becomes more fundamental than life. A similar inversion occurs where the justification of society displaces Rawls' question of how best to order society. The problem is that life is the precondition for consent, and is therefore prior to consent. Making consent the summum bonum is therefore misguided from the start. Either God or Nature proves that consent does not deserve the highest place, for it simply does not occupy the highest place. These sorts of arguments look to be a critique of reality, and are incompatible with an acceptance of reality. I suppose one could argue that consent should precede life, but at the end of the day the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't.
The variant on Rawls' argument is somewhat interesting: negative utilitarianism in the service of antinatalism. "I should not have a child if they will suffer much." Meh. I don't think life is ultimately about the avoidance of suffering any more than I think life is ultimately about consent, and I have found that those who are excessively focused on such things tend to lead impoverished lives. I'd say life is bigger than suffering or consent.
An inversion is occurring where consent becomes more fundamental than life. A similar inversion occurs where the justification of society displaces Rawls' question of how best to order society. The problem is that life is the precondition for consent, and is therefore prior to consent. Making consent the summum bonum is therefore misguided from the start.
I never understand these kind of criticisms. It reminds me of "If a tree falls in the woods.." arguments. One can say this about ANY moral claim. For example, if no humans were around, there would be no need for morality regarding murder. THUS, how can murder be wrong (whether through consent, rights, dignity of the human, or other normative ethic) if the norms behind "Murder is wrong" do not exist prior to the existence of humans?
Obviously this is fallacious thinking. Rather, we can simply say that "Once humans DO exist, then 'Murder is wrong' comes into play". The same with procreation. Once humans DO exist, then "Procreation is wrong" comes into play. I don't see it being more complicated than that. ALL moral claims presuppose "life" (people) exist(!) in the first place.
These sorts of arguments look to be a critique of reality, and are incompatible with an acceptance of reality. I suppose one could argue that consent should precede life, but at the end of the day the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't.
The variant on Rawls' argument is somewhat interesting: negative utilitarianism in the service of antinatalism. "I should not have a child if they will suffer much." Meh. I don't think life is ultimately about the avoidance of suffering any more than I think life is ultimately about consent, and I have found that those who are excessively focused on such things tend to lead impoverished lives. I'd say life is bigger than suffering or consent.
I think this is throwing out a lot of important values we hold in other arenas. For example, if as a consenting adult I force you into a game you don't want to play because I think the game is bigger than any one individual's refusal, that seems mighty suspicious. And I am talking personal ethics here, which procreation (should) fall under. I do believe there is a discontinuity with the State/political ethics, but that is a different argument, which I can bring in if you want to make the category error of using laws like the draft, education compliance, and inoculations.
I also think it is a bit of a red herring to compare it to parental care of children under a certain age (often 18 yo). That is because usually the care is about preventing more harm in the future for that child, where this very specific/unique kind of decision is creating all of the potential harm in the first place. These are two different types of decisions regarding consent. At this point since someone DOES exist, it would be more harmful NOT to take care of them, as now you are not recognizing the rights of the child who does exist already, to be cared for, being that they have not fully developed into fully functioning adults yet, and had no say to be born in the first place. Presumably babies and children have a right not to be abandoned, neglected, or abused, for example, which is a different (positive/must do ethics) consideration rather than the (negative/NOT doing) ethics of simply not causing harm in the first place. One is palliative (as someone already exists and is exposed to great harms), and one is preventative (in the absolutist terms).
If this was applied to antinatalism, imagine a prospective parent/society is behind the veil of ignorance.
This doesn't make sense. How could I have a child without knowing the social conditions into which it would be born? If I were the King of Philosophy, I would outlaw thought experiments.
This doesn't make sense. How could I have a child without knowing the social conditions into which it would be born? If I were the King of Philosophy, I would outlaw thought experiments.
Just curious, do you know of Rawls' Veil of Ignorance regarding justice and rights? If so, can you see how there can be a direct analogy between the use in the equality sense for a moderate social democracy to understanding that a person's life could be of any condition?
Also, just factually speaking, no person's life can be predicted through simply contemplating it, or taking one's own circumstance as the template for how other people will live.
Imagine if I were to predict all sorts of things based on my understanding of what I think you would like.. But I forced it on you forever lest you kill yourself. Such an odd position to defend. But you will say the same for mine, simply because it is not widely considered or understood, not because it isn't sound.
do you know of Rawls' Veil of Ignorance regarding justice and rights?
I've heard of it only in the quote and link you provided. As described there, as I noted, it does not apply to antinatalism, since when I choose to have a child I do know the kind of life it is likely to live. My wife and I wouldn't have had children if we didn't think we could give them a good life.
I've heard of it only in the quote and link you provided. As described there, as I noted, it does not apply to antinatalism, since when I choose to have a child I do know the kind of life it is likely to live. My wife and I wouldn't have had children if we didn't think we could give them a good life.
As I said earlier, it is just factually the case you can never know the kind of life your child will have accurately. That is epitome of hubristic thinking. Any number of factors including health issues, accidents, societal/environmental changes can effect a person negatively and was not accounted for in the prediction. It has been well-documented how when we are in our "happiest states" (which is often the case of young couples who start developing a long-term relationship, or simply sexual relations leading to accidental pregnancy), we are often at our worst state of predicting all the negative things that can occur (Pollyannaism).
Also, personal decision-making process of a single couple is presented here as a rebuttal to a broader philosophical position. This is a case of confirmation bias and overconfidence in predictive ability of a complex situation (every single experience of a lifetime's worth of experiences of a person).
We all have to be born and have to live before we can stumble upon the idea of anti-natalism. Seems self-defeating to think much of it. Trying to subvert the nature that brought us to this idea.
If life is ever good enough to allow one to ponder whether to have a child, life must be good enough for the child just the same.
If life is so bad to ponder whether to have a child, dont have a child. But should no one be allowed to have a child? Death is still coming for all so what does it matter if you do or do not have a child? No one, not even your children (if you have any) are going to be there long enough to justify any judgment of it.
We all have to be born and have to live before we can stumble upon the idea of anti-natalism. Seems self-defeating to think much of it. Trying to subvert the nature that brought us to this idea.
I never understand these kind of criticisms. It reminds me of "If a tree falls in the woods.." arguments. One can say this about ANY moral claim. For example, if no humans were around, there would be no need for morality regarding murder. THUS, how can murder be wrong (whether through consent, rights, dignity of the human, or other normative ethic) if the norms behind "Murder is wrong" do not exist prior to the existence of humans?
Obviously this is fallacious thinking. Rather, we can simply say that "Once humans DO exist, then 'Murder is wrong' comes into play". The same with procreation. Once humans DO exist, then "Procreation is wrong" comes into play. I don't see it being more complicated than that. ALL moral claims presuppose "life" (people) exist(!) in the first place.
If life is ever good enough to allow one to ponder whether to have a child, life must be good enough for the child just the same.
How does that logic follow? What happens if life was really bad but one still pondered whether to have a child.. Someone in a terrible circumstance let's say. It is simply false that all circumstances thinking of procreation entails one is in a good place. Also, even if one was in a good place whilst thinking about procreation, why would that effect the morality of the decision of creating suffering for another person?
But should no one be allowed to have a child? Death is still coming for all so what does it matter if you do or do not have a child? No one, not even your children (if you have any) are going to be there long enough to justify any judgment of it.
That makes no sense. For example, if someone is suffering in agony, that person isn't going have such a carefree outlook. However, one doesn't even need to go to the worst outcomes, just the fact that you are making a decision for someone else who will live out the burdens, is enough to give pause.
just the fact that you are making a decision for someone else
Having a child, feeding a child, etc. are as much making a decision for someone else as deciding not to have a child, or aborting a child.
If it is good to have no children because life is suffering, than life isnt all bad since we get to make this good decision to have no children. Arent we brave and honest and considerate. Such wonderful compassion for the suffering of future generations - we should build ourselves some statues for thinking so compassionately and reasonably so that all future generations will remember our sacrifices. Oh wait.
If it is good to have no children because life is suffering, than life isnt all bad since we get to make this good decision to have no children. Arent we brave and honest and considerate. Such wonderful compassion for the suffering of future generations - we should build ourselves some statues for thinking so compassionately and reasonably so that all future generations will remember our sacrifices. Oh wait.
I see your attempt at irony. Nice, I like irony. But since it really doesn't have an impact on the argument, I don't have much more to say to it. If no one was around to gain the benefits of non-existence, shall we create sufferers so that they can see how they would have benefited from non-existence? That would also be ironically wrong.
From a more practical standpoint, if a prospective parent is either 1) so depressed that they (incorrectly) view their life (since they have no true knowledge of the subjective assessment of life by others) as pure suffering or 2) their is actually so materially terrible that it is in reality pure suffering, then neither of those situations is optimal for childrearing, thus that individual or couple definitely should not have children. However, that individual's situation is absolutely not a reason for anyone else to not have children.
it is just factually the case you can never know the kind of life your child will have accurately.
That's very different from a "Veil of Ignorance." If it only means that the we can't predict the future perfectly accurately, then it's kind of a useless concept.
Also, personal decision-making process of a single couple is presented here as a rebuttal to a broader philosophical position.
No, it's not just a single couple. It's reasonable to say that any prospective parent can know their future child's ethnicity, social status, and their idea of how to lead a good life with reasonable accuracy.
To be clear, I'm not arguing against anti-natalism here, although you know I find the idea repugnant. I'm only arguing that your logic is flawed.
I never understand these kind of criticisms. It reminds me of "If a tree falls in the woods.." arguments. One can say this about ANY moral claim. For example, if no humans were around, there would be no need for morality regarding murder. THUS, how can murder be wrong (whether through consent, rights, dignity of the human, or other normative ethic) if the norms behind "Murder is wrong" do not exist prior to the existence of humans?
Obviously this is fallacious thinking. Rather, we can simply say that "Once humans DO exist, then 'Murder is wrong' comes into play". The same with procreation. Once humans DO exist, then "Procreation is wrong" comes into play. I don't see it being more complicated than that. ALL moral claims presuppose "life" (people) exist(!) in the first place.
No, that's not what I am saying. Your premise is . Your conclusion follows, . This precedence is both temporal and ontological. It is that premise that I am targeting. Consent doesn't precede birth. Birth precedes consent. That's how reality works. What you are doing is asking for or wishing for a different reality. The ontological principle of reality is that we receive before we give. Your alternative principle would have us give (consent) before receiving (existence).
Antinatalism reminds me of Gnosticism, where nature and the material world were created by an evil god and one is thus supposed to escape this entire order of being. Or in modern terms, something like The Matrix. The true god is represented by Consent, and in the alternative, non-evil universe, Consent reigns. Given our gnostic situation, the best we can do is escape the material order by ceasing all procreation. Historically gnostics really did tend to eschew procreation.
(Edit: I now see you have authored a thread, "If there is a god, is he more evil than not?" :razz:)
I think this is throwing out a lot of important values we hold in other arenas. For example, if as a consenting adult I force you into a game you don't want to play because I think the game is bigger than any one individual's refusal, that seems mighty suspicious. And I am talking personal ethics here, which procreation (should) fall under.
I think consent has a place, but not the highest place. It does not trump everything else.
That's very different from a "Veil of Ignorance." If it only means that the we can't predict the future perfectly accurately, then it's kind of a useless concept.
No, it means that from a position of ignorance we should do the LEAST amount of harm. And our disagreement is over how ignorant we truly are over a complex situation like a person's psychological, physical, interpersonal, and emotional well-being over the course of a lifetime.
No, it's not just a single couple. It's reasonable to say that any prospective parent can know their future child's ethnicity, social status, and their idea of how to lead a good life with reasonable accuracy.
It is true that many decisions are made based on prevailing social norms, but this does not elevate these norms to the status of ethical imperatives. The is/ought problem remains central here: the fact that something is commonly done does not mean it ought to be done. The ethical implications of bringing a child into the world must be scrutinized independently of societal conventions, and this scrutiny reveals the inadequacy of current norms in addressing the potential for harm and suffering.
To be clear, I'm not arguing against anti-natalism here, although you know I find the idea repugnant. I'm only arguing that your logic is flawed.
When it comes to making decisions for another person, procreation is unlike any other decision. It imposes an irreversible existence and all its accompanying burdens onto another being without their consent. This is different from other decisions we might make for someone elses perceived benefit, as those typically allow for some form of redress or agency by the affected individual. Comparing it to a gift is illustrative: a gift can be accepted, rejected, or discarded with minimal consequence. Procreation, however, imposes life, with all its inherent suffering and challenges, making it a decision of an entirely different kind AND magnitude.
We are not ignorant that suffering will occur- but we are ignorant as to the manner it will take shape.
Hubris is a source of a lot of well-intentioned but misguided ideas.
This precedence is both temporal and ontological. It is that premise that I am targeting. Consent doesn't precede birth. Birth precedes consent. That's how reality works. What you are doing is asking for or wishing for a different reality. The ontological principle of reality is that we receive before we give. Your alternative principle would have us give (consent) before receiving (existence).
This all follows from a faulty view of my premise.
Antinatalism reminds me of Gnosticism, where nature and the material world were created by an evil god and one is thus supposed to escape this entire order of being. Or in modern terms, something like The Matrix. The true god is represented by Consent, and in the alternative, non-evil universe, Consent reigns. Given our gnostic situation, the best we can do is escape the material order by ceasing all procreation. Historically gnostics really did tend to eschew procreation.
I kind of like this notion, though I don't hold "Consent" to be independent of humans, simply entailed in humanity. If there is no humanity, consent disappears as well.
Also, this particular argument is a bit different than just consent. Rather, it is saying that since we are IGNORANT as to how any person's life truly will play out in the course of their lifetime, AND we cannot get consent otherwise, we should do the option that is with the intention of the LEAST harm, which is of course, not even procreating that person who will be harmed to X degree.
That they will be harmed is generally not questioned. To what extent, and by what right is what is at stake here.
(Edit: I now see you have authored a thread, "If there is a god, is he more evil than not?" :razz:)
Ha, well, look at my profile for a better understanding of my overall philosophical position. And Gnosticism is mentioned, but as an analogy to Philosophical Pessimism, not, obviously, as a belief in it as a wholesale mystical/ontological belief system.
I think consent has a place, but not the highest place. It does not trump everything else.
But this also relies on what "the good" is, and defines it in "negative" terms (what not to do). Suffering is weighted more heavily in this conception such that, causing negative/suffering unnecessarily on someone else's behalf is weighted as a bigger moral consideration than any of the positives that result from causing the suffering. Not causing great distress to someone is a bigger ethical consideration than say, buying them cake.
There's another argument here to be made from this, but I am not making that case right now. Though all of it basically can be tied together to make for a compelling set of arguments from various angles contra procreation.
You didn't respond to my argument. The argument you make here is your usual one and has nothing to do with a veil of ignorance. No reason to take this any further.
You didn't respond to my argument. The argument you make here is your usual one and has nothing to do with a veil of ignorance. No reason to take this any further.
What isnt answering your supposed objection of my use of VOI?
Also, this particular argument is a bit different than just consent. Rather, it is saying that since we are IGNORANT as to how any person's life truly will play out in the course of their lifetime, AND we cannot get consent otherwise, we should do the option that is with the intention of the LEAST harm, which is of course, not even procreating that person who will be harmed to X degree.
I kind of like this notion, though I don't hold "Consent" to be independent of humans, simply entailed in humanity. If there is no humanity, consent disappears as well.
But this also relies on what "the good" is, and defines it in "negative" terms (what not to do). Suffering is weighted more heavily in this conception such that, causing negative/suffering unnecessarily on someone else's behalf is weighted as a bigger moral consideration than any of the positives that result from causing the suffering. Not causing great distress to someone is a bigger ethical consideration than say, buying them cake.
Okay, so maybe something like this?
Do not cause suffering, absent consent
Procreation causes suffering, and does not admit of consent
Therefore, do not procreate
Thus consent functions as an exception to the prohibition on suffering, but does not apply in the case of procreation.
I would appeal to a similar "inversion" argument to the one I already gave, but focusing on suffering rather than consent. Just as consent does not constitute an absolute principle, neither does suffering-avoidance. "I'd say life is bigger than suffering or consent."
The key here is that birth/existence is qualitatively different from, and ontologically prior to, consent and/or suffering. More directly: life is more than the avoidance of suffering, and therefore the desire to avoid suffering is not a sufficient reason to nix life.
Regarding the moral maxim of (1), I think it would apply to procreation in a very dire apocalyptic scenario, but I don't think it applies more generally throughout history. I don't know... There are a lot of different ways one could go with this.
Reply to Leontiskos There's a problem with (1). People found guilty of crimes have a lot of suffering inflicted on them without their consent, so sometimes it's OK to cause suffering absent consent. Or did the prisoner consent to his punishment by virtue of living in a society with laws, maybe?
ChatGPT is pretty impressive:
[hide="Reveal"]Can you think of any counterexamples to the maxim "Do not cause suffering, absent consent"
ChatGPT
The maxim "Do not cause suffering, absent consent" is a foundational principle in ethics and moral philosophy, often associated with the concept of autonomy and the importance of respecting individuals' rights and choices. However, there are situations where this maxim may face challenges or counterexamples:
Emergency Situations: In cases of emergency where immediate action is necessary to prevent harm, such as administering medical treatment to an unconscious person, causing temporary suffering without explicit consent may be justified to save their life or prevent further harm.
Parental Authority: Parents often make decisions on behalf of their children, such as vaccinations or medical procedures, without their explicit consent. While parents are expected to act in their child's best interest, these actions may cause temporary suffering.
Paternalism: In some cases, individuals may act in what they perceive as the best interest of others, even if it causes temporary suffering, without obtaining explicit consent. This concept, known as paternalism, can be controversial as it overrides individual autonomy.
Legal Punishment: In the context of legal punishment, individuals may experience suffering as a consequence of their actions, such as imprisonment or fines, without their explicit consent. This raises questions about the balance between justice and the prevention of suffering.
Animal Welfare: The maxim primarily focuses on human suffering but may not directly address the suffering of non-human animals. Actions that cause suffering to animals for purposes such as scientific research or food production may occur without their consent.[/hide]
There's a problem with (1). People found guilty of crimes have a lot of suffering inflicted on them without their consent, so sometimes it's OK to cause suffering absent consent.
The question is then whether these exceptions to (1) apply to the case of procreation. For example, we can cause suffering absent consent when punishment is due, but is punishment due in the case of procreation?
Anti-natalism doesnt save anyone in particular from suffering. We are not doing anyone any good by not procreating. There has to be a someone to prevent someone from suffering. Life is ontologically prior as Leontiskos said.
The question is then whether these exceptions to (1) apply to the case of procreation. For example, we can cause suffering absent consent when punishment is due, but is punishment due in the case of procreation?
It depends on what kind of life you expect your kid to have. If there's a 99% chance your child will die an excruciating death by the time they're ten, then you probably have a duty not to have a kid.
I would appeal to a similar "inversion" argument to the one I already gave, but focusing on suffering rather than consent. Just as consent does not constitute an absolute principle, neither does suffering-avoidance. "I'd say life is bigger than suffering or consent."
The key here is that birth/existence is qualitatively different from, and ontologically prior to, consent and/or suffering. More directly: life is more than the avoidance of suffering, and therefore the desire to avoid suffering is not a sufficient reason to nix life.
Regarding the moral maxim of (1), I think it would apply to procreation in a very dire apocalyptic scenario, but I don't think it applies more generally throughout history. I don't know... There are a lot of different ways one could go with this.
So the case is really best exemplified by David Benatar's asymmetry argument that is now more widely known than when I used to discuss it.
However, I don't want to get caught in the weeds of that particular version of the argument. I think it is best reformulated clearly as this:
Preventing happiness is less a moral obligation than preventing suffering. All things being equal, in the case of non-consent, and ignorance (like this Veil of Ignorance argument is saying), it is always best to prevent suffering, even on the behest of preventing happiness.
The fact is, this is from the perspective of the decision-maker. That SOMEONE exists who can understand what will result is all that matters, not that the subject of the action exists.
Anti-natalism doesnt save anyone in particular from suffering. We are not doing anyone any good by not procreating. There has to be a someone to prevent someone from suffering. Life is ontologically prior as Leontiskos said.
But I think I answered that objection from @Leontiskos. That is to say, all that matters is that humans exist for this to take place. No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle. The principle doesn't come first. IF humanity exists, the morality of being human applies. IF people exist, and the decision is about making another suffer or preventing it, then this applies.
I think this is throwing out a lot of important values we hold in other arenas. For example, if as a consenting adult I force you into a game you don't want to play because I think the game is bigger than any one individual's refusal, that seems mighty suspicious. And I am talking personal ethics here, which procreation (should) fall under. I do believe there is a discontinuity with the State/political ethics, but that is a different argument, which I can bring in if you want to make the category error of using laws like the draft, education compliance, and inoculations.
I also think it is a bit of a red herring to compare it to parental care of children under a certain age (often 18 yo). That is because usually the care is about preventing more harm in the future for that child, where this very specific/unique kind of decision is creating all of the potential harm in the first place. These are two different types of decisions regarding consent. At this point since someone DOES exist, it would be more harmful NOT to take care of them, as now you are not recognizing the rights of the child who does exist already, to be cared for, being that they have not fully developed into fully functioning adults yet, and had no say to be born in the first place. Presumably babies and children have a right not to be abandoned, neglected, or abused, for example, which is a different (positive/must do ethics) consideration rather than the (negative/NOT doing) ethics of simply not causing harm in the first place. One is palliative (as someone already exists and is exposed to great harms), and one is preventative (in the absolutist terms).
See about the difference between palliative and preventative ethics. Procreation is in the realm of preventative ethics, not palliative. AND it would be wrong to make a preventative situation turn purposefully into a palliative one.. I can prevent harm, but I cause it, so that you now need to mitigate it.. That isn't right...
No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle.
But if the reason to promote antinatalism now while there is humanity is that It is the ethical thing, and its goal is no humans, then No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle.
Meaning, what is the point of being ethical towards beings that arent born yet, if ethics itself is not to be? Why would we humans uphold any ethics above upholding the procreation of more humans, if upholding that ethics means that humans and ethics both equally should no longer be?
Why would we humans uphold any ethics above upholding the procreation of more humans, if upholding that ethics means that humans and ethics both equally should no longer be?
Antinatalism is just as much an anti-ethicalism.
Ethics simply is entailed if humans exist. We aren't living to carry out ethics, ethics is carried out because we are living. It is actually precisely CONTRA a notion that we are obligated in some "positive" (must do) sense. That is to say, there is more obligation to prevent suffering (a negative ethic), than to promote happiness or any X "other" beholden reason. That is to say, if there was a case whereby my action results in an unknown amount of suffering, and I can't get consent beforehand, and the effect is not only trivial, but major (though this part is not even necessary to state), that is more relevant than the unknown amount of happiness that might result as well from this action.
Preventing happiness is less a moral obligation than preventing suffering. All things being equal, in the case of non-consent, and ignorance (like this Veil of Ignorance argument is saying), it is always best to prevent suffering, even on the behest of preventing happiness.
There persists the conflation between the ontological and the "moral" (in the modern sense). It is the difference between preventing something and preventing the potential/potency for that something. To prevent the potential for X will also prevent X, but it is not the same thing as simply preventing X. One could prevent their child from getting smallpox by having no children or by vaccinating the children they do have, but these two options are not parallel. The obligations with respect to each are somewhat different.
Is Thanos from The Avengers a good example of an antinatalist? Specifically, a Thanos who snaps his fingers and everyone disappears without pain, not just half of them? No suffering + no potential for suffering = perfection. The theological gnosticism crops up its head again here, for the gist is that it would have been better for nothing at all to exist. I don't think the theological or metaphysical shift is avoidable given that your argument pertains to ontological realities and sheer potencies, rather than only to mere "moral" realities. To weigh suffering against life or existence will go beyond the "moral" insofar as evaluations of life and existence do not fall within the "moral" (in the modern sense).
But the Christian and Platonist traditions have been saying that being and goodness are convertible for thousands of years, and given that the argument does not recognize this seems to imply that it is weighed down by a specifically modern context. Yet to make an argument against life per se or existence per se is to move beyond that modern context.
I think the argument avoids the question of whether life or existence is good.
I am not sure what this is supposed to translate to, ethically speaking. It becomes irrelevant given the considerations of suffering prevention being more ethically an obligation than happiness promotion, all things being equal. In fact, if what you are implying here is correct, it is your notion that has some template that people must adhere to assumed to be there prior to birth "The Good". But I am not sure completely what you are implying, so I'd hold judgement. "Life is good" seems a theological statement of some sort.
There persists the conflation between the ontological and the "moral" (in the modern sense). It is the difference between preventing something and preventing the potential/potency for that something. To prevent the potential for X will also prevent X, but it is not the same thing as simply preventing X. One could prevent their child from getting smallpox by vaccinating them or by having no children, but these two options are not parallel. The obligations with respect to each are somewhat different.
So as with TClark, this will be a case of how we parse the facts of life. That is to say, I believe it to be the case that it is empirically evident that life has X amount of suffering. Charmed lives don't exist, except in perhaps imagination or thought experiments. And with this particular argument, it is precisely because we are ignorant of what that X entails that we take the route of causing minimum suffering.
I also see the thread about fate and determinism there is discussion of agency. Clearly, the child did not have to experience any suffering. And this is why Is ay that it is never good to turn a preventative into a palliative purposefully. I don't cause (the conditions for) suffering so that you can take X, Y, Z palliative actions from it. And then I don't gaslight the situation and say that "It is what it is", or that "This is just not a growth mindset". We know that at least certain amounts of suffering, often well-known can and do occur.
Is Thanos from The Avengers a good example of an antinatalist? Specifically, a Thanos who snaps his fingers and everyone disappears without pain, not just half of them. No suffering + no potential for suffering = perfection. The theological gnosticism crops up its head again here, for the gist is that it would have been better for nothing at all to exist. I don't think the theological shift is avoidable given that your argument pertains to ontological realities and sheer potencies, rather than only to mere "moral" realities. To weigh suffering against life or existence will go beyond the "moral" insofar as evaluations of life and existence do not fall within the "moral" (in the modern sense).
But the Christian and Platonist traditions have been saying that being and goodness are convertible for thousands of years, and given that the argument does not recognize this seems to imply that it is weighed down by a specifically modern context. Yet to make an argument against life per se or existence per se is to move beyond that modern context.
So you are conflating two arguments into one here. It is precisely because people cannot be consented that this Thanos argument is wrong. Also, once people exist, taking their existence away, is not the same question as bringing people into existence, so should probably be thrown out as some sort of counterpoint. There's too many differences.
As to the Christian/Platonist idea of being and goodness, or nothingness and perfection, I do find it intriguing. This is actually touching upon Schopenhauer's notion that we are NOT actually "being" in some rested/Platonic way, but because we are in the world of Maya, we are in the world of "becoming" which by default is always in some way "suffering" as it is a world of dissatisfaction, or lack, or "what we do not have presently and fades away", a world of "vanity", and all such notions. Indeed, there is an argument is precisely this world that we experience that is NOT goodness in any Platonic/completed/perfected sense. And interestingly, mysticism tries to work around this problem by saying that we are trying to "perfect" the world by giving it value and moral meaning (usually by way of enacting various commandments or divine actions upon the world).
However, though I am glad to discuss these notions, it is tangential to the argument itself which doesn't need the world to have any inherent value per se. Rather, as long as there is suffering (in any sense of that word), and the decision is there, that the moral weight is to prevent suffering more than any other one, including promoting (what one believes to be) good experiences for a person. It creates a baseline set of boundaries, as what people can end up doing is any such harm to a person and justify it in the name of X positive value that they think will result. Rather, if people have inherent dignity and worth, that respect for this boundary would seem to be necessary, otherwise people are perpetual pawns that are to be treated as such.
We are not living for ethics. Ethics is present because humans are around.
Being human (or maybe any being with senses) entails suffering.
Human beings are inherently ethical beings - the beings whereby ethics exist in the universe.
And in order for human beings to act according to this ethics that they are, one thing they cannot do is inflict suffering without consent.
Since we cannot get consent from the unborn, and being born human entails suffering, we should be, we ought to be, anti-natalist. As a result of us currently living, suffering, ethical beings acting as ethical anti-natalists, there will be no more humans, but also no more human suffering inflicted unethically, without consent.
Am I with you so far?
However, with no more humans, there will be no more ethics either. As you said ethics is present because humans are present. So humans not present (unless some other beings are ethical) means ethics is not present. With anti-natalism, we not only avoid inflicting suffering without consent, we void the ethics that told us such inflictions are wrong.
So the anti-natalist is saying, in order to abide by the ethical rule now, we must create the conditions where this ethical rule will no longer exist, since humans are the presence of ethics and no more humans will be present. The anti-natalist is saying we should eliminate the existence of the ethical rule for the sake of following the ethical rule. Just like they are saying we should eliminate the possibility of human procreation (end all future humans) for the sake of abiding by an ethical rule that is only found in existing humans. The anti-natalist gets to be the last ethical man standing, and the last instance of ethical behavior anywhere in the known universe.
The anti-natalist must admit weve evolved to a point where we humans inherently posit should and ought only to take this power and say I should not have evolved at all because my consent to suffer was not obtained. And since ethics comes to be only through me, a human, ethics ought not to have evolved in the universe either. But then if ethics didnt exist until I did, how could it have been unethical for me to be born?
The fact that the ethics summarized as anti-natalism arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained.
(Its not quite a paradox because it holds is together with ought not, as opposed to paradoxically joining is to is not or ought to ought not, but it is certainly absurd.)
Anti-natalism is either a self-defeating way of saying, because of human suffering, it would have been better if humans never existed. Or it is simply passing judgment on God, saying God, a being whose mere existence entails ethics (like humans) was wrong to create humans and inflict suffering on them without their consent.
Absurd or Satanic. Better to rule without humans or their ethics in hell, than to consent posthumously to suffering in heaven.
So the anti-natalist is saying, in order to abide by the ethical rule now, we must create the conditions where this ethical rule will no longer exist, since humans are the presence of ethics and no more humans will be present. The anti-natalist is saying we should eliminate the existence of the ethical rule for the sake of following the ethical rule. Just like they are saying we should eliminate the possibility of human procreation (end all future humans) for the sake of abiding by an ethical rule that is only found in existing humans. The anti-natalist gets to be the last ethical man standing, and the last instance of ethical behavior anywhere in the known universe.
Why should it matter if the ethical rule disappears though? What needs to preserve the ethical rule? The rule comes into play when more than one human is around, and the potential to procreate is there. If there is no potential to procreate, it no longer applies. Why would it matter that the rule gets rid of the application of itself? I don't see the problem.
Water by itself has no value. But when an animal relies on it, water then obtains some "value" for that creature. If there are no humans, there is no ethics. If there are no humans, there is no thirst either. Thirst exists because humans exist, we don't exist because thirst would cease without humans. That makes no sense.
But then if ethics didnt exist until I did, how could it have been unethical for me to be born?
I don't get what you are saying. A lot of people believe honor killing is ethical. Does that mean the first person to question this was wrong because it was a novel idea? Also, before you were born, there was the potential for you to be born. You didn't need to be born for the ethics to be relevant, just the potential for "someone" to be born.
The fact that the ethics summarized as anti-natalism arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained.
(Its not quite a paradox because it holds is together with ought not, as opposed to paradoxically joining is to is not or ought to ought not, but it is certainly absurd.)
But it isn't absurd. You are already finding out that your own objection seems to have no impetus. All this is saying is humans can self-reflect which is different than other animals.
Anti-natalism is either a self-defeating way of saying, because of human suffering, it would have been better if humans never existed. Or it is simply passing judgment on God, saying God, a being whose mere existence entails ethics (like humans) was wrong to create humans and inflict suffering on them without their consent.
Absurd or Satanic. Better to rule without humans or their ethics in hell, than to consent posthumously to suffering in heaven.
I have no idea what you're getting at. If humans don't exist, there are simply no people, not some hell. Also, I don't think anyone has called existence "heaven" in any non-ironic way. So, not sure what that's getting at. If you have some unspoken religious biases that you would like to bring up, go ahead.. Your notions start becoming clearer to me if you have some theological reasoning, but it doesn't become more accurate, just explains your frustration perhaps. The "Existence must exist so that we can fulfill whatever X mission" explains some of your implicit confusions and objections and it turns into the old debate of the problem of evil.
Interesting enough, antinatalism SOLVES a Christian problem by bypassing it. Souls cannot be sent to hell if you do not bear them into existence in the first place. If you didn't do this, of course, you would violate the "be fruitful and multiply", but let's say it was carried out to its logical conclusion and no one existed.. Would more people just be created like Adam and Eve so that they go through this game? Why have the game? What is important about the game? Doesn't it seem a bit anthropocentric? If aliens exist, would their religion reflect a god that has them as the main characters in their own Moral Play? Perhaps they have a similar but not quite the same salvation mythology.. One that precludes humans? :chin:
Given all agree that antinatalism applies uniquely to humans, and the unique human condition (that there is a "condition" most seem to agree; the nature or structure of that condition seems to be in contention) it seems like most people think, once again, that Ethics is the path to the "answer" (to be or not to be). Further, it seems most would say, albeit applying varying degrees of standard of proof, that if adjudged "unethical" antinatalism might be justified.
But I think ethics is either irrelevant, or is not being applied far enough. From my perspective, if a person, or a generation, is even grossly unethical, the organism and species should not be punished. Antinatalism is unethical itself; a patent example of the arrogance that our constructions have led "us" to. That we are considering sterilization of a living organism, because we can't seem to simply change our ways. Many even blame the body for that: craving, drive, aggression. As if much of the animal kingdom isn't basically variations of us. Our condition; our immoral condition, if that's what we're settled at, is not because our organism is naturally immoral. We constructed immoral in that uniquely human condition, Mind. And we can deconstruct it. We don't have to end an entire species to do so.
The fact that the ethics, summarized as anti-natalism, [only] arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained, [must both be true and ethical, is absurd.]
Fire Ologist
The two sides of the AND above defeat each other. So we must exist in order to not exist, by enacting a rule that must not exist unless I exist. This is impossible to live by. I am making a rule that says I should not be making rules.
Why should it matter if the ethical rule disappears though?
Because it undermines its enactment in the first place when it results in no ethical beings.
If humans disappear because all humans follow the rule, and with humans the rule disappears, then such humans would be being ethical for sake of a world without ethics.
Maybe it is because of my own limitations that I am suffering to make my point and why I cant logically show why antinatalist ethics is absurd, but that is because this really boils down to the amount and depth of suffering in the world. If we all thought life was only suffering, and unfulfillable, longing desire, without any satiation or anything else, we would be inventing ethical rules to justify not only antinatalism, but mass suicide, after wars to enforce the ethical rule once and for all (if we werent too incapacitated by suffering to act at all).
But life is not only suffering. We generally dont think that. At least most of us. Often.
And some suffering is good (like right now Im starving and soon I will be eating). Hunger is the best sauce. The poor always eat well. - Sancho Panza, Don Quixote.
It boils down to whether it is absolute that inflicting suffering without consent is always and only wrong. Life is not only the suffering of being wronged, it is also forgiveness. You really can suffer and move away from suffering. There really are both. I will be done eating today. You can give consent after the fact, after youve suffered without consent and say oh well, life goes on. Because there is not only suffering.
And it is worth some suffering to force a new life to be hungry once in a while, to work hard once in a while, to struggle and fail, in order to also have bread and achieve success, or just sit down and relax.
Most real suffering is self-inflicted. We break our own rules all of the time, and shoot ourselves in the foot, just so we can say see, life is only suffering to ourselves, regardless of those around us.
But some of us can sometimes just live life, accepting the suffering, forgiving the inflicters, and see that inflicting this life on another without consent is like giving them a gift, an unexpected, un-consented gift.
I just disagree it is moral or ethical that we should only focus on the suffering when deciding what world is better for any other people, such as any future generation. We need to see what is good in life just as well before we make out ethics and enact it.
Antinatalism upholds ethics high above the life and suffering of the human beings it is designed to promote, and this is absurd to me. If there is to be some grandiose place for any such high and mighty ethical laws, such as thou shalt not inflict suffering without consent, then there must be humans there to uphold it in that place. Ending humans ends any good ethical laws protect.
Following our disappearing ethical laws isnt the only good that is done in the world; life has its own goods just as well.
Because it undermines its enactment in the first place when it results in no ethical beings.
Why I don't see the problem. "What" is being undermined if there are no ethical beings? You are making it as if ethical beings are necessary to exist in the first place.
If humans disappear because all humans follow the rule, and with humans the rule disappears, then such humans would be being ethical for sake of a world without ethics.
we would be inventing ethical rules to justify not only antinatalism, but mass suicide, after wars to enforce the ethical rule once and for all (if we werent too incapacitated by suffering to act at all).
But life is not only suffering. We generally dont think that. At least most of us. Often.
I can say that the potential of suffering is always on the table, but that the world isn't constant suffering might be a different standard for things like suicide. Rather, the case isn't being born and leaving, but putting other people into the situation in the first place. I think the AN argument has presented a cogent case against this decision.
And some suffering is good (like right now Im starving and soon I will be eating). Hunger is the best sauce. The poor always eat well. - Sancho Panza, Don Quixote.
Yeah, but this indeed highlights the underlying tension between positive and negative ethics. It would be wrong of me to make you suffer just to overcome the suffering. Rather, it was better you didn't suffer at all. And then when you inevitably tell me, "But the suffering is where the meaning is!" Then I would say that this is misguided. If meaning entails suffering, there are a few things going on:
1) YOU should not be the arbiter of the suffering. Even if suffering is supposedly "good", it is not ethically encumbent on someone to take it upon themselves to be the executioner of the suffering onto someone else, violating the dignity, consent, autonomy, of a person, and violating the basic principle of "non-malfeasance" towards fellow humans.
2) Perhaps a world where "meaning" entails suffering, isn't one where it is best to bring someone into in the first place.
2a) Even more salient, and related to this Veil of Ignorance, we don't even KNOW how much suffering one's life might entail. Let's say you think that 22 is the threshold of suffering any average life should have to endure, because that is the number for "growing".. Well, if someone lives a 47 life, you can never predict that, where the suffering has now exceeded the amount necessary for a balanced, happy life. It is now excessive.
3) It is aggressively paternalistic to assume for someone else that THEY need to suffer because YOU think there is some "good" to it. Again, it's the ugly side of "positive ethics". We MUST save blank from certain death is a different situation than we MUST create beings that MIGHT experience happy lives. And you add to this that the cost of this is a lifetime of negative experiences, in unknown quantities, enacted without consent, this simply does not have much merit for its assumptions.
It boils down to whether it is absolute that inflicting suffering without consent is always and only wrong. Life is not only the suffering of being wronged, it is also forgiveness. You really can suffer and move away from suffering. There really are both. I will be done eating today. You can give consent after the fact, after youve suffered without consent and say oh well, life goes on. Because there is not only suffering.
The problem again is with preventative and palliative ethics. In almost every other situation in life, it is a palliative measure.. You temporarily cause discomfort for a child because they need to learn to survive. But not procreating is simply preventing all suffering, period. All things being considered, not causing harm is the ethic that has no need to be violated. There is no one that needs "palliative harm". Rather you are CREATING THE VERY NEED for palliative harm. This is now in the realm of preventative ethics.
Most real suffering is self-inflicted. We break our own rules all of the time, and shoot ourselves in the foot, just so we can say see, life is only suffering to ourselves, regardless of those around us.
The point is we need not put other people in this situation in the first place. I don't throw you into a game and say "Tough luck, bitch" and then gaslight you by saying, "Hey it's your fault. I tried to give you tools!". It is actually quite manipulative, what you are suggesting.
I just disagree it is moral or ethical that we should only focus on the suffering when deciding what world is better for any other people, such as any future generation. We need to see what is good in life just as well before we make out ethics and enact it.
Actually, no we don't. Let's say for the sake of argument that both absolute hellish lives and absolute charmed lives are not really existent (though there is way more evidence for more hellish lives).. Even if there was some mix, the "happiness creating" aspect has no bearing if that happiness is also coming with the "gift" of unknown amounts of burdens. There is no amount of paternalistic ethics that can be justified for such hubris.
Antinatalism upholds ethics high above the life and suffering of the human beings it is designed to promote, and this is absurd to me. If there is to be some grandiose place for any such high and mighty ethical laws, such as thou shalt not inflict suffering without consent, then there must be humans there to uphold it in that place. Ending humans ends any good ethical laws protect.
You keep claiming this, but for no good reason. Why must there be humans there to uphold it in place?
Your argument is something like this:
"If there are no humans, the ethic cannot be followed".
No. My argument is if there are no humans around there are no ethics around. Your argument is if the ethics is antinatalism, there would be no humans around. You just just dont see the absurdity of keeping the ethics in place without the humans to place it there.
. Your argument is if the ethics is antinatalism, there would be no humans around. You just just dont see the absurdity of keeping the ethics in place without the humans to place it there.
Huh? I am not following.
If there is no potential for procreation, there is no need for the ethic. Similarly, if there is only one person in existence, there is no need for ethics against murder.
I am not sure what this is supposed to translate to, ethically speaking. It becomes irrelevant given the considerations of suffering prevention being more ethically an obligation than happiness promotion, all things being equal. In fact, if what you are implying here is correct, it is your notion that has some template that people must adhere to assumed to be there prior to birth "The Good". But I am not sure completely what you are implying, so I'd hold judgement. "Life is good" seems a theological statement of some sort.
I think that what is primarily at stake is a "theological" question, namely the question of whether life itself is good or bad, and therefore my response here would be "tu quoque." Your position passes beyond the mere ethical when it comes to depend upon the proposition . When I respond by saying that life is good, this is not the introduction of a theological proposition, but is rather a theological response to your own theological proposition.
Now it seems to me that you are committed to the proposition either via the argument that life has a greater proportion of suffering than happiness, or else via Benatar's argument (or some variant thereof). I don't think it matters a great deal which argument is in play, and therefore whether the evil is conceived of as absolute or relative. Either way the conclusion is . The shift from a merely ethical frame to a theological frame occurs as soon as life itself comes to bear the property "evil" (or bad, or undesirable). The ethical frame (again, in the modern sense) has to do with choices and ends which prescind from opinions about the goodness or badness of ontological realities themselves, such as life.
Clearly, the child did not have to experience any suffering.
This is a good example of the ethical/theological or act/potency equivocation. The more precise statement is, "Clearly the child did not have to exist, and therefore did not need to experience suffering." To conflate the situation where the child does not have to experience suffering with the situation where the child does not have to experience suffering because there is no existing child to suffer is part of the problematic equivocation. You are not merely proposing removing suffering from a child, you are proposing removing the existence of the child as a means to avoiding that suffering.
So you are conflating two arguments into one here. It is precisely because people cannot be consented that this Thanos argument is wrong. Also, once people exist, taking their existence away, is not the same question as bringing people into existence, so should probably be thrown out as some sort of counterpoint. There's too many differences.
No, not at all, for you have already denied that consent plays a central role in your argument. The Thanos example is apparently apropos. If suffering is the real problem, and life has no intrinsic value, then if Thanos can remove suffering by removing lifewithout causing suffering in the processthen on your principles he should do so. You relegated consent to a caveat, <1. Do not cause suffering, absent consent>. Because Thanos is not causing suffering consent cannot be relevant. If you reject the Thanos comparison then consent must play a more central role than your defensive argument permits.
Coming at this from a different angle, if Thanos attempted to obtain consent before snapping each individual out of existence, do you think this attempt would be rationally sound? Does it follow from your argument that consensual euthanization of the entire race is the ideal and rational solution?
This is actually touching upon Schopenhauer's notion that we are NOT actually "being" in some rested/Platonic way, but because we are in the world of Maya, we are in the world of "becoming" which by default is always in some way "suffering" as it is a world of dissatisfaction, or lack, or "what we do not have presently and fades away", a world of "vanity", and all such notions.
Okay, interesting. I will leave this to the side for the sake of time, but it is worth noting that Platonist and Christian schemes allow for a fallen world of cave-shadows.
However, though I am glad to discuss these notions, it is tangential to the argument itself which doesn't need the world to have any inherent value per se. Rather, as long as there is suffering (in any sense of that word), and the decision is there, that the moral weight is to prevent suffering more than any other one, including promoting (what one believes to be) good experiences for a person.
So again, your argument here is bound up with the claim that the world has inherent negative value. More precisely, it is bound up with the claim that human existence has negative value (i.e. is evil). This is in no way tangential. If we remove that premise then your argument disintegrates, does it not?
It creates a baseline set of boundaries, as what people can end up doing is any such harm to a person and justify it in the name of X positive value that they think will result. Rather, if people have inherent dignity and worth, that respect for this boundary would seem to be necessary, otherwise people are perpetual pawns that are to be treated as such.
It's not at all clear to me that your position is the one that favors inherent dignity and worth. To nix life on account of suffering seems to be contrary to notions of inherent dignity. If humans have inherent dignity, then they have it regardless of negative attributes or accidents such as suffering, disability, etc. That is basically the heart of what we mean by dignity, "Even in spite of your inadequacies, your life still has intrinsic value." Suffering is merely one form of inadequacy.
That is to say, I believe it to be the case that it is empirically evident that life has X amount of suffering. Charmed lives don't exist, except in perhaps imagination or thought experiments.
There is the danger here of an argument which proves far too much. Imagine a world where every person suffers a pinprick but no more, and the remainder of their life is pure happiness. Why wouldn't your or Benatar's argument also prohibit procreation in this world? The pinprick of suffering seems to fuel your arguments just as well as extreme suffering. Benatar's asymmetry holds just as well in that case.
To conflate the situation where the child does not have to experience suffering with the situation where the child does not have to experience suffering because there is no existing child to suffer is part of the problematic equivocation. You are not merely proposing removing suffering from a child, you are proposing removing the existence of the child as a means to avoiding that suffering.
This seems to be the same problem as Fire Ologist, but a variation. The ethic is on the part of the person enacting the suffering onto the other. At this point, it is not about the "other".
Let me walk you through some situations. Will you grant me that instead of an existing "person", I can instead use an existing "state of affairs"?
If you allow me that, we can use the following analogy...
There is a state of affairs whereby I can put someone in harms way by X action (it need not be procreation).
The state of affairs does not exist yet, however. You can always say, "How can you prevent a state of affairs that is not existent! That situation has not come about yet.. In fact, we don't even KNOW which person might be harmed by the situation, but we know that in all likelihood, a person WILL be harmed, if YOU (the person who is doing the action) does X".
In this state of affairs scenario, it is doubtful you will find this thinking absurd. That is to say, just because there isn't a particular person that this state of affairs will affect, doesn't mean we are not incumbent to prevent the situation. All the more so, the more important the harm that will occur, that it can be prevented reasonably easily, etc. etc. So no, I don't see this situation applying.
If suffering is the real problem, and life has no intrinsic value, then if Thanos can remove suffering by removing lifewithout causing suffering in the processthen on your principles he should do so. You relegated consent to a caveat, <1. Do not cause suffering, absent consent>. Because Thanos is not causing suffering consent cannot be relevant. If you reject the Thanos comparison then consent must play a more central role than your defensive argument permits.
I didn't say consent was ONLY necessary when doing harm to someone. In fact, I didn't even mention whether ONCE ALREADY EXISTING, non-existence is or is not considered a harm. You cannot put the genie back. Where as with birth, there is no one that can get consent, NOW someone exists.. The very basis for this kind of deontological basis of ethics (respect, dignity, autonomy, etc.) now applies to a person.
Coming at this from a different angle, if Thanos attempted to obtain consent before snapping each individual out of existence, do you think this attempt would be rationally sound? Does it follow from your argument that consensual euthanization of the entire race is the ideal and rational solution?
Well, now you've changed it. If he asked, and everyone consented, ethically speaking, this isn't violating an ethic. Whether this is the right "solution", I don't know, because I don't believe already-existing to be symmetrical for never-existing. In modal thinking, never-existing is simply the potential of something to exist, and the already-existing is the factuality of someone's actual existence. Can it be that once existing, different priorities are considered in regards to harms and goods? Perhaps. For example, I wouldn't recommend forcing X upon someone. But once someone has X done upon them, if it means that they have abc experiences, and they value them, I see no need to get rid of them, unless indeed they thought they were were worthless. So perhaps nothing should have been done to that person, but once it's done, it doesn't take away the value they might have gotten. They do not have to be mutually exclusive. This is a trap many anti-AN arguments fall under. If there is good from a bad, then the bad must not be that bad. That is faulty logic.
I think also what you are struggling with is that antinatalism tends to be void of a positive value that we must live for. You can try putting in the value of "not suffering", but that doesn't get at it. Rather, we are NOT LIVING for that value, but rather, preventing that negative state of affairs from befalling someone. On the flip side, any other reason to have a child that is not purely a selfish reason by the parent, is one whereby you want the child to LIVE FOR some value, thus violating the non-harm prevention SO THAT they can live out this value. And it would indeed be on the anti-AN to prove that this violation is fine and dandy without just resorting to "It has always been done this way and thus appeal to tradition, yadayada".
So again, your argument here is bound up with the claim that the world has inherent negative value. More precisely, it is bound up with the claim that human existence has negative value (i.e. is evil). This is in no way tangential. If we remove that premise then your argument disintegrates, does it not?
No, because you don't need to view the world as evil for this argument, just that preventing suffering is a priority. Tangentially, the world might have inherently suffering, adding to the evidence FOR the suffering of the world though. I refrain from using "evil" though as it sounds like the world is "out to get you", when it could just be an inherent factor of our condition.
It's not at all clear to me that your position is the one that favors inherent dignity and worth. To nix life on account of suffering seems to be contrary to notions of inherent dignity. If humans have inherent dignity, then they have it regardless of negative attributes or accidents such as suffering, disability, etc. That is basically the heart of what we mean by dignity, "Even in spite of your inadequacies, your life still has intrinsic value." Suffering is merely one form of inadequacy.
So whilst I agree with what you have said there, the point is that paternalistically making a decision on behalf of someone to not prevent them from suffering, and thus basically forcing the conditions of suffering onto them, would not be respecting the dignity, as this becomes aggressive paternalism. You can probably think of your own scenarios where aggressive paternalism would be violating this dignity, other than procreation.
. . . There is the danger here of an argument which proves far too much. Imagine a world where every person suffers a pinprick but no more, and the remainder of their life is pure happiness. Why wouldn't your or Benatar's argument also prohibit procreation in this world? The pinprick of suffering seems to fuel your arguments just as well as extreme suffering. Benatar's asymmetry holds just as well in that case.
My point was that empirically-speaking, in the real world, there are no such charmed lives, so it is de facto out of the question other than a thought experiment. Supposing only a pin-prick was the suffering, I guess the scenario could be reconsidered. But I just want you to know, every single ethical consideration can be reconfigured if you change the conditions for which ethics plays out... So for example.. What if when you stab someone, they reanimate every time you do it instantly.. would that be wrong? I don't know, but that's not the world we generally live in..
But ok, let me take your bait for taking the strongest position just for the sake of argument..
Benatar thinks indeed, being that no one being deprived of this "almost charmed life", there is no foul. No person harmed, no foul. Rather, the violation still takes place in this scenario. It's not like the child is being "saved" from non-existence, so this isn't a palliative situation either.
Leontiskos methodically demonstrates that antinatalism turns on the premise that, if there is any human suffering, there is enough suffering to justify ending the human race.
When thinking ahead for the unborn-yet-to-be-procreated persons, the potential ones antinatalism is trying be ethical toward, couldnt we just as easily instead think of those unborn persons and make the rule one cannot deprive someone of happiness without their consent.
Is there no happiness in the world?
If that is our new rule, it becomes ethical to ask everyone to procreate as much as possible. Which would also be absurd as it would tend to deprive everyone of happiness if everyone was cranking out and trying to manage babies all of the time.
This highlights something else. There is not really any duty one way or the other to non-existing potential people. Antinatalism is good for potential people who will by design never exist. Ethics arises between two existing, actualized people. We can act today thinking of its impact on future people, but until those future people are actual, our present actions cant be seen as ethical, or not ethical. The ethics of the actions only arises where the people arise, actually.
Also highlighted and not addressed in antinatalism, the world isnt just suffering, or even enough suffering to contemplate a need to end all human beings. Its just not compelling.
We dont need to solve the problem of any suffering. We will want to solve the problem of the individual actual person who is actually suffering greatly. But because of that persons existence, and because other people experience happiness at times, we dont need to end all people.
The state of affairs does not exist yet, however. You can always say, "How can you prevent a state of affairs that is not existent! That situation has not come about yet.. In fact, we don't even KNOW which person might be harmed by the situation, but we know that in all likelihood, a person WILL be harmed, if YOU (the person who is doing the action) does X".
This is different than the theoretical potential person that is discussed pre-procreation. In the above scenario, not knowing the identity of the particular person who will be put in harms way doesnt mean the present existing state of affairs does not include already existing people who are actually putting people in harms way and actually going to be harmed.
When thinking ahead for the unborn-yet-to-be-procreated persons, the potential ones antinatalism is trying be ethical toward, couldnt we just as easily instead think of those unborn persons and make the rule one cannot deprive someone of happiness without their consent.
No because that's the point, that in matters of ethics, preventing suffering is weighted more important than promoting happiness. And indeed, causing suffering in the hopes that one promotes happiness would thus be a violation therewith.
If that is our new rule, it becomes ethical to ask everyone to procreate as much as possible. Which would also be absurd as it would tend to deprive everyone of happiness if everyone was cranking out and trying to manage babies all of the time.
But you point out the absurdity indeed of defending certain forms of utilitarianism. In fact, you have stumbled on the repugnant conclusion.
This highlights something else. There is not really any duty one way or the other to non-existing potential people. Antinatalism is good for potential people who will by design never exist. Ethics arises between two existing, actualized people. We can act today thinking of its impact on future people, but until those future people are actual, our present actions cant be seen as ethical, or not ethical. The ethics of the actions only arises where the people arise, actually.
Let me walk you through some situations. Will you grant me that instead of an existing "person", I can instead use an existing "state of affairs"?
If you allow me that, we can use the following analogy...
There is a state of affairs whereby I can put someone in harms way by X action (it need not be procreation).
The state of affairs does not exist yet, however. You can always say, "How can you prevent a state of affairs that is not existent! That situation has not come about yet.. In fact, we don't even KNOW which person might be harmed by the situation, but we know that in all likelihood, a person WILL be harmed, if YOU (the person who is doing the action) does X".
In this state of affairs scenario, it is doubtful you will find this thinking absurd. That is to say, just because there isn't a particular person that this state of affairs will affect, doesn't mean we are not incumbent to prevent the situation. All the more so, the more important the harm that will occur, that it can be prevented reasonably easily, etc. etc. So no, I don't see this situation applying.
Also highlighted and not addressed in antinatalism, the world isnt just suffering, or even enough suffering to contemplate a need to end all human beings. Its just not compelling.
How is it not compelling to prevent suffering when one can?
We dont need to solve the problem of any suffering. We will want to solve the problem of the individual actual person who is actually suffering greatly. But because of that persons existence, and because other people experience happiness at times, we dont need to end all people.
But this is exactly the misguided thinking I explain between the tension of preventative and palliative ethics. You don't CREATE the situation of palliative ethics by bypassing the preventative part. I don't CREATE your suffering so that I can help you fix it.
in matters of ethics, preventing suffering is weighted more important
That is not absolute. Im not a utilitarian for instance. And antinatalism isnt tailored to preventing suffering, it prevents everything, including weighting the importance of suffering over happiness.
If you allow me that, we can use the following analogy...
There is a state of affairs whereby I can put someone in harms way by X action (it need not be procreation).
I dont see this as analogous here, because you are dealing here with existing people who are put in specific harms way and existing people who are putting them there. Antinstalism is dealing with existing people who are potentially putting people in harms way, and non-existing potential people. The scenarios are too far apart. Its not close enough of an analogy to be instructive.
How is it not compelling to prevent suffering when one can?
In a world of suffering and happiness, it is not compelling to prevent suffering by eliminating all people and all happiness as well. We dont all agree that in matters of ethics, preventing suffering is weighted more important.
Many would agree that disallowing procreation would cause great suffering in existing people. Some people are born moms and dads and they know it. Is their suffering as they live our antinatalism worth the good of a future world without humans to you? Antinatalism also causes suffering of existing people now who want kids and whose kids will love them.
You don't CREATE the situation of palliative ethics by bypassing the preventative part. I don't CREATE your suffering so that I can help you fix it.
You dont prevent MY suffering if I never exist either.
It is ethical to prevent actual suffering in actual beings. It is wishful thinking to prevent potential suffering in non-existing beings. You might also be preventing the evolution of bliss and paradise on earth. You will never know if antinatalism was the right prescription for suffering, because they will be no one who could thank you for your ethics.
So now I have three problems with antinatalism.
1. There is no ethical way to treat non-existing people, so an ethics that is called good for its treatment of non-existing people is misguided at best if not non-ethics. Its resource management policy - not enough happiness to go around so lets eliminate the number of suffering people.
2. Suffering is not enough a reason to eliminate all humanity. My guess is the vast majority of people suffer 33% of their conscious time. The vast majority would rather live this life than no life at all. The suffering in the world still isnt enough to justify ending the world.
3. Antinatalism is not directed at preventing suffering, as it prevents everything. Its an over broad solution to a narrower problem
Imagine you have a magic wand that allows you to prevent procreation. People In two neighboring villages are constantly inflicting suffering on each other. You cant solve so many disputes and you see that the suffering will never end, so instead you make it so those people cant procreate and just let them live out their lives suffering. Soon there will be no more suffering inflicting going on in those villages because there will be no more people there. In another two neighboring villages, the people are always stealing from each other and bullying each other. There are times when the people are back in their homes laughing and relaxing, but at some point, everyone is stealing and bullying so at some point everyone is a victim of theft and bullying. No way to address the stealing and bullying, so you wave the wand and solve the problem eventually.
Antinatalism isnt tailored to the specific problem it is trying to prevent, and is way overboard of a response to just suffering.
1. There is no ethical way to treat non-existing people,
The ethics are to do with our actions now. Not unborn people. The potential suffering itself is not hte moral crux. The action that (on the balance of probabilities) will make it come about, are. This is a gross oversimplication (or, overcomplexification, depending where you stand) of the point of antinatalism. That said, this is just another notch in my belt of Emotivism. Only your emotional response to that potential suffering could inform any decision around it. There is no ethical, normative principle which could entail either having, or not having children in the strict sense of those statements.
Suffering is not enough a reason to eliminate all humanity.
This is, again, an emotive position. To some people it is. There isn't a way to argue for one or the other, really, other than Benatar's clearly apt a-symmetry argument. Accept, or don't.
Antinatalism is not directed at preventing suffering, as it prevents everything.
This is a non sequitur. It prevents the imposition of human life and nought else. The suffering goes with it. I can't quite grasp why you'd make such a wildly overt overstatement of the position. Another below.. Quoting Fire Ologist
The suffering in the world still isnt enough to justify ending the world.
It is wishful thinking to prevent potential suffering in non-existing beings.
Then it would stand to reason you are an anti-abortionist? Someone who would not look twice pulling out in the road? Wouldn't remove broken glass from a playground? These are all potential harms to no one in particular (the A-symmetry argument beats this anyway). A starker example is, why keep NICU's sterile? Hehehe.
The vast majority would rather live this life than no life at all.
Benatar, particularly, addresses this issue. It is far more likely the figure is closer to 80% (this is interpolation based on my thoughts along with his arguments around it). Polly-Anna syndrome is rife. Most people are genuinely mistaken about how often they suffer. That said, I'm unsure this is a particularly strong anti-natalist argument anyway. I don't care what living people think about their lives. The vast majority of anti-natalists hold that the living have a deep interest in continuing to live. Perhaps there are situations in whcih this isn't the case, but overall, its hard to find examples of that.
Your earlier two objections are to stronger arguments, and I think your objections are just your taste. They aren't logic objections or reasonable ways around the claims made. They just illustrate that you do not accept htem, prima facie. That's fine. None of that has to do with the strength or weakness of hte anti-natalist position other than how it strikes you (weakly, it seems).
No, because you don't need to view the world as evil for this argument, just that preventing suffering is a priority.
The argument holds that human life is evil (or bad) on account of suffering, and therefore we should not further human life by procreation. The proposition that flows from your claim about suffering, but it still seems to me obvious that this is a crucial proposition in your argument, and that it is "theological."
So whilst I agree with what you have said there, the point is that paternalistically making a decision on behalf of someone to not prevent them from suffering, and thus basically forcing the conditions of suffering onto them, would not be respecting the dignity, as this becomes aggressive paternalism.
We force a decision upon them either way. I don't see how only one direction is paternalistic.
In this state of affairs scenario, it is doubtful you will find this thinking absurd. That is to say, just because there isn't a particular person that this state of affairs will affect, doesn't mean we are not incumbent to prevent the situation.
The problem is that your argument is a form of metabasis, . I don't say that it is necessarily unsound, but it is not a clean syllogism. There is a quasi-equivocation on "persons."
Our obligation is to prevent the suffering of persons, not to prevent persons for the sake of suffering. Our primary suffering-obligation is to prevent existing persons from suffering. Additional argument is required to show that this means that we should prevent persons from existing. Your aversion to suffering is overwhelming, and out of sync with common intuitions. Common intuitions merely say that suffering should be mitigated, not expunged at all costs. ...but maybe I would be better off directly addressing Benatar's argument... (and I do so at the end)
In fact, I didn't even mention whether ONCE ALREADY EXISTING, non-existence is or is not considered a harm. You cannot put the genie back.
Why not? Does existence suddenly become a non-harm once someone is born? Is life bad before we are born and good after we are born? So that we must avoid it before we are born and embrace it after we are born?
Let's move to the consensual variant, which seems to me more fruitful:
Well, now you've changed it. If he asked, and everyone consented, ethically speaking, this isn't violating an ethic. Whether this is the right "solution", I don't know, because I don't believe already-existing to be symmetrical for never-existing.
Again, why are they not symmetrical? I am guessing that unhappy people correlate to antinatalism and happy people correlate to "pronatalism," because there is symmetricity. Again, the whole thing is based on the question of whether life is good or bad, and that determination should hold steady. So if you really think life is bad then you should think that other people should think that life is bad, and that other people should consent to painless euthanization. If euthanization is not the rational choice for living persons, then why would you promote antinatalism? (Note that when I talk about the "rational position," what I mean is that this is the choice that the rational person ought to freely choose for themselves.")
But once someone has X done upon them, if it means that they have abc experiences, and they value them, I see no need to get rid of them, unless indeed they thought they were were worthless.
If X doesn't want to be euthanized because they find life beautiful and valuable, then either they are irrational or else the antinatalism thesis suffers a blow. That person would literally resent your antinatalism, because it sought to "paternalistically" prevent their fulfilling life. These two realities are directly opposed. It is not faulty logic.
Rather, we are NOT LIVING for that value, but rather, preventing that negative state of affairs from befalling someone.
It seems to me like a rationalization of pusillanimity: fear of life for fear of suffering. The antinatalist would apparently counsel the unborn to opt out of life for fear of suffering.
Do you agree that, one way or another, we must make a choice for the unborn? That to give birth is to choose life for them, and that to abstain from procreation is to choose non-existence for them? (Really "them," as I am now swimming in the metabasis). I don't accept the purported neutrality of the antinatalist position, as if so-called "paternalism" is not inevitable.
My point was that empirically-speaking, in the real world, there are no such charmed lives, so it is de facto out of the question other than a thought experiment. Supposing only a pin-prick was the suffering, I guess the scenario could be reconsidered.
Reconsidered on what basis? I am offering a reductio, and if your argument succumbs then the argument itself is problematic, as it "proves too much."
So for example.. What if when you stab someone, they reanimate every time you do it instantly.. would that be wrong?
It wouldn't be wrong in the same way as it is now. But your theoretical does not function as a reductio to any argument that I have offered, and that is the primary difference.
Benatar thinks indeed, being that no one being deprived of this "almost charmed life", there is no foul. No person harmed, no foul. Rather, the violation still takes place in this scenario.
The problem occurs if this is a valid argument:
Suppose every living human being is guaranteed a pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness.
[Insert Benatar's antinatalist argument here]
Therefore, we should never procreate
Are you starting to see the reductio? The reductio has force because we know that any (2) that can get you from (1) to (3) is faulty argumentation.
I wouldnt argue with you that Ive made arguments based on emotion in here. But there is a basic premise that suffering qua suffering is only bad, so inflicting suffering on another is only bad, and inflicting suffering on another is unethical. These notions arise out of emotion, and raw experience (unless there is some heretofore 11th commandment that the antinatalists dug up.). Suffering itself involves emotions, physical states and psychological reactions to those states, so bringing emotion into it isnt a non-sequitor.
But, true, Im not just building analytic proofs here.
Then it would stand to reason you are an anti-abortionist? Someone who would not look twice pulling out in the road? Wouldn't remove broken glass from a playground? These are all potential harms to no one in particular
Schop said, and I agree, that ethics only exist where people and exist, and in particular, where more than one person exists. The ethical rule at issue is: it is always wrong to inflict suffering on others and/or to do so without consent. And the ethical solution is to stop making people.
While I disagree with the rule (and I dont thereby think inflicting suffering is good, just that it is not universally always wrong to inflict any suffering without consent), leaving the rule as is anyway, there is a distinction between an ethical rule that prevents harm to people you dont know in particular, and a rule that prevents harm in people people that dont exist.
It is true that, if all suffering infliction is wrong, the unethical behavior is to do with our actions now and the unethical person is the one who exists, inflicting the suffering. But in all of the above scenarios, in your quote, there are already existing victims of the harm. The antinatalist isnt looking out for the fetus who will be a person; the antinatalist is urging no one gets pregnant. There is no person existing that is the one towards whom the ethical act is directed. There is only the antinatalist claiming ethical treatment of the beneficiaries of that ethical treatment, namely beings (I guess you can call them human beings) that never come to be. There is not only no particular subject of the antinatalists actions, there is no potential ethical subject.
Too leave the glass on the playground is potentially inflicting harm (not necessarily, whereas necessary suffering is part of the antinatalist solution) on anyone who plays there. The people who might or might not play there actually exist while I consider whether or not to remove the glass. The non-procreated are not beings at all. So if two ethical beings must exist for there to be an ethics between them, those beings exist in the playground scenario but do not exist in the antinatalist world. We cant prevent suffering in someone until someone exists, at least any reason we would have to prevent further existence is not a matter of ethics towards that further existing being, because there is no one or thing there to be ethical towards.
If I use the playground analogy, the antinatalist reasoning to me would lead to solutions like there should be no playgrounds or because children at play can cut themselves on glass, there should be no children.
Truth is antinatalism solves every math problem, every philosophical conundrum, every imperfection - all of gone to history. Problem is, people like playgrounds, despite the glass. All ethics and logic and suffering be damned when there is good sliding board around.
Antinatalism isnt tailored to the specific problem it is trying to prevent, and is way overboard of a response to just suffering.
And, if you don't mind, add: and, a response directed at the wrong party. If you want to end suffering, end mind's constructions, and attachments thereto. Why end a species?
The ethics are to do with our actions now. Not unborn people. The potential suffering itself is not hte moral crux. The action that (on the balance of probabilities) will make it come about, are. This is a gross oversimplication (or, overcomplexification, depending where you stand) of the point of antinatalism.
Then it would stand to reason you are an anti-abortionist? Someone who would not look twice pulling out in the road? Wouldn't remove broken glass from a playground? These are all potential harms to no one in particular (the A-symmetry argument beats this anyway). A starker example is, why keep NICU's sterile? Hehehe.
Yep/.. I am not sure why @Fire Ologist isn't quite getting this.
Benatar, particularly, addresses this issue. It is far more likely the figure is closer to 80% (this is interpolation based on my thoughts along with his arguments around it). Polly-Anna syndrome is rife. Most people are genuinely mistaken about how often they suffer. That said, I'm unsure this is a particularly strong anti-natalist argument anyway. I don't care what living people think about their lives. The vast majority of anti-natalists hold that the living have a deep interest in continuing to live. Perhaps there are situations in whcih this isn't the case, but overall, its hard to find examples of that.
Your earlier two objections are to stronger arguments, and I think your objections are just your taste. They aren't logic objections or reasonable ways around the claims made. They just illustrate that you do not accept htem, prima facie. That's fine. None of that has to do with the strength or weakness of hte anti-natalist position other than how it strikes you (weakly, it seems).
Antinatalism isnt tailored to the specific problem it is trying to prevent, and is way overboard of a response to just suffering.
Again, you ignore what it means to cause suffering and back-filling the justification after-the-fact with palliative ethics. You don't intentionally cause the situation for which you think you then have the remedy. And since you really ignored my argument, and simply show your distaste, I don't know what else to say other than you have failed to show any meaningful objections other than indeed your distaste for the logic.
When thinking ahead for the unborn-yet-to-be-procreated persons, the potential ones antinatalism is trying be ethical toward, couldnt we just as easily instead think of those unborn persons and make the rule one cannot deprive someone of happiness without their consent.
No, causing happiness is not an obligation in the way NOT causing harm is. Causing pain in order for them to also have happiness is still a violation of non-malfeasance.
Happiness-promoting is not obligatory, and especially so if to promote happiness you knowingly create the conditions for someone else to be harmed. Procreation creates the very need for palliative measures to mitigate suffering. Preventing harm by not procreating avoids creating this need altogether.
and, a response directed at the wrong party. If you want to end suffering, end mind's constructions, and attachments thereto. Why end a species?
See, that reads to me like a breath of new air in the conversation. Sort of procreates some breathing space.
Reminds me that we are talking about making a rule that must guide my actions. Its not just an analytic exercise with suffering and ethical rules as its parts. The argument for antinatalism is also about my response, like where you said it was a response directed at the wrong people.
After were done with the logical analysis, antinatalism is a call to action. It says if we work hard enough together, maybe in a few generations, we will finally all do the ethical thing and choose to be antinatalists, then, the human species will be gone, and with it, gone is all suffering, and those last people can say we, now the most ethical generation, the ones who have inflicted the least suffering on others, we bid to those who discovered antinatalism our humble gratitude for showing us the ethic, and bid everyone else, including ourselves, I guess, good riddance.
While I think we mean different things when you say end minds constructions and attachments thereto, I would use those same words to point to the fact that all ethics is in our heads. Ethics is about what we physically do when we interact with other people in the world, but the ethical parts of those actions exist only in my head, in our heads. We must construct all of this, and together for it to be ethics. I would also instead use some of your words to say, while we are always attaching and detaching from constructions, to be ethical is to take care of what you attach to and detach from.
But we need both the analytic approach, and this raw, more contextual (aware of aware-ing) view to find an ethical norm.
My attempt at the analytic syllogism:
[b]Life is suffering.
No one should intentionally cause suffering.
Procreating is intentional infliction of suffering
Therefore, antinatalism.
Negatively put, we should not inflict suffering, so we should not procreate. Or more positively put, it is right not to procreate, or else you would intentionally cause suffering.[/b]
Weve constructed out of suffering this new ethic. (It had to be new because people had to be here first to construct it, it is newer than us at least.)
Now of course antimatalism is more that. And granting the premises, its a sound argument. That may be enough for many intuitions.
But what can we know and say about this syllogism?
P1: Life is suffering.
Maybe. Maybe because of life, we have something to compare suffering with in order to identify that life includes suffering. Without something good in life to compare to, how would we recognize suffering. We had to have a happy finger first before we could say that on prick was suffering. But then, does that mean the good and happy finger is a cause of the suffering too?
But maybe life is living. And living is many things, with the many things we live with. One of them is suffering. One of them is ecstasy. One of them is sleeping. One of them is a pin-prick, or reading. Life is reading, right now.
Also, this premise is where we assume a sub premise suffering is only bad. Suffering is bad, but it is not only bad. Some suffering is called work. Some called really hard work. Some called loving. Some called longing. Some longing is suffering deeply. Some longing is not.
I think many are willing to say there is enough suffering assured in life that its not worth breaking it down into how much or how little there is that it would start to change the calculus of the syllogism. Many would argue life pivots from suffering too much to suffering enough, and therefore Life is suffering is a valid premise, period, end of discussion.
So well move on, under protest.
P2: No one should intentionally cause suffering.
Sounds like a nice sentiment from the start. But it depends on your view of what suffering is from P1 if you would make this an absolute. If all suffering is bad, then yeah, absolutely no one should inflict it on anyone else. But many of us have had suffering inflicted upon us without our consent, at great cost, causing deep suffering, only to later count the experience as a a good one. Thats the constant life of a child. Some suffering can lead to tremendous things that would not have been what they are without the suffering. So if not all suffering is bad, what is wrong with causing it in another?
So this premise only works if all suffering is bad. So my protest from P1 is rearing its head.
That means to me I should try to tailor P2 to keep the argument flowing.
How about new P2: No one should intentionally harm or injure another for the sole purpose of causing them to suffer.
Sounds stronger, and accounts for the good of inflicting valuable suffering, but this will be a problem when it comes time to choose whether to procreate. Now with new premise 2 we have to have a baby already born who we can physically harm and injure before we might unethically do so for the sole purpose of causing them to suffer.
I just disagree that intentionally causing suffering, the heart of this ethical rule, is necessarily something that should never be done, its not clearly a universal. Its not self-evident.
It needs work, as does my argument against it, but lets press on.
P3: Procreating is intentional infliction of suffering.
This conflates begetting, or giving new life, with infliction on a subject. When we inflict, we inflict upon. There must be an object that we inflict something specific like suffering upon. But that object is missing in the syllogism. Take the antinatalist negative approach and flip it, and you see the hole, the missing object when one tries to inflict something onto the unborn, the non-existent.
If we do not procreate we will not inflict suffering upon ..who? (I get it, the answer is: on the possible child that would have been had you gotten pregnant.). But really, who benefits when I do not have a kid so I can not inflict suffering? Can I say I benefited 10 babies because I was going to have at least 10 kids, but now since Im an antinatalist, I benefited 10 people? That seems really odd. But if making up some number of never-existing people as beneficiaries of my good antinatalist deeds is odd at all, so is saying I benefitted one person. There is no one person who benefits if you conflate the Infliction of suffering with procreation and respond by not procreating. Im just procreating. There is no one there to enjoy my mon-procreation with, as there is no one to say thanks for not inflicting suffering on me because I didnt create any such life.
Secondly, there is a bias in the word inflict. We dont inflict levity and happiness. We inflict pain and suffering. To procreate need not be an infliction of anything at all. Maybe it is another place to reword the premise better.
But thirdly, premise three is kind of premise 1 reworded. To say procreation is inflicting suffering is like saying life is suffering. Life, the tug and pull of being and becoming, or just the becoming of being, or just the ing of suffering. If life is suffering procreating is building new suffering or inflicting suffering.
This just goes back to the arguments against premise 1, that life cant only be suffering for suffering to be distinguishable as a feature of life at all - life is more than suffering, and more than enough good to enable appropriate attachment to other features of life besides suffering. And suffering isnt so bad that you must never cause it in another.
But, Conclusion: Antinatalism.
Logically flows from the premises as they are meant by the antinatalist. Suffering is truly excruciating and life is suffering, so since procreating makes new lives of suffering, we should not procreate. Certinly uses logic.
But only compelling if you think suffering is so bad, that suffering is the definer of becoming a human being, that we cant see any good in suffering, that we cant see other things besides suffering more valuable to us, that we cant use our suffering to construct other things, and that if we inflict suffering it is never for good, it is always an unethical act. I just disagree with all of those observations. Together they mean an end to procreation is wildly inappropriate a response. Its an emotional response to suffering, not something clear enough to construct an ethical norm.
Its a slap in the face of the Dionysian. Mother Nature inflicted humanity on the universe, why would we judge her so harshly and end her creation, for the sake of each other not having each other?
I dont see wisdom in turning against life itself because of suffering.
We should turn against the suffering, not the life that begets it or not even the ones who inflict it.
The law should be, because life involves suffering, we should give relief and kinship, so that others can know life with less suffering, but others can know life.
My arguments dont seem compelling enough yet either. But that just means I need to keep searching for the words, suffering through the birth of better words, constructing something to attach to that accounts for more than the last attachment.
Without something good in life to compare to, how would we recognize suffering. We had to have a happy finger first before we could say that on prick was suffering. But then, does that mean the good and happy finger is a cause of the suffering too?
Suffering is intrinsically negative and harmful regardless of comparative happiness. The existence of suffering is ethically significant on its own, as it involves harm and distress that should be prevented when possible.
But maybe life is living. And living is many things, with the many things we live with. One of them is suffering. One of them is ecstasy. One of them is sleeping. One of them is a pin-prick, or reading. Life is reading, right now.
Promoting happiness at the expense of causing harm violates the principle of non-malfeasance by justifying harmful actions for potential positive outcomes. It involves using individuals as means to an end, imposing projects on them without their consent, and treating them as tools for achieving broader goals. Ethical consistency requires prioritizing the avoidance of harm and respecting individuals' autonomy and dignity, rather than foisting known and unknown conditions of harm upon them, for the sake of some positive-ethical external objectives.
Also, this premise is where we assume a sub premise suffering is only bad. Suffering is bad, but it is not only bad. Some suffering is called work. Some called really hard work. Some called loving. Some called longing. Some longing is suffering deeply. Some longing is not.
While some people argue that suffering isn't all bad and can lead to growth, this idea falls short when you look at the bigger picture. First off, suffering is inherently harmful. Even if it might lead to some positive outcomes, the immediate distress and pain it causes shouldn't be ignored or justified. The principle of "do no harm" should always come first, and causing suffering to potentially promote happiness just doesn't cut it ethically. Plus, making someone else suffer because you believe it's good for them totally disregards their right to make their own choices. It's like deciding for them that the end justifies the means, which is a huge overstep.
Treating people as tools for achieving a goal (like personal growth through suffering) is another major issue. People arent just instruments for projects we believe in. Everyone has different ways of dealing with and understanding suffering. What might be a meaningful struggle for one person could be devastating for another. This unpredictability means you can't assume suffering will lead to positive outcomes for everyone.
Respecting personal autonomy is crucial. Everyone should have the right to decide whether they want to endure suffering for a potential benefit. Foisting this decision on someone else is ethically wrong and incredibly paternalistic. Its like saying, "I know what's best for you," which often isn't the case. Growth and fulfillment can happen through positive experiences and challenges that don't involve suffering.
Finally, there's a big difference between preventing harm (preventative ethics) and trying to fix it after the fact (palliative ethics). Creating situations where suffering occurs and then trying to justify it with potential benefits is backwards. Its better to avoid causing harm in the first place. All in all, assuming that suffering is valuable and imposing it on others without their consent is unethical and dismissive of individual autonomy and well-being.
After reviewing your P2, that last response answers that as well, so moving on...
This conflates begetting, or giving new life, with infliction on a subject. When we inflict, we inflict upon. There must be an object that we inflict something specific like suffering upon. But that object is missing in the syllogism. Take the antinatalist negative approach and flip it, and you see the hole, the missing object when one tries to inflict something onto the unborn, the non-existent.
If we do not procreate we will not inflict suffering upon ..who? (I get it, the answer is: on the possible child that would have been had you gotten pregnant.). But really, who benefits when I do not have a kid so I can not inflict suffering? Can I say I benefited 10 babies because I was going to have at least 10 kids, but now since Im an antinatalist, I benefited 10 people? That seems really odd. But if making up some number of never-existing people as beneficiaries of my good antinatalist deeds is odd at all, so is saying I benefitted one person. There is no one person who benefits if you conflate the Infliction of suffering with procreation and respond by not procreating. Im just procreating. There is no one there to enjoy my mon-procreation with, as there is no one to say thanks for not inflicting suffering on me because I didnt create any such life.
This principle doesn't need to be about a specific person who benefits or says thanks. It's about the ethical stance of the decision-maker to prevent harm. The decision not to have children because you want to avoid causing potential suffering is about maintaining an ethical standard. Saying "who benefits?" misses the point because its not about imaginary future people celebrating your decision. It's about your commitment to an ethical choice that avoids creating a scenario where suffering is possible. Its not about benefiting non-existent beings; its about making a responsible and ethical decision based on the understanding that creating life inevitably involves creating suffering, and the ethical imperative to avoid this suffering outweighs other considerations, and the recognition that not doing so, is a paternalistic overstep in foisting one's projects onto another, using them. So, this strawman argument oversimplifies and misrepresents (this particular) antinatalist position.
But maybe life is living. And living is many things,
Is this not the long and the short of it?
With a Bricolage of logic and reasoning, a skilled artist can construct complex hypotheses to justify many things in ethics. As much as we like to think ethics transcends us, that thought too, emerged because it is functional to view ethics that way. Contra Descartes et. al., the only thing this organism can claim with certainty is that this organism is. Period. The same cannot be said of any of its constructions from "I" to "all life is Dukkha," to "thou shalt not x".
So does it not boil down to: life is living. We humans make the distinction suffering/no suffering. These, and like distinctions are how our world turns. But with antinatalism we are clearly going too far. People think asceticism a radical approach; how much more is extinction?
Even practically. If you can mobilize an entire species to eliminate one of the three strongest drives--to perpetuate living, and to bond with one's offspring--you might as well exhaust first, all other efforts to change the conditions. If the livestock are suffering under our current conditions, the solution is to change the conditions, not to sterilize the cattle.
As much as I have been turned on to Schopenhauer. This is the corrupted truth which emerges out of the insistence that the will is both the seat off the suffering and our essential human nature. The will constructs suffering. Our human nature may experience pain, the absence of pleasure, but it does not construct anything out of that; it responds to it, just as it responds to pleasure.
The so called will is the name we give to those dynamics of Mind. Difficult to escape, but actually malleable.
Our obligation is to prevent the suffering of persons, not to prevent persons for the sake of suffering. Our primary suffering-obligation is to prevent existing persons from suffering. Additional argument is required to show that this means that we should prevent persons from existing. Your aversion to suffering is overwhelming, and out of sync with common intuitions. Common intuitions merely say that suffering should be mitigated, not expunged at all costs. ...but maybe I would be better off directly addressing Benatar's argument... (and I do so at the end)
No, going back to the Kant thread, not preventing all counts of suffering BECAUSE (X reason that parent has), IS using as means to an ends, overlooking dignity. It is this crux of dignity that you are missing. It was unnecessary, other than promoting some cause.. That project is done on behalf of the child- hence aggressive paternalism.
Why not? Does existence suddenly become a non-harm once someone is born? Is life bad before we are born and good after we are born? So that we must avoid it before we are born and embrace it after we are born?
No, because again, one could have been prevented, one violated and justified with mitigation or because of X conflicting reason of the parent, to be carried out for the child, but can never be the child.. there was no child to begin with to even need happiness.. nor to need the suffering which ultimately comes along with it... And again, "merely" becomes a cover for everything. I merely let that thing hurt you because in the future, it could be in your interest. There is an reductio for ya.
Again, why are they not symmetrical? I am guessing that unhappy people correlate to antinatalism and happy people correlate to "pronatalism," because there is symmetricity. Again, the whole thing is based on the question of whether life is good or bad, and that determination should hold steady. So if you really think life is bad then you should think that other people should think that life is bad, and that other people should consent to painless euthanization. If euthanization is not the rational choice for living persons, then why would you promote antinatalism? (Note that when I talk about the "rational position," what I mean is that this is the choice that the rational person ought to freely choose for themselves.")
I've already answered and you conveniently ignored and cherry picked so I will present it again: Quoting schopenhauer1
Can it be that once existing, different priorities are considered in regards to harms and goods? Perhaps. For example, I wouldn't recommend forcing X upon someone. But once someone has X done upon them, if it means that they have abc experiences, and they value them, I see no need to get rid of them, unless indeed they thought they were were worthless. So perhaps nothing should have been done to that person, but once it's done, it doesn't take away the value they might have gotten. They do not have to be mutually exclusive. This is a trap many anti-AN arguments fall under. If there is good from a bad, then the bad must not be that bad. That is faulty logic.
If X doesn't want to be euthanized because they find life beautiful and valuable, then either they are irrational or else the antinatalism thesis suffers a blow. That person would literally resent your antinatalism, because it sought to "paternalistically" prevent their fulfilling life. These two realities are directly opposed. It is not faulty logic.
Actually, if we want to use Benatar here, that matters not. If no ONE is deprived of the good, then the decision does no good or bad that "no benefits" took place for someone. The onus is on the creating the bad "for someone". I might even argue that creating bad "for no one" is not good or bad either. It can only be formulated as a maxim for someone making the decision.
And yes, the ethic assumes that creating suffering is more important ethically than promoting happiness. And hence why even the pinprick argument is a sort of shrug because due to the non-existing people to not care about it, it becomes moot. It's only YOU the person existing crying on the sidelines over non-existent spilt milk.
Do you agree that, one way or another, we must make a choice for the unborn? That to give birth is to choose life for them, and that to abstain from procreation is to choose non-existence for them? (Really "them," as I am now swimming in the metabasis). I don't accept the purported neutrality of the antinatalist position, as if so-called "paternalism" is not inevitable.
No it's precisely this kind of formulation I am against. The only scenario where something would happen for/to them is the one where a person results, none of the others. At this point, it might be helpful to draw a table...
Reconsidered on what basis? I am offering a reductio, and if your argument succumbs then the argument itself is problematic, as it "proves too much."
No, not really. When you create a fantasy world and that changes the very terms of how existence works, I don't see that as proving anything. What if gravity didn't exist? How would that change ethics? What if time and space could be changed so that we can redo actions? Again, none of this is this world. We can argue facts, but then at least we are arguing what is the case, and not hypotheticals that change how ethics would work because circumstances of the very conditions for ethics have changed.
It wouldn't be wrong in the same way as it is now. But your theoretical does not function as a reductio to any argument that I have offered, and that is the primary difference.
It's to show an illustration of what is going on when you change things to a certain extent.
No, not really. When you create a fantasy world and that changes the very terms of how existence works, I don't see that as proving anything. What if gravity didn't exist? How would that change ethics? What if time and space could be changed so that we can redo actions? Again, none of this is this world. We can argue facts, but then at least we are arguing what is the case, and not hypotheticals that change how ethics would work because circumstances of the very conditions for ethics have changed.
Er, I think antinatalism is dead in the water due to this argument:
Procreation is permissible in an all but perfect world
Benatar's argument excludes procreation even in an all but perfect world
Therefore, Benatar's argument is unsound
What is your counter supposed to be? "No, because counterfactual analyses aren't allowed"? I would suggest reading about the fallacy of "proving too much." Benatar's argument cannot account for the fact that procreation is obviously permissible in an all but perfect world. Benatar would not allow procreation before removing that pinprick. That's crazy. Benatar is irrationally opposed to life, and he would be irrationally opposed to life even in the best of circumstances. Indeed, his irrational argument opposes life even in the best of circumstances!
I think antinatalism is inherently bound up with Gnosticism. This is because it opposes the natural order, and to oppose the natural order requires appealing to some vantage point outside of the natural order. You shouldn't procreate because the world is evil, addled by suffering. But how do we know that the world or nature is evil? Surely nature did not tell us such a thing, nor cognitive faculties formed by nature. So then how would we know that it is evil? As the Gnostic says, it must be knowledge received from some god who is opposed to the god of this world (and the nature of the world it created). So again, antinatalism is theological in the sense that it presupposes nature-transcending knowledge.
For example, given that Benatars argument opposes the natural order, it cannot have been derived from the natural order. So if Benatar really thinks his argument holds good, then he must hold that his own mind and the knowledge it has come to know is super-natural, transcending nature. If we are limited to nature then we cannot contradict nature. Where does such a mind or such knowledge come from, if not from nature? Either the Gnostics are correct and it comes from the true god, or Christians are correct and it comes from demons. Or else it is just hopelessly mistaken and a product of merely human irrationality.
This is definitely the most arguable aspect of the whole thing. I actually do sometimes swing on this one, but as a living person it hits me as patent that I'm off the rails at that point. I am not important to my own considerations here. It is whether or not causing people to exist is ethical. If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking your life is, on balance, purposeful and happy, you will reject this premise and (whether erroneously or not) be fine with procreation. The other premises don't seem to be shakeable in this way.
Suffering itself involves emotions, physical states and psychological reactions to those states, so bringing emotion into it isnt a non-sequitor.
This is true, but where we are dealing with non-existent people this is not relevant other than to assign a position to oneself as a result of their emotional reaction to whatever proposition..
But in all of the above scenarios, in your quote, there are already existing victims of the harm.
There are clearly not. There are potential victims. This is why the analogy holds, for the most part. And taking this straight to your conclusion of "no playgrounds", yes, that's right, but antinatalists don't confuse the issue:
No humans. Not not playgrounds. Let the people who exist use hte playground, for reasons your point out that would make the "no playgrounds" conclusion stupid as heck. That said, it seems fairly clear that's not hte intention. THe intention is to leave the playground (world)as is, and remove the potential sufferer as it is (on this account) an unavoidable consequence of being one. We're not trying to get rid of oceans to avoid drownings - we're trying to stop people swimming where drowning is a clearly likely consequence (very shaky analogy, but there you go - can refine later if needed).
Yes. But "many things" includes many things one would not trade non-existence in for, if the choice were at all a coherent one. If someone is "many things" but in there is psychopathic sexual deviant, we aren't inclined to let it roll.
For example, given that Benatars argument opposes the natural order, it cannot have been derived from the natural order. So if Benatar really thinks his argument holds good, then he must hold that his own mind and the knowledge it has come to know is super-natural, transcending nature.
Simply put, what? Total non sequitur. Sorry to say, but this just hits as red herring designed to impugn the logic of an argument on a naturalistic basis. Who gives a flying toss if its "against the natural order"? You'd need to establish what that is, and how it is derived (in light of hte extremely novel consciousness humans currently enjoy (see what i did there..)) in a way which could logically make Benatar's points untenable. You can't support these claims - only make them. I do smell the overwhelming aroma of religiosity coming through here... where did the evil bit come in?
Either, you have that knowledge, or his arguments are as good as yours. One for thee, one for me. Though, if you've simply been overzealous and mean only to posit that his arguments are inadequate and not that his position is wrong due to other arguments, sure. It reads as if you're trying to present a logical basis for rejecting his arguments. But, they literally boil down to your tastes regarding epistemology it seems. And I'd say your comments there are.. bizarre... That said, you'd very much enjoy prof. Tim Mulgan's Ananthropocentric Purposivism.
I think antinatalism is inherently bound up with Gnosticism. This is because it opposes the natural order, and to oppose the natural order requires appealing to some vantage point outside of the natural order. You shouldn't procreate because the world is evil, addled by suffering. But how do we know that the world or nature is evil? Surely nature did not tell us such a thing, nor cognitive faculties formed by nature. So then how would we know that it is evil? As the Gnostic says, it must be knowledge received from some god who is opposed to the god of this world (and the nature of the world it created). So again, antinatalism is theological in the sense that it presupposes nature-transcending knowledge.
Antinatalism need not be synonymous with philosophical pessimism, though the two concepts are often related. Antinatalism only requires certain logical principles to be true. If we believe in a negative ethics where it's best not to cause suffering, harm, or use others, it is imperative not to overlook the consequences of procreation, even if motivated by a positive ethical cause, like promoting happiness.
Everything follows from this principle. There are no non-existent people who benefit from being born; rather, it is about preventing the suffering, harm, and violation of existing people, if they are born.
Gnostic-like elements can be used to justify why suffering is as bad or worse than people initially think. While these more theoretical notions of suffering can be indulged, antinatalism does not hinge on them. If we do take these aspects seriously, there is an argument, that it appears that once born, we are trapped in a cycle of unfulfilled desires with little chance for genuine repose. We can only mitigate this through psychological and physical means, such as fulfilling needs and wants or using mental exercises to manage angst, but this will never satiate, as Schopenhauer noted in detail.
Beyond the inherent suffering of existence, life imposes contingent suffering based on situations and circumstances beyond one's control. These include diseases, natural disasters, social injustices, and personal losses. The world subjects individuals to random and often severe hardships, from debilitating illnesses to the trauma of losing loved ones, and the cruelty of societal inequalities. Even small daily annoyanceseverything from traffic jams, minor illnesses, interpersonal conflictsaccumulate over time, adding to white noise baseline of human suffering. By choosing to procreate, we are subjecting new individuals to these unpredictable and uncontrollable harms. This contingent suffering exacerbates the moral issue of procreation, as it means bringing someone into a world where their well-being can be drastically compromised by forces they cannot influence or evade.
While there are inherent goods in life, claiming that these justify causing harm oversteps a deontological point. The inherent goods can be summarized as follows:
-Physical pleasure: The simple joys of sensory experiences.
-Human or animal connections: Friendships, romance, group activities, bonding, nurturing, etc.
-Flow states: Getting "caught up" in something challenging and engaging.
-Aesthetic pleasures: Enjoying art, humor, nature, music, literature, etc.
-Learning: Gaining new concepts or skills, engaging in hobbies.
-Achievement: Accomplishing goals and feeling a sense of accomplishment.
These goods add value to life. But to assert that these goods justify the creation of life, with its inevitable suffering and harm, oversteps a fundamental deontological principle. This principle maintains that we should not unnecessarily cause harm for people (i.e dont create circumstances of harm for someone that did not need existing harm reduced with a lesser harm)- this is regardless of potential positive outcomes. Procreation involves deciding that potential pleasure and meaning for new beings outweigh the certain suffering they will encounter, which is a significant and hubristic ethical assumption.
Humans are unique in their self-reflection. Unlike other animals that live in the moment, generally absent existential or moral considerations, humans do and can make self-consciously deliberate choices. Other animals exist within the simplicity of their instincts, unburdened by the weight of self-awareness. In contrast, humans have been metaphorically kicked out of paradise because we possess the knowledge of good and evil, the capacity for existential contemplation.
Choosing to bring someone into existence means deciding that they should live out the challenges and issues we deem meaningful. This is a profound choice, not a natural inevitability. People seek pleasure and meaning in various ways, but deciding for others what is meaningful or subjecting them to a lifetime of issues is something that is paternalistically assumed to be imposed for another.
You claim that the antinatalist is secretly religious, but even the most atheistic person promoting having kids is really the pseudo-religious because they see life as something necessary for someone to live out. Indeed the project of life becomes more important than the harms that that person would experience. It is this overlooking of suffering for the project of life that I am concerned with. It is this idea that is the crux of the dignity violation. Its no mere here, its full stop.
There are clearly not. There are potential victims. This is why the analogy holds, for the most part. And taking this straight to your conclusion of "no playgrounds", yes, that's right, but antinatalists don't confuse the issue:
No humans. Not not playgrounds. Let the people who exist use hte playground, for reasons your point out that would make the "no playgrounds" conclusion stupid as heck. That said, it seems fairly clear that's not hte intention. THe intention is to leave the playground (world)as is, and remove the potential sufferer as it is (on this account) an unavoidable consequence of being one. We're not trying to get rid of oceans to avoid drownings - we're trying to stop people swimming where drowning is a clearly likely consequence (very shaky analogy, but there you go - can refine later if needed).
It is whether or not causing people to exist is ethical.
Yes.
But theres no reasonable quarrel with procreating is inflicting, and inflicting suffering because it inflicts life which is suffering? Seems subject to scrutiny, and potentially analogous to feeding is inflicting suffering, and opening a window to let in some fresh air is inflicting suffering, because all of these promote life, like procreation promotes life which is suffering. I might not only have to be an antinatalist, I might have to be an anti-hydrationist, because giving a thirsty person a glass of water, is like giving birth to a new person.
And no need to consider what other things we cause by not procreating? As long as we dont inflict suffering we will be doing good in this world, be good for this world - not arguable?
If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking your life is, on balance, purposeful and happy, you will reject this premise
Getting a little emotive here, which you criticized me for above. You mean, one person who would reject this would be someone satisfied with experiences of purpose and happiness instead of suffering. You can call this one person deluded. Maybe they are. But then who is anyone to judge someone elses self delusions and their effect on the balance of their own suffering? Must we stop the delusional thoughts of others with our own better thoughts? Like the wonderful thought of antinatalism?
And why are happiness and/or purpose, as you frame the delusion, the only counters to suffering? If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking life is, on balance, suffering, then you would reject anyone who viewed any life as on balance, not suffering. Screw purpose. Im enjoying just trying to argue with you here.
Maybe you are right that the suffering in life is the most arguable premise, but the other premises utterly rely on suffering and can be shown almost as anrguable even granting that life is suffering.
We're not trying to get rid of oceans to avoid drownings - we're trying to stop people swimming
Antinatalism analogized to, ironically, a life guard, keeping people out of the dangerous waters. Thats backwards. Antinatalism would eliminate the lives to guard, not merely keep lives on the land to live safely. A lifeguard would inflict a riddance of the ocean to those safely on land, not a riddance of living, like antinatalism would.
Living is simply different than suffering and cannot be summarized as only suffering.
Bottom line to me, in a raw, physicalist sense, life is prior to suffering, and life is more than this conversation about suffering and what to do about it. Procreating, consuming, growing, secreting, growing some more, always dying as newness is always born in each living moment - these are the experiences of living, not just suffering. And now life is thinking and writing or reading, not only suffering. Antinatalism isnt just a tidy little syllogism categorized as ethics. Its an act in the world, and an against life, which is procreative. Against suffering on paper, but inflicted upon all human life in action.
Antinatalism, might simply be something psychological, a justification for suicidal tendancy applied on a universal scale.
Mother Nature made use of suffering to fashion we species of ethical monkeys, only so that we could end the infliction of Her suffering on us and call it good ethics. Seems potentially delusional to have out smarted Mother Nature and her sufffering ways called life. With our ethics no less.
Then it would stand to reason you are an anti-abortionist?
Thats interesting.
Antinatalism promotes no more babies because making a baby is the infliction of suffering on that baby. No one wants to inflict suffering on a baby, because it is just wrong. If that is the right way to live, and someone gets pregnant, the pregnant couple would have done wrong and inflicted suffering on another (or be in the act of inflicting suffering on another growing into such person).
What can the antinatalist do with the new fetus? Can they abort it?
If they can abort it, it must not be a person, because I would think the rule is that it is not ethical to kill another innocent person. Thats worse than inflicting suffering.
But this is interesting. The antinataliat who doesnt think a fetus is a person and who supports abortion would have to agree with the following: it is unethical to cause a sperm and an egg to form a fetus because that would be inflicting suffering on another person, but is it ok to kill the fetus after it is formed because a newly conceived fetus isnt a person.
Doesnt an antinataliat have to be an anti-abortionist to lay out a consistent treatment of future people we do not want to inflict things upon?
I might not only have to be an antinatalist, I might have to be an anti-hydrationist, because giving a thirsty person a glass of water, is like giving birth to a new person.
You still havent paid attention to preventative vs mitigative. One youre already existing and now mitigation measures are appropriate. The other, you prevent the harm in the first place, as putting them in a situation in the first place which must be mitigated, is the ethical consideration in question. Hence, unique in moral choices.
Bottom line to me, in a raw, physicalist sense, life is prior to suffering, and life is more than this conversation about suffering and what to do about it. Procreating, consuming, growing, secreting, growing some more, always dying as newness is always born in each living moment - these are the experiences of living, not just suffering. And now life is thinking and writing or reading, not only suffering. Antinatalism isnt just a tidy little syllogism categorized as ethics. Its an act in the world, and an against life, which is procreative. Against suffering on paper, but inflicted upon all human life in action.
In existential terms this is bad faith. You are assuming the role of arbiter of life. Rather this is simply something you chose to take on, it is not some robotic imperative. We are deliberative and can choose non life by choice, so prima facie, this appeal to the species or life is a false narrative.
Mother Nature made use of suffering to fashion we species of ethical monkeys, only so that we could end the infliction of Her suffering on us and call it good ethics. Seems potentially delusional to have out smarted Mother Nature and her sufffering ways called life. With our ethics no less.
But ethical monkeys like us have ideas of antinatalism and choosing no suffering for others. You are anthropomorphizing nature. Nature doesnt care whether the species dies or you or I fell off a cliff.
You still havent paid attention to preventative vs mitigative.
It get it, antinatalism is a preventative act in your mind. Analogies to mitigative acts dont impress you. These distinctions dont impress my view of antinatalism.
You still dont pay attention to much else Ive written as well.
Nature doesnt care whether the species dies or you or I fell off a cliff.
Neither does nature care about any ethics at all, be it telling you to have 20 babies or 0. Neither does an unborn baby care what you inflict on it or not. Neither will anything care that there once were these ethical creatures who were so ethical they wouldnt wantonly inflict their ethicalness on life anymore.
I disagree that life is suffering. False premise.
I disagree that procreating is an act upon a person - we dont inflict anything when we participate willingly in the natural act of procreation. We arent acting for or against any particular human being when we procreate. The particular human being comes afterwards because life is prior to all of this ethical speak and life is prior to the harm of inflicting suffering by anyone or any process. Procreation is a choice to accept new life - not a choice to make nature do natures thing. Nature does the procreating - we accept it. We dont inflict it (even in vitro).
I disagree that it is always wrong to inflict suffering on another person. Just not a solid, clear, ethical basis to wipe out procreation. Inflicting suffering can be the most ethical thing to do.
It is wrong to take what you are given and squander it, waste it, hoard it, and wrong to not share it, to not give it freely to others.
Dont have children if you think life is so terrible that no one should be forced to exist.
Look down on people who do have children for their breaches of your ethics if you want.
But Antinatalism is unethical. It misses the point of ethics entirely, which is good human life.
Neither does nature care about any ethics at all, be it telling you to have 20 babies or 0. Neither does an unborn baby care what you inflict on it or not. Neither will anything care that there once were these ethical creatures who were so ethical they wouldnt wantonly inflict their ethicalness on life anymore.
So again, for another time, the point is about the act of the parent, not the child. Do YOU (the potential parent) want to prevent suffering for another, if you can? It doesn't matter one wit, whether the child exists to KNOW this. It is about what YOU should do as the already existing person with the agency and means to do so.
Now, the obvious response to this is something like what you are saying here: Quoting Fire Ologist
I disagree that procreating is an act upon a person - we dont inflict anything when we participate willingly in the natural act of procreation. We arent acting for or against any particular human being when we procreate. The particular human being comes afterwards because life is prior to all of this ethical speak and life is prior to the harm of inflicting suffering by anyone or any process. Procreation is a choice to accept new life - not a choice to make nature do natures thing. Nature does the procreating - we accept it. We dont inflict it (even in vitro).
But you will "inflict" something to "someone". It again, is a bad faith argument to understand what procreation is (leads to a new person), and then say that "because we don't know the exact person who will be born, that they don't exist yet, that the act has no affect/effect to someone". That is just patently false. Any future situation by definition, doesn't occur yet, that doesn't mean people don't have agency now that would lead to various known outcomes in the future. This is just rhetorically hollow argument, and a poor one that lands flat just on the face of it based on the nature of what procreation entails, what even the concept of "future" entails, and what human agency entails.
But let's have a mind-journey here...
Me: Once born, we know that people will die. Is this acceptable?
Interlocutor: "Yes, death isn't bad in and of itself. It's the price we should pay for life".
Me: Ok, some people think this is a harm, but let's grant that this is acceptable..
Me: Once born, we are exposed to all kinds of illnesses and unfortunate circumstances including but not limited to:
Accidents, addiction, aging, allergies, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, arthritis, asthma, bankruptcy, bereavement, betrayal, birth defects, blindness, broken bones, bullying, burns, cancer, car accidents, chronic pain, chronic illnesses, cognitive decline, crime victimization, cystic fibrosis, depression, divorce, domestic violence, drowning, eating disorders, economic hardship, environmental disasters, epilepsy, eviction, falls, family conflict, financial instability, food poisoning, fraud, genetic disorders, grief, harassment, heart disease, homelessness, hunger, hurricanes, identity theft, imprisonment, infections, infertility, influenza, insomnia, job loss, kidnapping, loneliness, loss of a loved one, malaria, malnutrition, mental illness, migraines, natural disasters, neglect, neurological disorders, obesity, pandemics, Parkinson's disease, personal injury, pest infestations, physical abuse, poverty, pregnancy complications, PTSD, racial discrimination, respiratory infections, rheumatism, robbery, schizophrenia, school shootings, self-harm, separation, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, skin diseases, social isolation, stalking, starvation, stroke, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, terminal illness, terrorism, theft, trauma, unemployment, violence, vision loss, war, water contamination, workplace accidents, xenophobia, yeast infections, zoonotic diseases, abandonment, abduction, abuse, acid attacks, acne, ADHD, aging parents, agricultural accidents, alcohol poisoning, amputation, anorexia, anxiety disorders, aphasia, appendicitis, asbestos exposure, asthma attacks, autoimmune diseases, avalanches, bed bugs, bedwetting, binge eating, bipolar disorder, blizzards, blood disorders, broken heart, bullying at work, burnout, cancer recurrence, carbon monoxide poisoning, carpal tunnel syndrome, cataracts, child labor, chronic fatigue syndrome, cluster headaches, colon cancer, communicable diseases, concussions, congenital heart defects, contagious diseases, COPD, Crohn's disease, cyberbullying, cystitis, debt, defamation, dental problems, dermatitis, developmental disorders, discrimination, dissociative disorders, drowning incidents, dyslexia, eclampsia, elder abuse, elephantiasis, emotional abuse, embezzlement, endometriosis, environmental pollution, eviction from home, explosive accidents, extortion, eye infections, famine, family estrangement, famine, farsightedness, fecal impaction, female genital mutilation, fibromyalgia, floods, flu pandemics, food allergies, foodborne illnesses, forced displacement, foreclosure, frostbite, gambling addiction, gas leaks, gastroenteritis, gender-based violence, genocide, glaucoma, global warming, gout, hangovers, hate crimes, head injuries, hearing loss, heatstroke, heavy metal poisoning, hepatitis, heroin addiction, high blood pressure, house fires, human trafficking, hurricanes, hyperthyroidism, hypothermia, hysterectomy complications, identity crises, illiteracy, incarceration, industrial accidents, influenza outbreaks, insect bites, interstitial cystitis, involuntary unemployment, irritable bowel syndrome, jaundice, jet lag, joint dislocations, judicial errors, kidney disease, landslides, language barriers, lead poisoning, leukemia, lice infestations, liver disease, lupus, Lyme disease, macular degeneration, malaria outbreaks, marital problems, measles, meningitis, meningococcal disease, mental breakdowns, migraines, mining accidents, miscarriage, mood disorders, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, narcissistic abuse, narcolepsy, neck injuries, neurodegenerative diseases, neurofibromatosis, neuropathy, obesity-related complications, occupational hazards, obsessive-compulsive disorder, organ failure, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, pancreatitis, panic attacks, paraplegia, parental neglect, parasitic infections, peptic ulcers, peripheral artery disease, pesticide exposure, phobias, physical deformities, pink eye, plagiarism, pneumonia, police brutality, post-natal depression, premature birth, prostate cancer, psoriasis, psychosis, radiation exposure, radon poisoning, rape, respiratory failure, restless leg syndrome, retaliation, rickets, road rage incidents, roof collapses, salmonella poisoning, sanctions, SARS, scabies, schizophrenia episodes, scoliosis, seasonal affective disorder, seizures, septicemia, severe weather conditions, sexual exploitation, shingles, sinkholes, skin cancer, sleep apnea, sleep deprivation, smoking addiction, social anxiety disorder, soil erosion, speech disorders, spinal cord injuries, stalking incidents, stillbirth, stomach cancer, stress, stroke recovery, sudden infant death syndrome, suicidal ideation, surgical complications, swine flu, tax evasion charges, terrorism threats, thyroid cancer, ticks, tornadoes, toxic relationships, traffic congestion, trafficking in persons, transphobia, traumatic brain injuries, trench foot, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, ulcers, underemployment, unemployment, urban decay, uterine cancer, vandalism, vehicle theft, venomous bites, viral infections, volcanic eruptions, war injuries, wasting syndrome, water scarcity, whiplash, whooping cough, wildfires, withdrawal symptoms, workplace harassment, workplace stress, worms, wrist injuries, wrongful accusations, wrongful death, yellow fever, zoonotic infections, noise pollution, office politics, unreasonable bosses, misunderstandings, broken friendships, peer pressure, unrealistic societal expectations, cultural alienation, discrimination, traffic accidents, loneliness in a crowd, missed opportunities, creative blocks, existential crises, dealing with bureaucracy, feeling unfulfilled, high cost of living, technology failures, power outages, scarcity of resources, environmental degradation, emotional exhaustion, systemic corruption, loss of cultural heritage, internet addiction, digital divide, cyberattacks, data breaches, peer rejection, public speaking anxiety, negative body image, climate anxiety, overwork, burnout, imposter syndrome, midlife crisis, family obligations, cultural expectations, aging infrastructure, housing shortages, inaccessible healthcare, poor work-life balance, stigma of illness, fear of aging, generational conflict, substance dependencies, cyberstalking, deforestation, plastic pollution, extreme weather, droughts, heatwaves, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, social media harassment, self-esteem issues, fear of failure, infertility treatments, invasive medical procedures, chronic stress, overpopulation, resource wars, political instability, societal unrest, ideological conflicts, legal battles, copyright infringement, loss of reputation, deteriorating mental health, peer pressure, unfulfilled potential, financial scams, ergonomic injuries, urban sprawl, toxic friendships, loss of tradition, dealing with dementia in family members, balancing career and family, navigating personal identity, confronting mortality, technological obsolescence, scarcity of natural resources, global economic shifts, cultural misappropriation, fear of public places, imposter syndrome, financial market crashes, fear of flying, language extinction, misinformation, corporate espionage, loss of biodiversity, noise pollution, space junk, invasive species, soil depletion, and burnout.
Now, you may say that this is contingent and we don't know what people will really endure. And I would say, that i correct, and why I would call them "contingent/circumstantial harms". And thus, the beginning of this particular argument was showing that the Veil of Ignorance applies here, because (contra other posters here like TClark), we do not have even imperfect knowledge of what types and degrees of harms people will endure once born.
Then you will tell me, "No we do know to some degree the amount of harms, based on what we've experienced". But then, I would say the crux of the issue regarding dignity pops up. That is to say, what are you willing to allow another person to be exposed to in your pursuit of X? In this case, it looks like your X is an impersonal idea of "Life" or "Mother Nature". None of these things are entities that deserve the category of ethical consideration. The only people that matter are the people that might be born who will be affected. Those are the loci of actual pain and suffering.
Then you can tell me that the "goods" outweigh the pain.. That "Mother Nature" and "Life" deserves such-and-such. Besides being an impersonal concept, and thus a category error for ethical consideration that deserves absolutely nothing, being "deserves" doesn't even apply to such impersonal concepts.. We have to understand what it is about suffering that makes it weighted as more important to prevent than promoting-good/happiness. This goes to the notion of aggressive paternalism.
Dont have children if you think life is so terrible that no one should be forced to exist.
Look down on people who do have children for their breaches of your ethics if you want.
Acknowledging that people have a right to their own estimation of things...
It is not just/fair to estimate for others, a whole lifetime of what various harms and suffering is acceptable. In fact, not considering suffering when they are not in a scenario where they need help (already exist), is purely using someone, because precisely because that person doesn't exist yet, any move to create that person, would always be one whereby one is inflicting that suffering upon them when it did not need to be inflicted so. Thus it is always the case that this is using someone as a means.
Adding Benatar's asymmetry (reformulated and tweaked a bit), this is no debate.
Preventing procreation prevents suffering and happiness. Preventing suffering is the obligation, preventing happiness matters not. And no "thing" will cry over spilt milk, not Mother Nature, not Life.
It is aggressively paternalistic to assume that your unhappiness for other people not experiencing X positive value, is the reason why people should thus suffer. And as I explained, certainly, Mother Nature and Life, abstract and reified ideas, have no say in the matter.
So again, for another time, the point is about the act of the parent, not the child. Do YOU (the potential parent) want to prevent suffering for another, if you can?
Wrong. YOU are still talking about the child too. You should be saying something like this: Do you, the potential parent want to be a person who inflicts suffering, do you want to walk around being an unethical person who inflicts suffering, or do you want to be be ethical? Takes the child out of the equation. If its not about the child then it is not about preventing suffering for another.
You cant make your arguments without committing the same error you accuse me of making.
Its not an error. You need two existing subjects before you can judge the actions of one upon the other as ethical or not. The best you can say is the present world would be a better place if it was filled with people who acted according to principle and and acted according to ethical principle. If one of those principles happens to mean all people will cease to exist, the world is still better today because all of us principled antinatalists inhabit it.
Thats your argument. But you said for another anyway.
Almost as hollow as thinking we humans, the sole source of ethics, came to be this way by a natural process that was unethical all along.
Dont you think there is as long a list of great things that happen to people as your laundry list of dirty laundry? You need the clean clothes first before you can get stuck with the dirty laundry. You need life first, apart from suffering, free from suffering, to later suffer anything.
what are you willing to allow another person to be exposed to in your pursuit of X? "
What are you willing to take away from another person in your pursuit of your ethical ideals? Take away parenting? Take away loving your children. Take away pride in how those children endure and learn from suffering and are charitable with their sacrifices?
Life does include suffering. Everyday to some extent, for everyone and every creature who lives, there is suffering.
I also dont want to inflict any more suffering on anyone to make matters worse for them.
But, what is the point of being ethical when being ethical means there will no longer be beings being ethical?
Antinatalism is anti-ethics.
Which is why earlier I said antinatalism puts ethical principals above the people who are being ethical, and does so having the effect of there no longer being any people. So what is the point of being ethical when ethics itself is being used to destroy is, to harm the species, to inflict upon the world a world without any ethics (without people)?
Its all backwards and confused. Like murdering someone for their own good.
You claim that the antinatalist is secretly religious...
No, I am saying that antinatalism is non-naturalistic. I wrote out responses to all of your claims, but then I shelved that post because it was so long. Instead I focused on the simple argument (Reply to Leontiskos) and the foundational Gnosticism (Reply to Leontiskos).
Regarding the simple argument, I will ask you a simple question: Is it true that we should not procreate in a world where everyone receives one pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness? Yes or no? Presumably some have ambitions of achieving such a world someday.
Here is an easier way to envision the foundational Gnosticism problem. The evolutionary naturalist says:
Reasoning, including moral reasoning, is a result of evolutionary adaptation
Evolutionary adaptation is ordered to survival
Therefore, moral reasoning is ordered to survival
The argument which says we should cease procreating would lead to extinction
Therefore this argument is unsound; contrary to evolutionary adaptation ordered to survival
This argument is a microcosm of the anti-Gnosticism argument, for the Gnostic must reject naturalistic premises akin to (1). For the naturalist, antinatalism is by definition irrational, as it is directly contrary to nature. Your arguments are all dubious, but one of the fundamental reasons they are all dubious is because you are essentially importing knowledge from a different "god," a god that is foreign to our nature, culture, religions, etc. In denying moral naturalism you must necessarily be appealing to some form of supernaturalism. Think of it in terms of the microcosm: if your ethic is directly contrary to evolutionary survival, then it must be coming from something above and beyond evolutionary survival.
Wrong. YOU are still talking about the child too. You should be saying something like this: Do you, the potential parent want to be a person who inflicts suffering, do you want to walk around being an unethical person who inflicts suffering, or do you want to be be ethical? Takes the child out of the equation. If its not about the child then it is not about preventing suffering for another.
Don't look now, but you are making my arguments...
Yeah reformulate it to take the child out of the equation. It's about the parent.
However, I am not opposed to talking in "potentials" or "future children". What I AM opposed to is talking AS IF the future child will feel "deprived" of not existing. So I think it's fine to say, "You can prevent future suffering", because it is the NOT SUFFERING that matters. That someone DOES NOT exist to suffer is the ethically good outcome. That someone DOES NOT EXIST TO BE HAPPY matters not one wit..
Almost as hollow as thinking we humans, the sole source of ethics, came to be this way by a natural process that was unethical all along.
Again, category error to input ANY ethical thing to nature. Humans are too plastic for this kind of thinking. Did nature intend us to have computers? No, nature intended nothing. Nature has nothing to say on nothing. Once you have degrees of freedom of deliberation, it is up to us to figure shit out and not go bad faith and say, "What did nature want?". As nature a) isn't something that can confer morality and b) nature doesn't tell us about morality. And any use of "appeal to nature" can be to justify anything because we are brutes and we do ethical things as well.. it is up to us to deliberate on what to sus out as the correct view and action. There is nothing to fall back on. Even if we did, it would be your interpretation of it. Or at best using descriptive ethics to justify normative ethics.
Dont you think there is as long a list of great things that happen to people as your laundry list of dirty laundry? You need the clean clothes first before you can get stuck with the dirty laundry. You need life first, apart from suffering, free from suffering, to later suffer anything.
And that is my point, when not under mitigating circumstances, but preventative choices, mitigating circumstances don't matter. If you allow/inflict/not prevent suffering even with the intent on someone enjoying the good, but knowing you are allowing the bad, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a violation. Causing suffering that was not necessary to cause because you have an agenda is the height of paternalism and means-using.
What are you willing to take away from another person in your pursuit of your ethical ideals? Take away parenting? Take away loving your children. Take away pride in how those children endure and learn from suffering and are charitable with their sacrifices?
None of these things are ethical. In Kantian terms, they are simply "inclinations" or ends that people might want to pursue. They aren't moral onto themselves like suffering prevention is.
But, what is the point of being ethical when being ethical means there will no longer be beings being ethical?
Because ethics is around because there are humans around, humans aren't around to keep ethics going, for the nth time. In fact, it would be immoral to keep people around to keep some ethical framework going, as that is exactly the reason it is unethical in the first place- it is discounting the causation of someone else's lifetime of suffering for the promotion of some X ethical project that you conceive of!
Its all backwards and confused. Like murdering someone for their own good.
Actually, quite the opposite. Death comes from being born in the first place. All the sufferings of life, including being murdered come from one's choice to overlook suffering for one's project. And since no one is exists to feel the "deprivation" of good, go back to the spilt milk argument. Quoting Leontiskos
Regarding the simple argument, I will ask you a simple question: Is it true that we should not procreate in a world where everyone receives one pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness? Yes or no? Presumably some have ambitions of achieving such a world someday.
And I gave you my answer....
Also, about "someday", I wouldn't make people in the meantime become grist for this goal.
Reasoning, including moral reasoning, is a result of evolutionary adaptation
This is not fact. Moral reasoning isn't necessarily evolved for from evolutionary reasons, but could be a secondary byproduct of other reasons. I do know that whole fields like evolutionary psychology exist, but it's often contested certain methodologies being it's near impossible to know the original environment conditions of our ancestors, and what particular traits were evolved for versus simply having large brains with a degree of plasticity. For examples, presumably making computers wasn't "evolved for", but perhaps basic numeracy was. It would be bad faith arguing to presume you are going to get from basic structures to complex ones without it being a "just so" story. And spare me any articles, I understand that these theories exist.. Doesn't mean they are hard facts.
Evolutionary adaptation isn't "ordered" per se, but rather, is a shotgun approach of genetic variation against environmental factors. It prunes away variations not fit for the environment reproduction. The order is simply our way of organizing the "real time" of this happening in nature. The "order" is not like some "logos", just how we humans are understanding the variations that cause change in species fitting into environmental niches.
Again, not necessarily the case. Moral reasoning might be even a more modern thing really. It could have been traditional understanding based on tribal traditions. I wouldn't call that reasoning as an appeal to tradition. For example, let us say there is a culture with a history of some heinous act, but the heinous act allowed them to survive. I wouldn't say this is "moral reasoning". There are blood feuds and slavery and honor killings, and all such things that have kept people in line. This doesn't mean it's moral. There may be stuff that helped to survive that is actually immoral.
The argument which says we should cease procreating would lead to extinction
Therefore this argument is unsound; contrary to evolutionary adaptation ordered to survival
This is the same problem as Fire Ologist. Evolution has nothing to say about morality, and anything we glean from it is from post-facto reasoning, not because it is inbuilt. It is cultural, personal, existential, but not necessarily instinctual. There can arguments that basic empathy and fairness are seen in small children, but this is so general as to not be an actual ethical basis. I can say it is compassionate and fair to not procreate, and it just took being an adult with a certain amount of reasoning abilities to understand this, using my "evolutionary" traits of compassion and fairness.
This argument is a microcosm of the anti-Gnosticism argument, for the Gnostic must reject naturalistic premises akin to (1). For the naturalist, antinatalism is by definition irrational, as it is directly contrary to nature. Your arguments are all dubious, but one of the fundamental reasons they are all dubious is because you are essentially importing knowledge from a different "god," a god that is foreign to our nature, culture, religions, etc. In denying moral naturalism you must necessarily be appealing to some form of supernaturalism. Think of it in terms of the microcosm: if your ethic is directly contrary to evolutionary survival, then it must be coming from something above and beyond evolutionary survival.
Again, as far as I am willing to entertain Gnosticism, it is as a metaphor that existence has some inherent suffering aspects to it merely by being something with becoming and is not fully being. I can go into it more, but it would be Schopenhauer's idea of boredom being a sort of proof of the negative nature of happiness, as a repose rather than something that actually satiates. It is the treadmill rather than the peace of fully being.. Schopenhauer might say that "higher realm" is some sort of non-willing peacefulness of nirvana. I don't necessarily believe that is possible. @Wayfarer has called this belief "nihilistic" because there is no soteriology whereby one can escape the cycle of suffering.
Let me bring you through a series of questions:
What are you intending a new person born to get out of life? Why must there be someone versus no one that isn't selfish from the start (remember, no person exists prior to you to care)?
Once born, let's say the thing you envision is some sort of happiness conceived of in whatever way (religious, social, personal, hedonistic, virtue, etc.). What if they fail on most of those ways?
If your answer is that "They just have to figure out a better way".. how is this not paternalistically assuming that people "must do" this project that you had for them? It's forcing a set of (de facto) choices that these new people will have to pursue. Once "in the game", there is no way out of having to make these choices, and sometimes they lead to no good outcome for the player. It is then quite gaslighting to blame the player for not following the plan well enough the way you want it, or to say that it didn't work out in their favor, or to say if they "just did this or they would be better". I can't emphasize enough the kind of hubristic paternalism necessary in deciding for another that this project is what needs to be played out be a person that is someone that is not you simply because you have the power to create that person.
In denying moral naturalism you must necessarily be appealing to some form of supernaturalism. Think of it in terms of the microcosm: if your ethic is directly contrary to evolutionary survival, then it must be coming from something above and beyond evolutionary survival.
Interesting point.
An attack from a different flank.
Ive been pointing out that if the ethic was indeed a product of nature, it would be nature developing an ethic that led to the demise of all ethic agents and so the demise of ethics itself; the ethic that was naturally born would then have to turn and destroy itself to be an antinatalist ethic. Ive been trying to show it is internally self-defeating - living things using their lives to end living things that use their lives ethically.
But destroying itself is not what life naturally does. Its just the opposite. Living things may devour their surroundings and destroy things, but life does so to live and to endure destructive forces from outside nature.
This all just further supports your argument that antinatalism is not natural.
That someone DOES NOT exist to suffer is the ethically good outcome.
This is two parts: 1. That SOMEONE does not exist. And 2. Exist to suffer.
You are talking about the child as if actual, not potential. You did a much worse job of making this about the parent. The ethically good outcome has to be about the parent, the ethical person acting ethically. Not someone else. Be they not exist as a potential child or exist to suffer as an actual child.
Again, category error to input ANY ethical thing to nature. Humans are too plastic for this kind of thinking. Did nature intend us to have computers? No, nature intended nothing. Nature has nothing to say on nothing. Once you have degrees of freedom of deliberation, it is up to us to figure shit out and not go bad faith and say, "What did nature want?". As nature a) isn't something that can confer morality and b) nature doesn't tell us about morality. And any use of "appeal to nature" can be to justify anything because we are brutes and we do ethical things as well.. it is up to us to deliberate on what to sus out as the correct view and action. There is nothing to fall back on. Even if we did, it would be your interpretation of it. Or at best using descriptive ethics to justify normative ethics.
Dont really need to reply here. Im not talking about nature like its intentional. Its causal. Mother Nature is a metaphor for causality, or natural necessity. Like a biological function. Like procreation. Like, in the case of humans, ethics. Ethics came from humans and humans came from natural processes so ethics sits directly in nature in us humans. Antinatalism would be natures human ethics that requires by natural necessity humans unnaturally stop procreation, which ends the ethics that sits only in humans which formerly sat in nature. Total mess.
They aren't moral onto themselves like suffering prevention is.
Suffering prevention. Is this the highest ethic, the only ethic, a foundational ethic to all that are built on it? Or just another ethic where someone might hold some other ethic higher while keeping suffering prevention close, just not central?
I think you have to say it is up there pretty close to your highest ethic. All other ethics might add some suffering to the world.
Antinatalism sort of is a one size solution fits all human immorality solution.
And I know you dont care about this but it means ethics is as meaningless as your suffering, your life, and your precious preventative sentiments. Why be ethical? Its a different question, but antinatalism does not promote a good sense of meaning and purpose behind being ethical. It rids the world of the life out in place that would do the preventing of procreation.
What are you intending a new person born to get out of life?
Who knows? No one can influence what a person gets for themselves out of this life. Thats up to them to get out of it what they can. To the ones who are born to us we can only give them things out of life - it is up to them and their intentions to take these and get things out of life. All we can intend is the same thing we can physically provide - an opportunity. Its called procreation.
Theres nothing paternalistic by banning all babies? It is an ironic use of the term paternal but thou shalt prevent suffering and never have children. Just as wide open to derision for paternalism.
Antinatalism promotes no more babies because making a baby is the infliction of suffering on that baby. No one wants to inflict suffering on a baby, because it is just wrong. If that is the right way to live, and someone gets pregnant, the pregnant couple would have done wrong and inflicted suffering on another (or be in the act of inflicting suffering on another growing into such person).
What can the antinatalist do with the new fetus? Can they abort it?
If they can abort it, it must not be a person, because I would think the rule is that it is not ethical to kill another innocent person. Thats worse than inflicting suffering.
But this is interesting. The antinataliat who doesnt think a fetus is a person and who supports abortion would have to agree with the following: [b]it is unethical to cause a sperm and an egg to form a fetus because that would be inflicting suffering on another person, but is it ok to kill the fetus after it is formed because a newly conceived fetus isnt a person.
Doesnt an antinataliat have to be an anti-abortionist to lay out a consistent treatment of future people we do not want to inflict things upon?[/b]
I don't see this as a knock on his position. Birth control isn't natural, but it's not immoral.
Its a more clear blow than my same point about it being unnatural. It just means you cant be a naturalist if you want to be an antinatalist. You couldnt have drawn the ethic from nature. Some other influence, like a god as an easy example whispered no more babies lest you cause all their suffering. If the antinatalist doesnt want to have a deity, fine then - but where did they get the idea of a universal morality that wipes out procreation was a good?
I still say it makes no sense to prevent suffering in another by eliminating the other (through never making the other). You never have the prevention if you never have the other to prevent from something.
This is two parts: 1. That SOMEONE does not exist. And 2. Exist to suffer.
You are talking about the child as if actual, not potential. You did a much worse job of making this about the parent. The ethically good outcome has to be about the parent, the ethical person acting ethically. Not someone else. Be they not exist as a potential child or exist to suffer as an actual child.
No. Again, it IS from the perspective of the parent. You CAN project onto the future and see hypotheticals. Someone DID NOT SUFFER (that could have). There is no actual "someone", but from the perspective of the parent, this prevention was what was the ethical decision, and being a negative ethic, it is good that it DID NOT occur. And again, the ethic, being a negative ethic, was about NOT allowing the suffering. The asymmetry is when you project to the other way, "Happiness did NOT occur". This is not a violation; it's not obligatory to promote happiness, only prevent the situation where an ACTUAL someone would suffer. The ACTUAL someone did not suffer. Violation did not take place.
As an aside, you can certainly disagree with the formulation and reformulate it. That is fine. The nature of the ethic doesn't change, just the language used for hypothetical scenarios. But oddly enough, however you formulate the language, we actually agree it is from the perspective of the person making the decision.
Dont really need to reply here. Im not talking about nature like its intentional. Its causal. Mother Nature is a metaphor for causality, or natural necessity. Like a biological function. Like procreation. Like, in the case of humans, ethics. Ethics came from humans and humans came from natural processes so ethics sits directly in nature in us humans. Antinatalism would be natures human ethics that requires by natural necessity humans unnaturally stop procreation, which ends the ethics that sits only in humans which formerly sat in nature. Total mess.
Natural necessity? This is all bad faith arguing. You are arguing as if humans cannot deliberate for themselves, or that there are directives from nature that force us to decide a certain way. Calling your argument by another name "causality/natural necessity", doesn't change the incoherent nature of the argument, thus everything imputed on your idea of "Mother Nature" remains for this new term, that also matters not to moral decisions. There is no logos, no natural necessity to fall back on.
Suffering prevention. Is this the highest ethic, the only ethic, a foundational ethic to all that are built on it? Or just another ethic where someone might hold some other ethic higher while keeping suffering prevention close, just not central?
I think you have to say it is up there pretty close to your highest ethic. All other ethics might add some suffering to the world.
Antinatalism sort of is a one size solution fits all human immorality solution.
Indeed negative ethics, like not violating rights, or making people suffer unduly, would be pretty high up there, yes. The basis could be several things, but it is based on a deontology of not using people in this case. YOUR positive projects shouldn't be at the behest of SOMEONE ELSE'S negative violation. The right not to be used/rights violated/negative ethics violated is above someone else's notion of what is best to occur in the world.
And I know you dont care about this but it means ethics is as meaningless as your suffering, your life, and your precious preventative sentiments. Why be ethical? Its a different question, but antinatalism does not promote a good sense of meaning and purpose behind being ethical. It rids the world of the life out in place that would do the preventing of procreation.
No, I am not sure why this phrase or concept is so puzzling to you. Let's say instead of ethics, it was "Make plastic". Would it make sense that humans need to be around so plastic exists? That makes no sense. Nothing "needs to be around", including ethics. It's a byproduct of what humans face when making decisions. If there is no potential for ethical considerations (like procreation, murder, theft, etc.) to exist, then there are no need for ethics. It's not much more complicated than that.
Who knows? No one can influence what a person gets for themselves out of this life. Thats up to them to get out of it what they can. To the ones who are born to us we can only give them things out of life - it is up to them and their intentions to take these and get things out of life. All we can intend is the same thing we can physically provide - an opportunity. Its called procreation.
Right..so this speaks to exactly my point about the intent versus reality, Veil of Ignorance, and creating projects for someone else. I know you don't see anything wrong here, and that is part of our miscommunication/disagreement. I at least want you to understand where the disagreement is, even if you disagree. I don't know if you see it here with your answers to these questions..
Theres nothing paternalistic by banning all babies? It is an ironic use of the term paternal but thou shalt prevent suffering and never have children. Just as wide open to derision for paternalism.
No, that would mean all ethics that say "Don't do X" is paternalistic. That would be absurd as any action that is an "ought" would be this, and we would be abusing language. "Don't murder" is not paternalistic. Rather, unlike the antinatalist ethic, which PREVENTS a paternalistic scenario from happening, procreation WILL cause another person to be affected, to be born for X reason/project. THAT is paternalistic to think another person should be allowed to suffer because you have a notion of X. No one is affected by anything by not procreating/antinatalist argument. So by definition and applying it to the outcome, antinatalism cannot be paternalistic like procreation would indeed be. Also, being that almost no antinatalist philosophies entail being "forced" to not have children, but rather provide an ethical reason not to, there is no problem here either. The person can freely choose what they think is right.
But this is interesting. The antinataliat who doesnt think a fetus is a person and who supports abortion would have to agree with the following: it is unethical to cause a sperm and an egg to form a fetus because that would be inflicting suffering on another person, but is it ok to kill the fetus after it is formed because a newly conceived fetus isnt a person.
Doesnt an antinataliat have to be an anti-abortionist to lay out a consistent treatment of future people we do not want to inflict things upon?
I didn't answer because it's a non-sequitur. This isn't a debate about abortion. An antinatalist is not entailed to believe anything regarding abortion, but certainly, one who believes that the fetus (qualified perhaps by a certain time period of gestation), is not a person yet, would think that abortion is permissible.
I didn't answer because it's a non-sequitur. This isn't a debate about abortion. An antinatalist is not entailed to believe anything regarding abortion, but certainly, one who believes that the fetus (qualified perhaps by a certain time period of gestation), is not a person yet, would think that abortion is permissible.
So an antinatalist can say it is impermissible to procreate, to create a new fetus, in order to prevent suffering, but it is ok to kill a human fetus.
I didn't read entire thread and don't know if this was discussed already but isn't anti-natalism perfect solution to overpopulation?
It's not new that overpopulation is a problem, and killing off billions of people is unacceptable, but Anti-natalism would solve that problem in only 50 years without anyone suffering.
I didn't read entire thread and don't know if this was discussed already but isn't anti-natalism perfect solution to overpopulation?
It's not new that overpopulation is a problem, and killing off billions of people is unacceptable, but Anti-natalism would solve that problem in only 50 years without anyone suffering.
Antinatalism can take many forms, but most antinatalism is not about preventing various environmental or population outcomes but due to not wanting to allow suffering for a future person. Indeed, a result would be a reduced people born, which would in fact reduce the population, but that is generally not the position of most philanthropic or misanthropic antinatalists. Once the population levels off to a "correct" level, the environmental/population "antinatalist" would no longer be so, and thus was a contingent natalist, really.
Interestingly, in the US, countries in Western Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia, and even China (even AFTER the one child policy restrictions) the population has gone to below replacement levels which makes economists and social conservatives uneasy. They need little units of labor to keep the pyramid scheme going, and this "lower than replacement level" gives them pause for alarm. Here are some recent stories on this:
Now I'd love to think this worldwide decline in fertility rate is because everyone realizes that bringing more people into the world means bringing more suffering into the world, and they want to prevent this in a noble ethical way, as good antinatalists.. But that is not the reason. The reason of course is mainly due to the fact that the more educated a population, and higher the standard of living, the harder it is to raise a child. People also end up living more individualistic lifestyles that tend to skew child-free over family-type living. So it is more about lifestyle choice, the cost of raising a child, and a more individualistic, less traditional view of goals in life.
Of course in poorer, less educated (for women especially), and more traditional societies like the Middle East, parts of South America, Africa, and Asia, the fertility rate is still fairly high and so in those areas you will continue to see growth, and the overall growth will continue being that there's simply more people on the planet in general, but it will slow.
Either way, no, population decline is generally not the goal of antinatalists. Since population reduction is context dependent (as presumably it would be permissible to have children again once sustainable levels are reached) we maybe can call it "context-dependent antinatalism". I guess in theory as well, "misanthropic" antinatalism falls under this (rather than philanthropic ... or "to prevent suffering").. That is to say, people think that humans are ruining the environment, other animals, habitats, and the current living conditions and thus need to stop breeding until such time as these recover. Usually these people are simply for fewer children, not absolutely no children.
Reply to schopenhauer1
Well said, I have no counter arguments but will add to your comment that using this kind of antinatalism to reduce population would also create economic issues.
Most likely various adversary countries would see it (or already see it) as opportunity to expand population by settling low fertility areas or areas that would introduce such antinatalism.
Suffering itself involves emotions, physical states and psychological reactions to those states, so bringing emotion into it isnt a non-sequitor.
This is true, but where we are dealing with non-existent people this is not relevant other than to assign a position to oneself as a result of their emotional reaction to whatever proposition..
But in all of the above scenarios, in your quote, there are already existing victims of the harm.
There are clearly not. There are potential victims. This is why the analogy holds, for the most part. And taking this straight to your conclusion of "no playgrounds", yes, that's right, but antinatalists don't confuse the issue:
No humans. Not not playgrounds. Let the people who exist use hte playground, for reasons your point out that would make the "no playgrounds" conclusion stupid as heck. That said, it seems fairly clear that's not hte intention. THe intention is to leave the playground (world)as is, and remove the potential sufferer as it is (on this account) an unavoidable consequence of being one.
I might not only have to be an antinatalist, I might have to be an anti-hydrationist, because giving a thirsty person a glass of water, is like giving birth to a new person.
While i understand the avenue you're taking here, it's not apt.
Procreating is not analogous to maintainence of life. If someone is alive, there's a consequence to doing nothing. Not so around procreation. There is a neutral, or a positive (i.e nothing, or a new person (capable of suffering)).
And no need to consider what other things we cause by not procreating? As long as we dont inflict suffering we will be doing good in this world, be good for this world - not arguable?
No. This isn't relevant in any way. We're starting at zero. If the position is that people must procreate I can only laugh. I don't see another conclusion there, if you want to establish a 'wrong' in not procreating.
Getting a little emotive here, which you criticized me for above.
Not at all. I would guess if it's making you uncomfortable, i could repeat those comments :P
The point here, is that most people are "wrong" about hte quality of their life. Do you seriously think that isn't a reasonable inference, ignoring emotionality?
And why are happiness and/or purpose, as you frame the delusion, the only counters to suffering? If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking life is, on balance, suffering, then you would reject anyone who viewed any life as on balance, not suffering. Screw purpose. Im enjoying just trying to argue with you here.
Here's some meat. IFF I am deluded in that way, then yes I would. I, currently, have zero reason to think so and plenty of good reason to think the opposite. I can note all the happiness and purpose in my life without having to ignore what I think is a good, logical conclusion about my life. It is, overall, a waste of time.
Antinatalism analogized to, ironically, a life guard, keeping people out of the dangerous waters. Thats backwards. Antinatalism would eliminate the lives to guard, not merely keep lives on the land to live safely. A lifeguard would inflict a riddance of the ocean to those safely on land, not a riddance of living, like antinatalism would.
That is not the analogy at all. The analogy would be to God if anything. God removing people because they suffer too much in the face of his arguably more important creation - the Ocean. But this is a little silly. An Antinatalist would call both analogies dumb and just say "Why can't you take the metaphor as the metaphor instead of reading other things into it?"
Antinatalism isnt just a tidy little syllogism categorized as ethics. Its an act in the world, and an against life, which is procreative. Against suffering on paper, but inflicted upon all human life in action.
I really don't know what you could mean here. Life is plenty of things - overwhelmingly: suffering. It is not right to procreate in the face of that fact (on my account). It goes no deeper than that. All of the other fluff obviously exists. It has nothing to do with the arguments, as i see them.
Mother Nature made use of suffering to fashion we species of ethical monkeys, only so that we could end the infliction of Her suffering on us and call it good ethics. Seems potentially delusional to have out smarted Mother Nature and her sufffering ways called life. With our ethics no less.
This anthropomorphizing of nature seems delusional to me. I'm unsure how to approach it, given that take. There is no 'intention' behind nature. We're not acting 'against' anything by not having children. We have a choice, and to me, it's a clear one. To you, either not so, or the 'other' choice.
What can the antinatalist do with the new fetus? Can they abort it?
If they can abort it, it must not be a person, because I would think the rule is that it is not ethical to kill another innocent person. Thats worse than inflicting suffering.
This is very interesting and you've picked up on a couple of conceptual issues that I think probably sort of float around among antinatalists without any real answers. For me, the antinatalist can abort. Should abort. But this is in line with most other reasonable takes on abortion: Up to a point. I'm not willing to commit to a timeframe, but its obvious at some stage a fetus can 'experience' and prior to that, go for gold.
The antinataliat who doesnt think a fetus is a person and who supports abortion would have to agree with the following: it is unethical to cause a sperm and an egg to form a fetus because that would be inflicting suffering on another person, but is it ok to kill the fetus after it is formed because a newly conceived fetus isnt a person.
Doesnt an antinataliat have to be an anti-abortionist to lay out a consistent treatment of future people we do not want to inflict things upon?
Few points here:
1. They would not have to agree. A zygote is not a person. The coming together of a sperm and an egg is not what leads to suffering. Though, most antinatalists probably would recommnd avoiding this.
2. To - some - degree, i get what you're saying. But 'future people' is a bit ambiguous here. A fetus which could survive outside the womb is probably already a person. Prior to that, you're still int he realm of "whether or not" in terms of making a choice, to my mind.
This anthropomorphizing of nature seems delusional
Really? You dont use metaphors to make the text more interesting? Ok if you think thats delusional of me how about simply:
Arising by the necessity of chemistry on earth, life began. This led to animals, which by the natural necessity of evolution led to animals on land, which by necessity led to humans, which by necessity led to logic and ethics, which by necessity led to antinatalism, which, if practiced well, necessarily leads to the end of all of this living necessity (at least of the ethical kind). The natural evolution of ethics in the world was necessary so that ethics could be ended by these ethical animals.
Basically, all the rest of the living things by necessity procreate, as procreation is part of the very life that has now spit out ethics, and our ethics is to end life itself, unlike every other natural, necessitated living thing. Seems like natural necessity gone astray because of our ethics. Or, justQuoting AmadeusD
overwhelmingly: suffering.
seems like its based on a preoccupation with suffering too much maybe?
The analogy would be to God if anything. God removing people because they suffer too much in the face of his arguably more important creation - the Ocean.
most people are "wrong" about hte quality of their life.
Wow. Philosopher king hath spoken to the little suffering people. Is anyone ever wrong when they judge what is right or wrong about the quality of OTHER PEOPLEs lives? Maybe wrong anbout some of the most people? Isnt it THEIR lives? Its none of my business to say your life is suffering, just like its none of your business to say my life is anything. Maybe most antinataliats are wrong about the quality of their lives. Possible? Killing off all procreation might be a little rash?
The coming together of a sperm and an egg is not what leads to suffering. Though, most antinatalists probably would recommnd avoiding this.
So by procreation, you have to mean conceiving, growing the fetus, giving birth and feeding/caring for a new person. So it is wrong to procreate in this sense because only after some or all of these steps has suffering been inflicted on a person. Not just conception. This way, conceiving a fetus isnt yet procreating, and we can kill the fetus if we want, without inflicting suffering. But then, a man could have sex and conceive many fetuses and never brake the rule of antinatalism. It is only the woman alone who can complete the steps it takes to inflict the suffering of procreation. The man inflicts a fetus that can be killed on a woman (or maybe inflicts is harsh, but antinatalists know how to read inflicts between the lines), but only the woman chooses not to kill it and inflicts suffering on a new person, eventually. Right? To be consistent with the notion procreation inflicts suffering, much harder for men to break the antinatalist rules? If ever?
Arising by the necessity of chemistry on earth, life began. This led to animals, which by the natural necessity of evolution led to animals on land, which by necessity led to humans, which by necessity led to logic and ethics, which by necessity led to antinatalism, which, if practiced well, necessarily leads to the end of all of this living necessity (at least of the ethical kind). The natural evolution of ethics in the world was necessary so that ethics could be ended by these ethical animals.
Basically, all the rest of the living things by necessity procreate, as procreation is part of the very life that has now spit out ethics, and our ethics is to end life itself, unlike every other natural, necessitated living thing. Seems like natural necessity gone astray because of our ethics. Or, just
Don't know what the other person would say, but your use of "necessity" here is the problem. Necessity is being used in some ethical fashion. We aren't "necessitated" in an ethical way by any natural logos or impulse. Meta-ethically, we at least act as if we have the freedom of deliberation, so I am not sure your point. We have no fidelity to "evolution", "the chemistry on earth" or anything else. That is a weird reification to me.
Maybe wrong anbout some of the most people? Isnt it THEIR lives? Its none of my business to say your life is suffering, just like its none of your business to say my life is anything.
Interesting enough, this is partly the basis for deontologically, why it would be wrong to decide for another that they should suffer. It isn't your business to determine that for someone else :D.
But besides this, empirically-speaking there is solid ground to stand on in regards to Pollyannaism. That is to say, we often have very unpleasant experiences in the present that we often smooth away later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the unpleasant experience. This leads to a false estimation of each event in the moment as opposed to the events in hindsight which throws off later reported evaluations of good and bad. Or, even worse, trying to compress all experiences in an evaluation later on, not pulling apart each individual events negative experience as lived.
we often have very unpleasant experiences in the present that we often smooth away later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the unpleasant experience.
Then we often have pleasant experiences in the present that we rough up later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the pleasant experience. Thats all psychology.
All of this interestingly points out that no one can judge anothers suffering, or that they are suffering at all.
It is false to say life is insufferable. Just way too much whining about the day you stubbed your toe. Way too much discounting of the day you saw someone you love happy and laughing, or laughter itself.
It is false to say we are never right to inflict suffering. Just not a tailored ethic anyone could ever follow. We can follow a rule to not steal. We can not lie or murder. But never inflict any suffering?? We would need to not ask anyone to ever do anything. We couldnt tell someone we loved them for fear this would burden them and increase their suffering. Teaching someone about antinatalism could inflict tremendous suffering on them - the meaning of life and all their plans dashed because they involved a family and kids. It is NOT true that Happiness is not obligatory, whereas preventing suffering is. Neither happiness nor preventing suffering are obligatory. You reify your ability to reduce suffering, and the ethical rule that tells you this is the highest good.
Antinatalism is a weird reification of being ethical, of the good as in a good choice being choosing not to inflict life with its suffering.
That's not reification. Reification is this:
Vocabulary.com:Reification is when you think of or treat something abstract as a physical thing. Reification is a complex idea for when you treat something immaterial like happiness, fear, or evil as a material thing.
In your case, you were treating nature/necessity as something which we need to have fidelity for.
In the case of AN, there is no necessity of nature being appealed to. The ethic itself isn't a reification, simply a weighted value (against causing suffering). You can question that value, but that is not reifying an abstract thing into something more concrete. Nature's evolutionary aspect has no ethical component to it, and to pretend it does, would be a reification. Similarly, if you said "good exists in the world like a chair exists in the world", some might accuse that kind of thinking as a "reification" of good. You are doing this to necessity.
Then we often have pleasant experiences in the present that we rough up later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the pleasant experience. Thats all psychology.
Indeed it is psychology. Either way looks pretty poor for evaluation then. Interestingly enough, the negative biased people that have mild depression have been seen as "depressive realists".. That is to say they may have a more accurate view of things. This doesn't seem to be the norm as the average person doesn't have mild depression (aka dysthymia).
It is false to say we are never right to inflict suffering. Just not a tailored ethic anyone could ever follow. We can follow a rule to not steal. We can not lie or murder. But never inflict any suffering?? We would need to not ask anyone to ever do anything. We couldnt tell someone we loved them for fear this would burden them and increase their suffering. Teaching someone about antinatalism could inflict tremendous suffering on them - the meaning of life and all their plans dashed because they involved a family and kids. It is NOT true that Happiness is not obligatory, whereas preventing suffering is. Neither happiness nor preventing suffering are obligatory. You reify your ability to reduce suffering, and the ethical rule that tells you this is the highest good.
So again, for the nth time, the unique thing about procreation is it is completely preventative.. It prevents the cause of all suffering. Every other instance has an aspect of not only prevention but mediation. I see your other arguments as not mattering because of the difference between positive and negative ethics. As you yourself stated in the last post, just because YOU have a project you want to see carried out, that doesn't mean others need to be inflicted with suffering as a result of this. And being that no one is forcing antinatalism, no one is forcing you live out the AN ethic, if it pains you so. It is up to you whether you want to decide for another that they should suffer because you think that some X positive project overrides this consideration. That is the whole crux of the argument.. Is allowing the conditions for someone else's suffering with X positive ethical consideration you might have? The AN would always claim that no, it is not. No need to cause suffering, if it was unnecessary.
the unique thing about procreation is it is completely preventative
So we are allowed to inflict lots of suffering throughout our lives, but the rule not to inflict suffering is super important when looking to consent to the naturally produced function of procreation. Got it.
Its completely preventative of ethics too. No more ethics along with no more suffering that the ethical ones couldnt stomach inflicting on others (except they could stomach the risk of inflicting suffering by every other act they take besides procreation).
So we are allowed to inflict lots of suffering throughout our lives, but the rule not to inflict suffering is super important when looking to consent to the naturally produced function of procreation. Got it.
Are you willfully ignoring what I am saying between preventative and mitigative? Mitigating is only needed once you have to trade a greater harm for a lesser harm because there is no other way out of the harm. It is already happening.
Its completely preventative of ethics too. No more ethics along with no more suffering that the ethical ones couldnt stomach inflicting on others (except they could stomach the risk of inflicting suffering by every other act they take besides procreation).
Yeah and again, no humans, no ethics needed. No problem.
Also, no one is saying one should try to inflict or to not prevent suffering other than procreation. Not sure where that comes from. I just said procreation is unique in terms of prevention. It doesn't mean anything else.
Yeah and again, no humans, no ethics needed. No problem.
But humans came here naturally. So ethics, which tells you how to live good and rightly, came here naturally.
We kill all humans off, and ethics is gone, whos to say nature wont evolve a new species of sentient, ethical beings. By ending humans you are leaving the world empty of ethical beings who could have prevented nature from spitting out more sentient suffering. Totally irresponsible of you.
But humans came here naturally. So ethics, which tells you how to live good and rightly, came here naturally.
That premise is misguided or misleading in either one of two ways:
1) If humans came here naturally, then anything can be justified as it came about from humans, which came here naturally so anything we do is technically "from nature".. reductio.
and
2) Descriptive ethics is not normative ethics. There is no directive from nature. This is as existentialists say as "bad faith".. Or it is a smokescreen as you can say that "Nature tells us this", and I can say "Nature tells us that". "Nature tells us clearly that we need to procreate because animals procreate". That is literally the definition of the naturalistic fallacy.
1) If humans came here naturally, then anything can be justified as it came about from humans, which came here naturally so anything we do is technically "from nature".. reductio.
So do antinatalists believe we humans came here UNnaturally? What did ethics come from then?
Look, I think we are talking past each other.
My wife was just scratching our dogs neck telling him how good he was with my daughters dog who he hates who just spent a few days over the house. Finally went home today and my dog is happier than ever. My dog of course had no idea what my wife was saying just that it sounded soothing as she massaged his neck and ears. All he knew was all of his suffering was gone, he was master of his house once again and feeling at peace staring into my wifes eyes as she gently petted him. That happy 30 seconds was worth hours of suffering (which of course it took to build), and was just a dogs life.
Happiness is so much more than suffering; moments are worth a lifetime of suffering. Moments of human happiness are worth millions of years of evolutionary struggle for survival.
We show this in our choices and lives all of the time. We dont suffer only because of life. We suffer because of what we want, we suffer on purpose when we work towards something we suffer to achieve, we struggle to realize, we wish we knew before but we know now and we are glad we at least know this at all. All for those fleeting moments where now is joyous, where our work is done, when weve achieved our goal, as we realize our vision and know enough to say good.
We all say good everyday. I defy you to get through one day without saying good.
Life is suffering? How could you know this if life was not good?
I agree that life includes suffering, but I dont agree suffering is bad.
Like the antinatalist just asserts as a given that life is suffering and suffering is bad, I simply assert life is a series of joyous moments and these things are good, and good enough, not at all like suffering, and not bad at all.
Dont you see that at all? If not, cant you let someone else wish that joy upon everyone, wish that they get to experience a moment of joy that would fill a hundred lives? Uou really think no one could feel this way in this life, this life is so bad?? Cant you let someone have that? Let them have their joy along with their suffering?
Now back to the syllogism.
If the suffeting in life is what counts most for you, then fine, find your ethics in the prohibition of suffering, and build your ethical behavior out of ceasing procreation.
But if suffering is just one of those things, a stumbling block to a lifetime understanding even the concept of bliss, where suffering is just a challenge youve beaten so many times by simply living, if you can make a trifle of all the suffering in the world when compared to the good life also brings, then the whole antinatalist argument fails. It is a syllogism in which life is suffering is the main premise, linking procreation with unethical failure to prevent suffering, so if you just dont care about lifes suffering to the point where its prevention is the highest good, the whole argument fails.
Thats my starting point - life is good. Suffering is a part of life, but so what? Life was good first and still good now that I suffer while living my life.
Even though without this first premise the antinatalist argument fails, I recognize that I havent proven that life is NOT suffering, or given you any reason to abandon your position that life is basically suffering. Thats up to you to prove your premise is valid. You also havent proven to me that life is NOT good, or its goodness cannot dwarf its suffering.
But now you know, if you want to convince me of the soundness and validity of the antinatalist argument, you should be convincing me that life sucks. Otherwise the rest of the argument will fail for me.
If you did convince me that life sucked so bad it was worth considering an ethic that held all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented in others, you would still have to convince me that preventing procreation is preventing suffering. Suffering only has a chance to be suffering after there is a person who suffers. The person in whom you might prevent suffering, therefore had to exist before one can prevent suffering, because suffering doesnt exist until after the person suffers. So never procreating is not preventing suffering, it is preventing a person. Period. Unless preventing a person is some other good ethic, nothing good is done by preventing a person from existing. They havent existed yet; you havent prevented suffering yet. You may have a rule all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented but you cant apply that rule to any actions that do not involve other existing beings who actually exist and therefore can actually suffer (if not prevented). Potential, future beings do not actually suffer; so if you prevent a potential future being from existing, you prevent no suffering at all, since there is no actual suffering that could possibly be prevented, as there is no actual person who could possibly suffer.
I know you dont like this argument but it sits in the bigger question: why would anyone even care to be ethical in their treatment of other people, if procreating other people is not a good? Who are we being ethical for? Ourselves? Will we suffer any less as we go on living? All that weve done if we stop procreating is we assert our judgment that the existence of people doesnt matter as much as the ethical rule all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented. But ethics is for people (which you have said), not people for ethics.
Lastly, even if you could convince me that the suffering outshines the joy as the essential feature of life, and even if you could convince me that by procreating, we are doing anything specific toward any specific person, let alone by not procreating we are preventing anything specific in any specific thing (like a person), you still could t convince me that the rule all suffering that can be prevented should be prevented.
Im not going to go into it again but suffering isnt what is bad in life to me. Evil and sin are. Unethical choices are. Suffering is a consequence, not a raw material, of life, but not always a consequence, and sometimes non-existent in life (for moments, many moments).
So there is no need to convince me that I am wrong. You can if you want, but then you would have to show me I dont really mind the suffering enough to justify discarding the joyousness.
I admit I have been focused on the logic to try to convince you that you are wrong. Beat up the premises to snap you out of the conclusions. But its up to you to see for yourself.
I cant make you see the good that is life and how suffering can be minimized and defeated. All I can ask is that you honestly answer this: if someone thought life was good, in fact amazing, would they be immoral to want to share this with as many people as they could, including by hoping for children and doing everything they could to raise children?
Or if someone thought ethics only applies between existing moral/ethical agents, that ethics cant apply to the dead or the uncreated, then wouldnt an ethical rule forbidding procreation because of its infliction of suffering be misapplied? Or Maybe even unethical in its ignorance towards actual people as opposed to potential people?
Or if someone thought suffering could be something so important in the shaping of who one actually is in this life, that suffering was sometimes good in itself as something not only to be accepted, but embraced and promoted at times, wouldnt a rule that ended all suffering by ending all people seem opposite of the good one sees in other people, in other lives, and in life itself?
If you grant me my premises, am I still wrong to think procreation is a great good?
And I think Ive said my peace. Antinatalism seems unneccesssry if it be based on simply suffering, seems anti-ethics while it puts ethics above ethical people, and simply ignores the joy in life.
And the boredom. Life is boredom - we should all kill each other in a final bloodbath just for sake of some excitement in these otherwise insufferably boring lives. Ridiculous? Not if life is only boredom.
Life is way more than suffering. Maybe only human beings can recognize this. Why kill ourselves off because of a little suffering?
And I think Ive said my peace. Antinatalism seems unneccesssry if it be based on simply suffering, seems anti-ethics while it puts ethics above ethical people, and simply ignores the joy in life.
It is a useful to consider antinatalism if you are planning to have children. The reason being it requires you to look at your inner motives and understand the kind of responsibility you are taking on.
Other than that, it is fairly limited in my view for the reasons you articulated (and many more).
Life is way more than suffering. Maybe only human beings can recognize this. Why kill ourselves off because of a little suffering?
Because the AN basically believes that not suffering trumps not existing. It is certainly a factual claim that if you do not exist you do not suffer. It is not a factual claim to state that something is better than something else. It is also not a factual claim that suffering is bad unless you have outlined some specific example of the kind of suffering being offered up for discussion.
The arguments for and against the AN position are dependent upon personal views, experiences and metaphysic (The non-identity of possible people is an example of the kind of metaphysics argument used by ANs).
I think it is fair to say that it is an extreme kind of negative utilitarianism if taken as universal law, as the end goal drives towards something like net zero suffering (so net zero existence).
In a more favourable light it is act utilitarianism hyper-focused on a specific aspect of the human experience.
But isn't it ironic the AN is only able to prevent said suffering, by in fact, making full use and utility of the alleged eventual path (or in their mind, cursed tool) that is existence?
Reply to Outlander Well, you kind of have to understand that position as framed in isolation. ANs are not against existence per se, but there is certainly a disjoint if we project their views as a universal law (which none really seem to do).
It is a moral preference. Of course, if said person believes in moral absolutes then the matter is quite different.
As a means of exploring the responsibility of being a parent I regard the AN position as worthy of serious attention.
Let's reframe the mindset here. Not ""against" anything, simply the acknowledgement (belief, rather) that creating human life is more likely to incur negative experience than positive and such should either be avoided altogether or at least such factual information or likelihood (whether true or not) should be made present in the minds of all men or women capable of childbirth?
Can we agree on that as being the anti natailist creed? Or do you have a different definition in mind?
To further say, there is a war (or framed binary belief or "footing") between so called "anti-natalists."
That life, regardless of change or possible omission of what is currently held in the antinatalist mindset as "suffering" or "negative", creation of new life either, is intrinsically a negative, whether that conviction is held based on the likelihood of even, say, a perfect utopia naturally always reverting to a negative state, or some other generally non-evidential belief.
That is to say there are two camps so to speak, whose divisions are defined not of anti-natality at all but greater reason itself: possibility of change and rigidity of current state of affairs. Is this not correct?
Existing = Suffering < Neutral < Pleasure
Not Existing = No Suffering/Neutral/ No Pleasure
Only the latter guarantees No Suffering.
Obviously because ANs exist they are prone to argue against bringing life into the world.
From this there is the argumentation of having the Right to bring people into existence. Then we enter into the non-identity problem and metaphysics.
Of course there is much more nuance to it than this but this is the basic frame work. Its proponents will vary depending on other moral stances (including items like moral absolutism, moral naturalism and logical positivism).
That life, regardless of change or possible omission of what is currently held in the antinatalist mindset as "suffering" or "negative", creation of new life either, is intrinsically a negative, whether that conviction is held based on the likelihood of even, say, a perfect utopia naturally always reverting to a negative state, or some other generally non-evidential belief.
I think this more or less aligned with the Right of the living to bring life into existence.
Basically what makes the anti-natalist so sure? What specifically do they hold their ground on?
Is it, say as if one were a prisoner, who is given the option to father a child, knowing said child will also in turn become a prisoner and experience more suffering then pleasure? And is this the root of all AN argument: if more pleasure cannot be "guaranteed" prior to the creation of life, such action, which would apparently likely result in more negative than positive is to be avoided.
Is this not the AN dogma or decree? I apologize, for it is me who is now asking for you for information or clarity!
It is certainly a factual claim that if you do not exist you do not suffer.
Hmmm. Seems to me if something doesnt exist then any reference to this non-existent thing makes the thing some theoretical thing. Its not a real thing (because it doesnt exist).
So the new ethics of AN demands we be ethical towards future potential beings who actually dont particularly exist; and in the meantime we suck at being ethical now (not for the future) towards actual human being who actually exist.
Or, I wonder if you do not exist, what do you do? Obviously you do nothing, nor can you do anything because you in the first place are a fiction, a possibility at best. Why would a fiction suffer or certainly not suffer, or do anything?
Its not a language game. Who or what is relieved of suffering but our imaginary friends who we spare from living in the first place?
If I, who now exist, died, it can be said that I do not suffer. Ill accept that (although there are various ways to dispute that as well, including my own argument against un-procreated beings). But you can say I dont eat chicken anymore either, or play music, or stub my toe, or have a toe. You can say lots of things about me that are over now. Thats because I existed, and knew suffering and had all of these things about me to lose with my life. There is an I from which things that go along with this I can be removed, like my suffering, or my toe.
But if there is no one there to exist, no you as in a you never existed, there is no one saved from suffering. No procreation ends human life, and no human life means no humans suffering (or playing tennis); but you cannot particularize this and say YOU or HE or even IT never suffered about a you who never existed.
Because you cannot particularize this prevention of suffering in a particular you who doesnt suffer, AN is acting ethical towards no one, no one who ever exists.
Because you cannot particularize this prevention of suffering in a particular you who doesnt suffer, AN is acting ethical towards no one, no one who ever exists.
You can guarantee less suffering by not bringing someone into the world. This is also underlined by the metaphysical problem of non-identity. Much like our responsibility for considering the kind of world we leave behind for future generations (which we speculate about quite often without arguing about their non-existence).
This is also underlined by the metaphysical problem of non-identity.
The problem of identity is a real problem, but if we admit this problem to the equation, then there may be no me who could fail to prevent suffering either.
We need to assume an agent, identify many agents, to build an ethic among them.
Thats not the issue, or we can never say anyone exists to suffer or more to the point, never say anyone exists to prevent suffering.
The problem of identity is a real problem, but if we admit this problem to the equation, then there may be no me who could fail to prevent suffering either.
Well, not really because you exist.
I think we have to insist any AN statement adheres to their moral stance regarding nonidentity of possible future people, as well as their moral claim that no suffering is good and no pleasure is neutral.
It is a utilitarian position in essence, so when questioning the AN this should also be kept in mind and pointed out where we feel necessary.
The AN view is asking what right anyone has to create life if they know it will suffer.
I'm sure you're correct in most instances. Of course we have yet to meet or question an actual practicing anti-natalist (not counting the obvious resident one, joyous and pleasant to know him as he is..., of course, a bit or irony but that's beside the point, for now)
I fee it important to note the overwhelming drive in which spurred my recent response to you, was to assert, rather question, anti-natalist is poorly defined as is. That is to say, there are two (at minimum I argue) driving forms of rationale that define such an idea. With no shyness of immodesty, I believe one could ascertain the driving consistent ideology of anti-natalism is: life is more likely to incur negative outcome than positive, and so, in respect to culmination of man's efforts of reason, that which is likely to produce negative result, is best avoided. However, this may be true. All well and good. But there remains a blockage, a failure of inquiry, I believe. As to whether or not said belief is based on circumstance that is changeable, or remains a hopeless illusion of changeability. That is to say, in simple terms, yes, if something is likely to be negative, it is to be avoided. But whether or not this negativity can be changed, resolved, eliminated, defeated, or perhaps lessened by introduction of a greater dynamic thus making said negativity trivial, is my, question. Basically.
So. I believe there are two types of anti-natalists. Those who are such rationally, and those who are perhaps confused and only in such respective minds of thinking due to circumstance that is in fact, false.
That is to say, those who are truly not anti-natalists but consequentialists, or best said, the current state of being ie. the status quo produces adequate evidence procreation is more harmful than positive, as in, perhaps things could be changed, whether easily or throughout much if not impossible levels of difficulty, to alter such a reality. This is the divide I think is neglected in the majority. Hence me reason for replying.
So. Yes, ":the way things are, that can be changed, but do not seem likely to be changed, creates the factual inarguable reality that, creation of new life is more likely to incur suffering on the innocent then immediate and observable positive outcome and so, procreation is to be avoided"
Versus "No, even if everything were to be perfect, either eventually, or in some intrinsic yet unobservable way, creation of new life is likely, eventually, to be of worse outcome than not"
Essentially. There is a divide that those who fail to acknowledge simply refute the soundness of the anti-natalism argument. Is my suggestion.
I'm sure you're correct in most instances. Of course we have yet to meet or question an actual practicing anti-natalist (not counting the obvious resident one, joyous and pleasant to know him as he is..., of course, a bit or irony but that's beside the point, for now)
I'm just watching as you all wildly miss the mark on antinatalism. I do love it when others try to argue it, but I also cringe at the misguided notions when they inevitably misunderstand it. It also seems no one pays attention to my previous arguments, so every time I argue something it is like all the arguments made previously are put on reset and wiped clean, and then people take other arguments that are not correct, and replace those as strawmen instead. I refer everyone to my last several posts and interactions in this thread, starting with the Veil of Ignorance as a starting point, and then once you have caught up to the relevant arguments, rather than misrepresenting them so as to knockdown poor strawmen, I can reenter the chat. Otherwise, please keep arguing misguided points for misguided notions.
I as referring to the general AN positions not your personal ones.
What I said outlined a couple of the main points AN puts forwards. I said no more than that.
Theres a lot of AN positions so its easy to pick and choose strawmen. What general ones? Even Benatar, the most well known proponent, is misconstrued terribly.
Reply to schopenhauer1I was merely pointing out the gist not giving a thorough analysis.
I pointed to the issue of non-identity (about which there are many positions) and about asymmetry (about which there is more to say too in terms of its implications). Pointing out to those asking that looking at one without considering the other is kind of futile.
You can provide links for them if you wish. I have read, and listened, extensively to the AN position.
My position is that it is VERY useful to look at for anyone considering having children - but not because I believe it will, or should, stop them.
I have read, and listened, extensively to the AN position.
Again with the THE. It's not ONE position. The "gist" is not having children. The arguments are numerous and nuanced. To lump it in as "the" position would be misleading.
My position is that it is VERY useful to look at for anyone considering having children - but not because I believe it will, or should, stop them.
What you said there are very different things. Let's say Kant's CI or Aristotle's virtue ethics is correct, that wouldn't necessarily mean people "will" stop people from X, Y, Z or promote people to do X, Y, Z. The soundness on the argument doesn't rely on whether it affects a lot of people. I can try to show tens of millions of people that someone like Trump is a conman liar that doesn't have your interests in mind, and that doesn't mean it will affect them, even if there is plenty of evidence it is the case.
I pointed to the issue of non-identity (about which there are many positions) and about asymmetry (about which there is more to say too in terms of its implications). Pointing out to those asking that looking at one without considering the other is kind of futile.
Right there are many positions, but you lump despite this. Anyways, the "non-identity" issue works AGAINST natalism. That is to say, if we believe in not violating dignity/autonomy etc. The violation only happens when someone is born, not when someone is not born.
If we had a set of beliefs about an event, even as big as "life itself", ranging from really like, disappointed with, frustrated by, not happy with, etc. None of that becomes so much a moral issue insofar as it is someone's own personal reaction. The minute that "I like X, so SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD LIKE X", it becomes a problem, as now someone ELSE will be affected by YOUR evaluation.
But again, this is my argument, not all of AN. So don't misconstrue that even though I am continuing the debate.
Nonidentity is neither for nor against (it is not specific to AN either). It is the question of whether, or how, ethics can be applied to people who do not as yet exist.
The main positions are:
- We have no right to bring life into existence (nonidentity issue involved here in part).
- No harm is better than no pleasure.
I have found nothing much outside of these primary ethical issues worthy of much attention (existential threats, state of society etc.,.) because all of them orbit the two positions I gave the gist of above.
Nonidentity is neither for nor against (it is not specific to AN either). It is the question of whether, or how, ethics can be applied to people who do not as yet exist.
I responded to people asking about the AN position is in general. I did that. What your personal position is is your business to explain.
People were responding to my last comments generally, then you swooped in there like you owned the place.. Please.
We've discussed this before. We've discussed this before. Again, swipe clean. Last time you were tag-teaming my argument with some other poster.. I forget which of the handful of anti-antinatalists that like to join..but they'll probably pop in too. Your friend perhaps.
Also, I'd like to add to your 'No harm is better than no pleasure" summation that it's not as simple as that, as nothing is. It is also the fact that one is pursuing a positive ethic by breaking a negative ethic, or justifying breaking the negative ethic (don't harm), by pursuing a positive ethic (promote X, Y, Z outcome.. happiness or whatnot). One would have to get past this notion that one should force a new person into an intended goal by breaking the negative ethic of no-harm, no-autonomy, etc.
Yeah the non-identity thing is then thrown out like a poor defense because "Who is harmed?" "Who is violated?" And of course this is supposed to justify doing any number of things that could potentially harm a future person.. It's obvious that any number of other scenarios that might happen to a "potential child" would be considered wrong, even if a person isn't actually born yet. It's the weakest of the anti-AN defenses, and not even clever.
People were responding to my last comments generally, then you swooped in there like you owned the place.. Please.
Because you were wrong. I will not interact with you any more. My post was directed at the others who failed to understand the AN position. I tried to guide them towards a better understanding that is all.
Because you were wrong. I will not interact with you any more. My post was directed at the others who failed to understand the AN position. I tried to guide them towards a better understanding that is all.
Bye
Wrong about what? Wrong about THE AN position..Right.
I truly think there are two widely and generally-held ideological "camps" as far as AN.
Perhaps it's an over-simplification or some misaligned understanding (which surely you could correct emphatically and with a smile), those two camps being:
Circumstantial:
Things (be it poverty, the state of the world, wars, overpopulation, prejudices, natural greed* [though that one gets interesting because it hints at an absolute, "unfixable" dynamic that will forever be present which belongs to the second camp]) as they are (and are foreseeable to be in either perpetuity or any reasonable foreseeable future) formulate a moral non-favorability towards procreation,
Intrinsic:
Due to Original Position, even if Earth was transformed into a Utopia, a hypothetical almost "alien world" where suffering is so rare and unheard of it now requires true and intense effort to create (versus the current dynamic where suffering seems to be the default and likely outcome without large [and for some non-accomplishable] levels of planning, effort, and perhaps luck), procreation is still responsible because a person did not choose to be born, and inevitably will face some restriction as a result, such restriction amounting to enslavement (ie. follow the moral laws, be a good neighbor, feed oneself, manage stress in a socially-acceptable way lest one be punished by physical incarceration, etc, etc. that one never "asked" or was even involved in being placed in). Something like that?
--
I take it to mean, in short, one is simply not true AN. True AN is, in a sentence, based on the truth one can never truly guarantee a net positive in performing an action (whether it's procreation, or even something more general such as ordering a dish at an unfamiliar restaurant or a new special at a familiar one, it should not be taken. That is to say, the reasons for avoidance are self-evident. Is this correct? Simply because we, rightfully so, consider creating new life more substantial and important than ordering food, doesn't change the underlying principle or truths of the comparative example, I think can be argued.
Due to Original Position, even if Earth was transformed into a Utopia, a hypothetical almost "alien world" where suffering is so rare and unheard of it now requires true and intense effort to create (versus the current dynamic where suffering seems to be the default and likely outcome without large [and for some non-accomplishable] levels of planning, effort, and perhaps luck), procreation is still responsible because a person did not choose to be born, and inevitably will face some restriction as a result, such restriction amounting to enslavement (ie. follow the moral laws, be a good neighbor, feed oneself, manage stress in a socially-acceptable way lest one be punished by physical incarceration, etc, etc. that one never "asked" or was even involved in being placed in). Something like that?
Yes. So, as you just pointed out, life has a limited set of choices. We tend to look at life as the degrees of freedom of choice, rather than the degrees of limitations. That is to say, you can't choose what is not available- a world or circumstance that cannot or does not exist, for example. THESE are the set you can choose from. But what if I don't want these set of choices? You are shit out of luck. Some people might have some mitigation, or even say to just go kill yourself you ungrateful bastard. But you see, there's something callously and unjustly wrong with this kind of response to the forced set of choices, once born. Once a person is born, there is only what life offers, with a brain that can understand there are undesirable things about life. And if you need to mitigate and change your mindset, or whatever else you're going to throw as a palliative, you have already conceded the original violation of forcing a limited set of choices.
Edit: And thus, why I say one should not violate the negative ethics of non-harm, forcing someone into YOUR project, for the positive ethic of X, Y, Z (usually along the lines of promoting happiness, a value of some sort, virtue, and then we can go down the litany of purely selfish personal projects).
If I value X, Y, Z about a project and think it is good, this does not mean I should affect other people to be forced to also be part of the project.
Yes. So, as you just pointed out, life has a limited set of choices. We tend to look at life as the degrees of freedom of choice, rather than the degrees of limitations.
So, at the end of the day, it requires respect of life to allow one to be in a position to create, let's say a bomb, to end all intelligent life, on Earth? Since life will exist otherwise. And the AN argument is, this is pure suffering.
Where do we go from here? What about possibility of life on other planets? Should life be respected long enough to ensure our entire universe is destroyed or rather "made incapable" of supporting life in perpetuity? We're not at that state, currently. So surely, the irony or at least unacknowledged (at least at present) reality which requires such a truth to become actualized is ignored?
That is to say, life (the true AN equates with suffering?) will still exist until more life is created that allows greater potential to prevent itself? Do you understand this is what you're saying?
So, at the end of the day, it requires respect of life to allow one to be in a position to create, let's say a bomb, to end all intelligent life, on Earth? Since life will exist otherwise. And the AN argument is, this is pure suffering.
Huh? Why make strawmen? You don't "fix" a violation (non-harm, no autonomy) with another violation (non-autonomy at the least, and non-harm in certain forms of hedonism/utilitarianism).
Where do we go from here? What about possibility of life on other planets? Should life be respected long enough to ensure our entire universe is destroyed or rather "made incapable" of supporting life in perpetuity? We're not at that state, currently. So surely, the irony or at least unacknowledged (at least at present) reality which requires such a truth to become actualized is ignored?
That is to say, life (the true AN equates with suffering?) will still exist until more life is created that allows greater potential to prevent itself? Do you understand this is what you're saying?
I don't understand what it is YOU'RE rambling on about. Killing people to "save" them is not what AN is saying. It is a ridiculous straw man.
Ironically, the only way death occurs is being born in the first place, so try again.
No one is an AN to that degree at all. That is not AN. I lost my 3000+ word essay on this subject unfortunately (not that I think you would have enjoyed reading it anyway!) :D
Made a brief summary here:
Antinatalism is based on a two main areas of contention. That is the philosophical problem of nonidentity and application metaphysical valuations.
NONIDENTITY
Firstly, the nonidentity problem is outlined quite simply in ethical terms as how and if we can claim to pass moral judgements that have consequences on persons who do not, as yet, exist. An instance of this would be akin to how we attend our environment with the thought to hand as to how it can effect future generations.
For instance, a culture that prioritises trees, viewing them as sacred perhaps, may also use them to build housing. This would disrupt future generations if they neglected the native forests by effectively destroying them all to build more houses or for use in other sacred ceremonies.
Here we can see a clear neglect of persons who do not yet exist (nonidentity). In contemporary terms this is often equated to how humans have damaged the natural world, thus leaving future generations with future problems to solve they had no direct hand in causing.
Here one antinatalist (AN) argument ensues. This is that we have no right to bring life into the world that will suffer due to none of its own doing. The new life is not responsible for its own coming into being, yet it does come into being. How can this be considered in light of those making the moral decision to have children? Is this morally irresponsible or not? If so to some degree each way, then to what degree and how can we rightly measure this?
Regardless of any personal analysis of this situation we can understand that given certain beliefs about this scenario we can come to see the reasoning behind someone siding with the AN argument.
Some will see justification in talking about the rights of nonidentity persons while others may find this too difficult, or impossible, to hold. The degree to which this can or cannot be justified is tied up in other initial ethics/moral stances (be this deontological, utilitarian, nihilistic, etc.,.).
THE METAPHYSIC OF ASYMMETRY
This perspective is an interesting one regarding moral axiology. Let us assume that measuring such values of human experience can be made in a meaningful way to begin with. This argument puts forward the proposition the probable chance of harm and benefit (let us use these terms as positive and negative aspects of human experience).
A) If someone (nonidentity) does not come into existence then there is No Harm and No Benefit.
B) If someone does come into existence then Harm is guaranteed (on some level) and so is Benefit (to some degree).
The argument goes as follows
For A, No Harm is Good and No Benefit is Not Bad.
For B, Harm is Bad and Benefit is Good.
Looking at instance A), not existing is Better than existing because there is an asymmetry between Harm and Benefit, where lack of harm is strove for and peaks in Good in its negation, lack of Benefit is Not Bad and so neutral. No Harm either way.
Looking at instance B), existing is guaranteed to cause Harms and Benefits are not guaranteed to outweigh Harms, even though in some cases they may.
Conclusion: Not existing guarantees No Harm caused. Existing guarantees Harm caused AND cannot guarantee Benefits outweighing guaranteed Harms.
If then the goal is to reduce Harm then it is effectively a gamble when we create new life. The nonidentity person may have a Good OR Bad life, whereas if such a person never came to be no more Harm will be caused to such a person for obvious reasons.
Now to return to the problem of nonidentity
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
The question is now how anyone has the moral right to procreate given a belief in reducing Harm following from the principle outlined in the argument of asymmetry?
No one asked to be born (obviously!), but someone did choose to bring life into the world. It is a solid argument for AN to say no to procreation here if they believe in the reduction of Harm as a priority. It is not faulty thinking following that particular line of reasoning with those particular views.
There are numerous other AN arguments that are basically little more than weighing the scales regarding future benefits and detriments to living being (and nonidentity potentials too) that add different themes to the argument. The common ones are Overpopulation, Dystopian World, Inequality, etc.,. These are more or less decoration to the core elements of the AN position I have laid out.
There is certainly weight to argument. Like every other ethical position though it does not present a convincing absolute moral law, but creates dilemmas for those serious about having children who wish to explore the ethical implications of doing so, for their child, other children, their community and surroundings, and all other manner of issues too.
NOTE: There was a another major point I had in the essay regarding ethics in general and Self-interest Vs Common good. Way more involved for that though so omitted it. Hopefully the above helps you see the weight, and use, of the argument presented by the AN position (whether you follow it or not).
Really? You dont use metaphors to make the text more interesting?
This is a bit sleight-of-handy. That's not what's happening here. They are informing the interpretation of the argument. That, to me, is bad form in the sense that you are in la-la land if you anthropomorphize nature to support a factual or logical argument because you think its relevant - and really not contacting the argument if you think it addresses it. I understand flowery language for engagement, but this isn't hte place.
The natural evolution of ethics in the world was necessary so that ethics could be ended by these ethical animals.
Your use of 'necessity' in this paragraph is perplexing. None of it necessary. That invokes a (whats called) cosmic level of intent which simply doesn't exist. But, for the sake of discussion, let's grant it - why is this conclusion at all a problem? Things are cyclical as best we can tell and don't adhere to much in terms of form (over such long periods, that is).
Seems like natural necessity gone astray because of our ethics
I would say to some degree, this one gets a bit of traction. I think its worth discussing why Ethics even matters to this discussion beyond whether or not one feels that having children is ethical. I don't. I can explain why and see where other's are lets say not making sense, but if someone simply rejects that suffering is ethically relevant to whether or not life obtains I can't argue with that. That's their view, and IMO ethics its nothing but personal emotional response - if you're a fairly logical person, you can get further but that's all. But again, 'necessity' is not a good word here. These things didn't have to happen. The natural necessity you invoke didn't see the Dinosaur asteroid coming, that's for sure.
seems like its based on a preoccupation with suffering too much maybe?
If you suffer too much, whether you're preoccupied with it isn't relevant. Those who aren't have the 'polly anna syndrome' and those who are are simply in touch with reality (this being a take - not my position on every human's psyche lol)
Hard to know what you're not getting. Swap humans for God. God's decision to remove the ocean. Human's decision not to procreate. They are diametrically opposed in the two stories we've told. If you can be clearer about what's not landing, I'd be happy to draw more parallels.
Wow. Philosopher king hath spoken to the little suffering people. Is anyone ever wrong when they judge what is right or wrong about the quality of OTHER PEOPLEs lives?
Sly digs aside, you have entirely misunderstood what is being said here. If someone tells me they have a good life, yet all they ever do is complain to me about their life.... *shrug*. I don't have to even explain why they are wrong there. They are lying to themselves. "quality of life" is subjective, where a count of suffering is not. Don't conflate the two. Quoting Fire Ologist
Maybe most antinataliats are wrong about the quality of their lives. Possible? Killing off all procreation might be a little rash?
Possibly, for sure.. but i see absolutely no argument that gets anywhere near the realm of getting that off the ground. Antinatalists don't claim their lives are horrible, and you've got to stop insinuating there's some personal judgment going on. It's not relevant to me whether someone claims they have a good life individually - the argument is about lives to come. Those who are currently living aren't relevant, personally, but in aggregate. Most people are flat-out delusional about how good their life is because evolution has provided us with several incredible illusions to keep us procreating. Which is arbitrary, unnecessary and IMO bad for all involved. We do not need to procreate, other than to procreate, whcih is tautological crap. And even more importantly, most people are completely ignorant to the suffering of others. This is partially why polly-anna syndrome is so rife. Most people don't have a fucking clue how bad the majority of people's lives are - and this obviously a sliding scale. People are getting more ignorant about others over time, which the strict number of people suffering at the extremes comes down. But the number of people not majoratively suffering is vanishing. More slaves than ever, more concentrated wealth, authority and power than at most points in history (though, this is to do with population booms as much as form).
The man inflicts a fetus that can be killed on a woman
Accepting the over-simplification, yes. This does fall to women at some stage of hte analysis (careful of the alphabet soup). I see no issue there. That's just a fact of how humans procreate (the woman chooses, essentially, whether it comes to fruition). But, I think this is a bit dull of a version of the discussion. Whoever makes the choice is the culpable one. It's not all that interesting that at some stage the woman has the ultimate say (also, that's not always true anyway - men are larger and stronger on average and can physically force a woman to carry to term - which, obviously, is unethical already so we're fine heh).
we can kill the fetus if we want, without inflicting suffering
We can. Yet, those alive will suffer for it, almost invariably. Yet another reason not to procreate - the possibility of having to go through an abortion.
To be consistent with the notion procreation inflicts suffering, much harder for men to break the antinatalist rules? If ever?
Not in any way whatsoever, and I have to say I do not think your run up to this illustrated a support for this conclusion.
Men choose to have children. If men never chose to have children and women were surreptitiously getting pregnant, or carrying to term then this gets some truck, but hte fact is men choose to have children and in fact have been the prime drivers behind procreation for hte majority of history. Only in the last seventy years or so have women had any control over when to conceive, carry and birth children with any lets call it accuracy.
Men actually seem more likely to break antinatalist 'rules' by breaking several other deontological rules.
This all said, perhaps it would make more sense to make an evolutionary argument:
Evolution wants you procreate. It will delude you to this end. This doesn't make your life better. It is a parasitic kind of manipulation of you body by your genes, to have more, and less happy, children (that is biased, and its illustrative, to be clear - not trying to sneak it in). This functions the exact same way drug-seeking behaviour functions in addicts. You have to break the cycle to avoid the hurt.
Antinatalists don't claim their lives are horrible, and you've got to stop insinuating there's some personal judgment going on. It's not relevant to me whether someone claims they have a good life individually - the argument is about lives to come.
But the argument is that the lives to come will be full of suffering, and the evidence that the lives to come will be full of suffering is gleaned from those living now, who are suffering. So the judgment: "my life and those of others, are full of suffering," IS relevant. The argument is made FOR lives to come (or for NO lives to come more precisely), but the personal experience of lives now is one of the premises of the argument.
If you suffer too much, whether you're preoccupied with it isn't relevant. Those who aren't have the 'polly anna syndrome' and those who are are simply in touch with reality (this being a take - not my position on every human's psyche lol)
Seems like you are basically saying either you know your life is full of suffering, or you are living in LaLa land. I don't know why we would speak so generally about billions of lives in such simplistic terms, especially to support a logic that ends procreation as if it was just some other behavior.
Look, I agree that suffering is everywhere that there is a living conscious being. I disagree the suffering is all of the time for every living being. And I think the non-suffering is well worth the suffering, for the vast majority of living beings. So I would need to be tortured and watch my family tortured for a few days at least before I would throw away all of human history and its future. I know there are those who have been tortured for years. I know for many, anxiety and depression are worse than physical pain - mental illness may be the deepest and sharpest of all suffering there is (and it can be accompanied by physical pain and physical sickness).
But still, for most, much of the time, life is worth it. It's not LaLa land to take your suffering medicine like a badge of honor and greet each new day, each new birth, as something better, again, and again and again.
But the argument is that the lives to come will be full of suffering, and the evidence that the lives to come will be full of suffering is gleaned from those living now, who are suffering. So the judgment: "my life and those of others, are full of suffering," IS relevant.
I agree, but I see that as entirely impersonal. Each individual arguing about the merits of their lives doesn't really touch the discussion too deeply. Its aggregation that matters because we're talking chances. And when speaking about this, in aggregate, that most people are wrong(or right) about how 'good' their lives are becomes highly relevant. A birds-eye could count up the good moments vs bad moments (by their own lights) and most people would come out in the negative yet claim the positive. This is unfortunately, true for myself and every person i've ever pressed on the subject.
I should say, I take this position, but its not "mine". This is an age-old position that I think some of the more recent antinatalists have just tried to quantify. I think it works. Its just hard to accept without becoming cynical, which i've not. It's an 'on average' claim, which results in a x chances in x that one would have a life balanced toward not suffering. That chance is vanishingly slim.
the personal experience of lives now is one of the premises of the argument.
Not really, no. The chance of a particular kind of experience is relevant, and we can aggregate extant experiences to calculate chances of more or less of that kind of experience. Ones where suffering isn't the overall flavour are rare. I wouldn't even consider doing the vast majority of things with a risk of a lifetime of suffering, without a 75+% chance of that not being the outcome. And even then, i'd most likely not do it. This rises to 99.9999999% when it has to do with my children's experience, which is telling, and may give some insight into the antinatalist thinking.
Seems like you are basically saying either you know your life is full of suffering, or you are living in LaLa land.
in aggregate yes. Maybe 1/100,000 people would be right making the claim. Or living in lala land, yep.
Nought wrong with that other than that it blinds you to the fact you're deluding yourself and hey presto having kids looks good to you. *sigh*. If these people were not having children, and increasing the sheer number of sufferers on the planet, I don't think this argument would any weight as one's delusion becomes one's reality internally.
And I think the non-suffering is well worth the suffering
There are ways I can get to this position, but I can't only do so in light of a fully-conscious being at the level humans are making an informed decision. Inflicting this on those unborn is horrid.
So I would need to be tortured and watch my family tortured for a few days at least before I would throw away all of human history and its future
This seems extremely, extremely selfish imo. Why is your experience the tell-all for humanity? (this being said while I fully get your point. This just seems a more fun way to take it).
But still, for most, much of the time, life is worth it.
I think they are deluded that this is hte case, for sure. For most people, evolution has provided a rather handy mechanism for dismissing the almost inevitable future of mostly suffering to allows to go forth and fuck, basically. I'm unsure this can be gotten around without some kind of spiritual invocation and I'm unsure what that would look like for you. Peterson'eqsue perhaps?
Its not. Im saying, to convince me of the premise that my life is mostly suffering, you will have to add some suffering to my life.
Im not fashioning any new law based on my experience of suffering or happiness, or my judgement of how other people should rationally balance the scales of suffering and joy in their experience, in their lives.
AN is fashioning a new law. AN says to me because your life is mostly suffering, you should not procreate. AN is the tell all.
Im just saying to Mr. AN enthusiast, procreate if you want or dont procreate if you dont want, but telling all of us, including me, not to procreate based on the fact that all life, including mine, is on balance over full of suffering, doesnt make sense to me at all. My kids love life too much. Ones a nurse (surrounded by suffering), one is a welder (gets burned everyday), and one is a struggling artist (who needs a job). They are all glad I inflicted life on them.
There is no aggregate until there are individuals to pile up into that aggregate. An aggregate construction doesnt get off the ground without constructing all of its individual stories first.
most people would come out in the negative yet claim the positive.
Two things: 1. I think most people overlook the positives and would errantly come out with mostly negatives. So I personally think most people would be wrong about their own lives too - if they said their lives were over full of pointless overwhelming suffering. But 2. What does it matter what anyone else thinks about anyone elses lives but their own? I cant tell you what pink looks like to you, or what hot feels like to you, and I cant tell you how much you should be suffering or how much you should think you are suffering, or what you are feeling when you suffer painful feelings. So unless we all of our own wills each agree that life is basically suffering none of us should be basing a law on this premise. Who is anyone to tell me or anyone else but themselves, how much they suffer - that is not possible.
What happens here is that, even if objectively speaking life is mostly suffering, we can only test that by asking each person, and the vast majority of people will say (as you said above), on balance, life is worth all of the suffering. Suffering, like the qualia of any experience, cant be determined or imposed from without, and the value of that suffering in developing laws like AN, should not be imposed either.
AN is fashioning a new law. AN says to me because your life is mostly suffering, you should not procreate. AN is the tell all.
Im just saying to Mr. AN enthusiast, procreate if you want or dont procreate if you dont want, but telling all of us, including me, not to procreate based on the fact that all life, including mine, is on balance over full of suffering, doesnt make sense to me at all. My kids love life too much. Ones a nurse (surrounded by suffering), one is a welder (gets burned everyday), and one is a struggling artist (who needs a job). They are all glad I inflicted life on them.
The AN position is not this. Some idiots may think they have an unshakable argument, but in truth it is just one of many arguments and has valid points to consider.
If anyone here is such an Extreme AN (to the point where they would enforce this by law) then they are not really understanding the point regular ANs make.
I summed up the main points someone trying to understand the AN position need to understand. The AN position is perfectly reasonable and does raise some intriguing questions about personal responsibility and how we measure the value of life (which is clearly quite a subjective matter!).
You're all missing the mark to some degree. The main argument is not about "How much suffering" per se. That can be a dimension, but only after the core of the argument is understood.
The argument relies on the asymmetry of preventing suffering and not preventing suffering. You already have to have as an ethic something "pinning" suffering to ethics. In my case, I am "pinning" via common notions of deontology about the dignity of people, and how they aren't to be used or "messed with". For example, non-harm, and autonomy seem to be pretty essential to the dignity of a person. All things that would be violated by having children. [It matters not that they "can't" be consented either, simply that they wouldn't be.]
Not preventing suffering via procreation, will lead to the violation of this ethic (non-harm, autonomy). Procreation leads to harm/suffering.
And again, if you want to parse out "suffering" and throw out categorical errors and strawman for examples, you can save it, as like in previous posts, I have provided the distinction between preventative actions (prevent the harm if possible, especially if it is unnecessary to let the harm happen in the first place!) versus remediative harm (the harm is already taking place, now a set of actions is needed to remediate it!).
It also becomes a problem of aggressive paternalism, as no procreation leads to no person being affected, and thus nothing caused to be affected ("forced" in shorthand colloquial speak), whereas procreation does lead to harm. Thus the aggressive paternalism only leads one way, that of the decision to procreate.
What do I mean by aggressive paternalism? That is what I was explaining in many of these posts, the simple idea that you shouldn't violate a negative ethic (such as non-harm, autonomy) to promote a positive ethic. That is to say, you should not force recruit people who will be harmed, and profoundly, because YOU deem the game necessary for someone else to play based on your personal estimation.
Now here is where perhaps we can discuss the dimension of: "HOW MUCH suffering?"- and I did bring up the Veil of Ignorance as we can never truly know, what the world beholds for someone else. But more than a primitive harm/benefit analysis, it is just a fact that the world has many known and unknown/unanticipated harms that will befall someone. That alone is enough to preclude life from being something one should "inflict" for another. Perhaps if we were indeed living in a parallel universe where there were very little suffering considerations, it would be more on the level of an ACTUAL gift. What do I mean here? I mean that (unlike life), an ACTUAL gift is something that would not impose an overriding set of inescapable BURDENS onto someone else, along with the "positives" of the gift being given. So even though this ethic doesn't need the dimension of "how much suffering", it still doesn't pass the test, even on this front.
Call me an idiot but I thought we were talking about ethics, a moral law.
If all the people who were thinking about procreating asked what ought I do? Whats the right thing to do? Should I procreate? The AN believer would say to everyone You shouldnt procreate because that would cause suffering.
No one is talking about enforcement of some criminal statute or something. Missed my point.
No one is talking about enforcement of some criminal statute or something. Missed my point.
But a lot of people argue, oddly enough, passionately against AN as if it were being proposed as law. it seems to me, weirdly misplaced hostility. If its not worth consideration, you dont even have to think about it. But often being angry about something means there is something of consideration that you find worthy of having to be addressed. Its causing you a disturbance in some way that you cant let it go. Its not even popular enough that you can say its all over so you cant avoid it. Its a small minority position in philosophy, an already small subset.
If all the people who were thinking about procreating asked what ought I do? Whats the right thing to do? Should I procreate? The AN believer would say to everyone You shouldnt procreate because that would cause suffering.
Yes, but they are entitled to their opinions and it makes sense to listen to their arguments for what they are not you think they are.
It is not really all that complicated you just have to break it down and understand that they have particular views on responsibility to future beings. You may not hold these views but you can consider them as if you did to some degree and come to a reasonable understanding of them.
As something of a comparison let us assume we all agree that polluting rivers is a bad thing. If some factory manager dumped toxins into the river (il)legally knowing the potential effect on the offspring of people who happen to drink this water we would regard this as a pretty terrible thing. The AN extends this further, but at least you can begin to understand why we want to STOP the factory manager from doing what they did, yet we would not decide to BAN the construction of all factories that could potentially pollute the river.
Understanding the general direction of the argument does not mean you need to adhere to it nor agree with it. You can still follow the path and see what is of use.
People who talk about AN from a radical position are obviously radicals, and radicals tend not to listen. I do not really waste my time on them as they do a good enough job of pushing others away from themselves to the point I see no point in engaging directly.
NOTE: To anyone jumping down my throat saying I am misrepresenting AN. No, sorry. This is not what I am doing. I am, and have, broken it down to the CORE elements that those not familiar with AN need to understand. I have no intention of exhibiting every possibility because they ALL come down to no 'suffering' being good where no 'pleasure' is not bad (asymmetry argument and the surrounding issues of utilitarianism/consequentialism and metaphysical values) and nonidentity (surrounding items like individual rights, responsibility and in particular whether or not we can say we have a 'Right' to procreate regarding potential beings combined with inevitability of 'suffering').
common notions of deontology about the dignity of people, and how they aren't to be used or "messed with". For example, non-harm, and autonomy seem to be pretty essential to the dignity of a person
Not preventing suffering via procreation, will lead to the violation of this ethic (non-harm, autonomy). Procreation leads to harm/suffering.
I get it.
Dignity is preserved in the person who prevents suffering by not procreating.
I get it.
You dont get that Im still not persuaded by the logic.
If I go to Chicago, theres a chance I cause somebody in Chicago to suffer. So if I never go to Chicago I have prevented all of that possible, likely (because life is so full of suffering) suffering. Therefore, I should never go to Chicago.
These arent strawmen. These are individual lives living out their free moral choices, using logic and judgement. In the judgement of AN, all human procreation is worth ending balanced against all human suffering.
The main argument is not about "How much suffering" per se. That can be a dimension, but only after the core
Suffering is close to the core of the argument. Very close. The AN person is not preventing happiness, or boredom, they are preventing suffering, and suffering caused by one person to another person is the thing that goes against human. Suffering is really bad, bad enough to prompt moral laws and new choices. According to the AN position.
Its not convincing to keep saying discussions about the suffering prong of the argument are strawman arguments.
you should not force recruit people who will be harmed
So what if you come from a long line of procreators, all of your parents and grandparents were all procreators (weird how that works) and all you want to do is spread a little love and joy and hope for a better future around like your mother did .. Dont you think you will cause fresh new suffering to make this person doubt procreation? You are saying its for your own good, despite all the people on your family tree who love and admire, for your own ethical good you should not cause suffering, so you should not procreate. The rule itself as a thought causes suffering too, to someone who had long plans of a family and grandkids one day. Its nice that no one is talking about actually forcing people not to procreate, but thats not the point; even asking (most) people to reconsider any more procreation, is going to cause suffering. How do you answer that without being paternalistic, and without: Quoting schopenhauer1
YOU deem the game necessary for someone else to play based on your personal estimation.
The game in your estimation is never causing suffering. But you never entertain thoughts of suffering being not just tolerable, but able to be made part of our dignity.
Not causing suffering isnt strong enough of a moral code versus the chance at bringing about a human good through that suffering.
Suffering matters greatly to your argument and you take it for granted that everyone should know this suffering, and that no one could dignify this suffering, and instead call it a strawman.
Its a small minority position in philosophy, an already small subset.
I cant believe its even a small subset, because its illogical to me to promote an ethic that defeats the existence of all ethical subjects.
Im just talking to you. Im not trying to save the world. I know nature will never give AN much traction. Maybe its not a good thought, despite the goodness of trying not to cause harm. AN defeats its own good, which are ethical human beings.
Reply to Fire Ologist In the sociopolitical sphere I think a decent part of this idea stemmed from a staunch opposition to 'Pro Lifers'. I think there are many more fundamentalists at the Pro end of the spectrum though! :D
Reply to Fire Ologist No one does over any reasonable extension of time. The point is to understand that someone else 'measures' the valuation between 'pain' and 'no pain' as a meaningful point in this kind of argument (which it is).
No one has explained how it is logical for an AN person to say thou shalt not procreate but, after a person breaks that rule and gets pregnant, how they can also say it is permissible to get an abortion. That would mean, it is wrong to create a newly conceived fetus, because that causes suffering, but once you create one, you can still kill it. Where is the internal logic there?
Unless ANs define procreation as bringing a baby to viability. In such case, another sub rule under the AN ethic is that if you are newly found pregnant, you should always get an abortion, or you will fail to prevent suffering. See, I answered it for the AN enthusiast. More abortions to save world from all those mothers and fathers who dont seem to care about all of the suffering they failed to prevent.
measures' the valuation between 'pain' and 'no pain' as a meaningful point
So if life only had a little bit of suffering in it, for everyone, the AN argument would fail? Thats not what Schop is saying. And it opens the whole AN argument up to attacks regarding the value of suffering.
Which to me shows its weakness.
If I leave my house tomorrow and go driving, Ill accidentally cut someone off, or miss a green light and cause someone to be late for work, or maybe hit someone, so in order to prevent suffering, shouldnt I never leave my house? Isnt that the same logic being applied to procreation?
No one has explained how it is logical for an AN person to say thou shalt not procreate but, after a person breaks that rule and gets pregnant, how they can also say it is permissible to get an abortion. That would mean, it is wrong to create a newly conceived fetus, because that causes suffering, but once you create one, you can still kill it. Where is the internal logic there?
This is precisely the kind of problem looked at in the issue of nonidentity. I do not know of any good argument as to when an abortion should or should not happen - but that is a separate but interesting comparison to consider when untangling the differences in such positions.
Reply to Fire Ologist I am not going to put words in their mouth only give an honest reply to your point.
So if life only had a little bit of suffering in it, for everyone, the AN argument would fail? Thats not what Schop is saying. And it opens the whole AN argument up to attacks regarding the value of suffering.
It would still not address the issue of nonidentity and your 'Right' to bring someone into the world who may or may not suffer to some larger or smaller degree.
This is because the valuation attached to existence put forward by the AN is that of 'asymmetry'. The absence of 'suffering' is GOOD while the absence of 'pleasure' is NOT BAD (rather than GOOD). It is a basic aggregation aligned with the unpredictability of how a human's life will be. This is why an AN may say 'Why gamble?' because to them it is a little like this scenario:
1) You do not care about money AT ALL.
2) You are given money and then have to gamble with it.
3) Two possible outcomes:
A) You GAIN more money.
OR
B) You LOSE the money.
All you then have to do is replace MONEY with 'Pain' and then 'Pleasure' to see how there is an imbalance. Not having either to begin with is more satisfactory than gambling.
If you could guarantee that every lived life would be basically full of 'pleasure' to an optimal level for everyone then I cannot see how an AN could argue against such a scenario. If there is LITERALLY no scenario they or you can present that is for procreation then they are stuck.
On the flip side can you imagine certain extreme scenarios where you would look more favorably on the AN position?
can you imagine certain extreme scenarios where you would look more favorably on the AN position
By favorably you mean see the logic, because AN is all gloom and doom about all of life and what is the best thing to do about it - doesnt do any of us any favors. But If this world was a living hell, I and all I could see around me was great suffering, and I knew my child would have it as bad or worse, with no hope for anything worth all the pain and suffering, then maybe.
You didnt answer my scenario about leaving the house being likely to cause additional suffering in the world. How am I any less immoral by having a baby or leaving the house? If I leave, I am likely to cause some suffering to some potential person, just like if I take steps to procreate I am likely to cause some suffering, therefore yo prevent suffering and be an ethical person, I shouldnt leave the house or procreate.
How am I any less immoral by having a baby or leaving the house? If I leave, I am likely to cause some suffering to some potential person, just like if I take steps to procreate I am likely to cause some suffering, therefore yo prevent suffering and be an ethical person, I shouldnt leave the house or procreate.
I believe such a person would do their best not to cause more harm either by leaving or not leaving their house. Once we exist it cannot be undone.
Again, the point of focus would be the nonidentity and what right you have to bring someone into the world in the first place.
You may as well ask something like why not wipe out the entire human race over night BUT that is not what AN is saying. They are concerned with the Rights of potential people and our justification for viewing having children as a human right in and of itself (without considering the rights of a human that never asked to exist in the first place).
Being born into an idealistic world still begs the question of why we do it and whether we really should. I imagine everyone has a number of reasons for having children and an even greater number of people never even really think about it at all.
what right you have to bring someone into the world in the first place.
What right do I have to make someone else late for work by driving too slow? What right do I have to cause a car accident? None. So if preventing suffering in some possible scenario is the highest ethical ideal, then I shouldnt leave the house.
You didnt answer the question.
I can have a baby and do my best not to cause any harm to that baby. So if merely having the baby sets up the conditions where I didnt prevent suffering, so does leaving the house and involving anyone else in my actions.
What right do I have to make someone else late for work by driving too slow? What right do I have to cause a car accident? None. So if preventing suffering in some possible scenario is the highest ethical ideal, then I shouldnt leave the house.
I can have a baby and do my best not to cause any harm to that baby. So if meeely having the baby sets up the conditions where I didnt prevent suffering, so does leaving the house and involving anyone else in my actions.
I answered by saying if 'suffering' was not an issue there is still the issue of questioning the intrinsic right of of having a child (the nonidentity problem).
Do not get me wrong I understand the kind of comparison you are making, but it is not an AN position to argue about things such as the right to punch someone in the face, be late for an appointment or such items surrounding the usual ethical concerns of existing humans. It is about looking at the ethical issues surrounding the reasons, and 'human rights' involved in procreation.
The 'suffering' part is A factor not THE defining factor of the AN position. This is why I have stated multiple times that both need to be considered when viewing the AN position.
The 'suffering' part is A factor not THE defining facto
Its THE defining factor. Take out that life is suffering, you take out that procreation causes life which causes suffering, AND you take out the ethical ideal that it is wrong to inflict suffering and good to prevent suffering.
Take out Suffering, and the whole AN argument collapses.
Take out Suffering, and the whole AN argument collapses.
So does life. There is no life without suffering so you would effectively be achieving nothing by making a claim that suffering is absent.
The 'suffering' is part of the argument involved with the presumed Right to bring life into the world going unquestioned. It is a very subtle part of the AN position but nevertheless essential to it - just like the Right to have an abortion for some women.
There is the claim to a Right to act in a certain manner (create/negate) potential life, and the issue of 'suffering' too (which is inevitable for any living creature).
To repeat, you have absolutely no need to agree with the AN argument only to understand the inner workings of it. The issue of nonidentity might not be much of an issue for you either, but it is for many. You just have to accept this and say "okay, but no thanks," and take what you can away from the discussion.
Just like someone believing in a god you have to listen to them, throw in some questions and then see if you can make some kind of sense of it all as best you can. Ultimately there is no conclusive answer as we cannot measure such things as yet.
There is a point in my mind where having an abortion is the right way to go and in my mind there is also the point where AN is the way to go. I have a far less murky picture of former than the latter.
Reply to Fire Ologist Also, consider the very problem of measuring 'suffering' against 'pleasure' even if you did not buy into the whole asymmetry argument.
In terms of nonidentity I have already shown how we can have care and concerns for future generations, so this is involved in the argumentation too.
That is it. If you understand this you understand the AN position and the problems it poses (regardless of its 'rightness' or 'wrongness').
If I go to Chicago, theres a chance I cause somebody in Chicago to suffer. So if I never go to Chicago I have prevented all of that possible, likely (because life is so full of suffering) suffering. Therefore, I should never go to Chicago.
Reply to Fire Ologist
Again, you have failed to interpret the arguments, by mischaritable reading or just outright failure to tackle what I am saying.
You are now wearing out my patience with this kind of thing. Either debate the points, or don't. But stop misconstruing and strawmanning it.
Let's look at your responses... Quoting Fire Ologist
I get it.
Dignity is preserved in the person who prevents suffering by not procreating.
I get it.
No, you don't get it then. It's NOT about the dignity of the PARENTS. Rather, it's about the dignity of the (future) child. Dignity is not violated by NOT allowing the suffering to carry forward (i.e. non-harm/non-autonomy principles are not violated). That is say, no person exists to be violated prior to procreation. The violation only takes place once procreation occurs.
And again, if you want to parse out "suffering" and throw out categorical errors and strawman for examples, you can save it, as like in previous posts, I have provided the distinction between preventative actions (prevent the harm if possible, especially if it is unnecessary to let the harm happen in the first place!) versus remediative harm (the harm is already taking place, now a set of actions is needed to remediate it!).
Once born, the person is in remediation ethics. They have interests and goals, and these are weighed against other interests and goals. It would be indeed, an indignity to NOT allow people to pursue their goals within reason, once actually existing. This doesn't mean that they then get to FORCE others, unnecessarily into harmful projects of their personal preferences (as this would be unnecessary violation.. it didn't need to happen). Rather, it means you have to learn to live together and respect each other's rights. Needing to survive in a given context of a society means having to move about in public spaces- in the situatedness of a social sphere. This means, inevitably you will cause unintentional harm. You try to be careful to avoid violations, but it cannot be prevented (unlike in the case of procreation), and thus why it always falls under remediation whereas procreation falls under preventative. Positive ethics DOES matter in the sphere of existing to some extent, as long as it doesn't unnecessarily violate others. Remember the bridge argument? The fishermen want to catch the biggest fish of their life. It's blocking YOUR right to go to your car. Whatever pleasure they get from fishing and the collateral damage of causing your harm, it was unnecessary to "recruit" you into their project. This is different than being one car of many in traffic "recruiting" you into traffic. With the road situation, it is tacitly accepted that this is part of how roads worked. However, if a car wanted to stop traffic so they can look out the side of the road at some attraction, that is now falling into unnecessary "recruiting" territory.
Its not convincing to keep saying discussions about the suffering prong of the argument are strawman arguments.
Some people believe the world is flat. They are UNCONVINCED. Some people think Donald Trump doesn't pose a threat to the democratic order. They are UNCONVINCED. Some people think the world is 6,000 years old. They are UNCONVINCED. It's not my job to try to convince every Harry, Dick, and Jane of their intransigent, unsound beliefs. I can only present the argument faithfully and to the best of my ability and they can do whatever they want. They can handle snakes, pray to their god, say their holy Hosannas, spout out nonsense, red herring non-sequitors on an internet forum, do whatever.
So what if you come from a long line of procreators, all of your parents and grandparents were all procreators (weird how that works) and all you want to do is spread a little love and joy and hope for a better future around like your mother did .. Dont you think you will cause fresh new suffering to make this person doubt procreation? You are saying its for your own good, despite all the people on your family tree who love and admire, for your own ethical good you should not cause suffering, so you should not procreate. The rule itself as a thought causes suffering too, to someone who had long plans of a family and grandkids one day. Its nice that no one is talking about actually forcing people not to procreate, but thats not the point; even asking (most) people to reconsider any more procreation, is going to cause suffering. How do you answer that without being paternalistic, and without:
YOU deem the game necessary for someone else to play based on your personal estimation.
schopenhauer1
This is actually the thing I am saddest about when arguing the case. I am not a Spock-like figure. I think people can be great parents, and are good people, but that procreation is still wrong. The two can be separated out. No one is doubting that certain people are very good at parenting and raising kids and I feel for the idea that they feel they are missing out on something. But this is a classic case of "inclination" versus "moral". The inclination is to want to fulfill this desire to raise a child. The ethic is to not unnecessarily create more people that suffer, and to force people into a world based on one's own estimation of how much suffering is good (especially since the amount and kind of suffering for another is unknown as just a fact of the matter). It's then the inclination that must be re-educated, not the ethic.
Everything seems counterintuitive until it becomes the norm. How do you explain people who value being "child-free"? These people don't even have the inclination to have children. They rather live a non-child lifestyle. They don't want to raise them, some don't even like kids (though many do, they just don't want them). This isn't even a small segment of the population. Child-free people aren't antinatalists usually, but they are a growing trend in society, and it grows with each generation, leading to a decline in fertility rates in most developed and highly educated nations. These people simply don't have this "inclination". This is just one of many proofs that the desire for procreation (literally the desire to want kids) is not a function of "instinct" so much as nurture/personal preference. In traditional societies, families are seen as paramount. Religious/tribal notions often reinforce this familial pressure. Family, society, and tradition, reinforces it with enculturated expectations. Many times, especially in atomistic societies (such as this "modern" one), it's a function of existential angst. "What is my purpose without a family"? And it gives at least 20 or so years of solid "something" to pay attention and attend to for parents. It becomes its own reason for existing.. Why work? To help raise a family! Why go on vacation? To take your (or alternatively to get away from) family!. Why do anything? Because of family. It becomes its own built in purpose. But I am not giving justification for causing suffering, unnecessarily (because it gives YOU purpose), only providing some reasons for the procreation inclination. Again, I don't look down on or castigate parents, or people that want kids. They are generally good people, trying to do the right thing, generally. Though of course, there are also plenty of horrible parents as well, but all of this is besides the point. I am just addressing this idea that AN is cold-hearted or doesn't understand that perspective. Most thoughtful ANs do, they just don't think it is relevant in countering or addressing the issue at hand in the ethical consideration.
Not causing suffering isnt strong enough of a moral code versus the chance at bringing about a human good through that suffering.
Suffering matters greatly to your argument and you take it for granted that everyone should know this suffering, and that no one could dignify this suffering, and instead call it a strawman.
So this isn't quite true. It is more than just suffering. If it was just suffering, I would consider myself a hedonic utilitarian or some such. It is rather about not using people by force recruiting them into projects that will harm them. Suffering matters here, but it is the particular nature of preventing suffering absolutely in the case of procreation that makes it exceptionally different than already-existing scenarios, where we are simply remediating suffering (doing the best with what we have, trading greater with lesser harms, negotiating our interests, etc.). Raising a child, forcing education, etc. then can be justified due to remediation measures for preventing greater suffering later on, it is argued. The prevention is not in play anymore. Since someone is born, they DO have interests, goals, etc. It would be wise to trade long terms harms for short term harms in some cases.
It's not my job to try to convince every Harry, Dick, and Jane of their intransigent, unsound beliefs.
Its not my job to demonstrate that the suffering that exists in life is only animating factor of ethics. Thats your job as an AN proponent. By simply avoiding the issue you sound like a flat-earther.
The earth isnt flat. I can argue that, point.
Life is waaay more than suffering. I argued that. You dont respond.
Preventing suffering is NOT the highest good of ethics. I argued that, you failed to respond.
If you are frustrated with me, I think its because you cherish suffering too much.
Thats your job as an AN proponent. By simply avoiding the issue you sound like a flat-earther.
I made a whole post, for the Nth TIME, laying out my case, in a pretty lengthy detailed way. This is so uncharitable and untrue as to be laughable at this point. This is the kind of thing where I can respond with a million different lengthy treatises, and you will just dismiss them (without actually addressing the points) so as to constantly make me repeat my points. It's a argumentative overextension. At some point, in debates like these, you acknowledge that the points have been addressed, and you either need to think more on it, or you simply disagree an lay out your counter-arguments.
If you are frustrated with me, I think its because you cherish suffering too much.
Life is suffering is your strawman.
No I'm frustrated with you because you have not actually understood what I have written, you are uncharitable, and you are making straw man arguments of my points. I think that's pretty good reasons to be frustrated! You can stop arguing now, because it looks like this is just turning into bad faith ones. This last post has now proven it for me at least. You can say you're bad faith response to this, but that would just be proving it more now. I'll entertain good faith arguments, but in these last posts, I have now seen I am arguing with someone who doesn't care to actually debate, just antagonize, so good day.
Schop,
Im not trying to be uncharitable. Ive told you that anyone who wants to prevent suffering has their heart in the right place.
Answer me one question, is the fact that life is suffering a key premise to your argument or not?
Or better is the fact that some degree of suffering is entailed in every life a key premise to your argument or not?
Frankly dont know why this is antagonizing. Im trying to debate the logic of AN. Its all so clear to you that you think Im acting in bad faith because Im not just following along the path that follows from the premise life is suffering but ethics are good for people and preventing suffering is good ethics so never procreating is living ethically.
To me it seems you are saying there is enough suffering in every life that it is not debatable to evaluate that suffering as anything other than bad, harmful, fruitless, and unethical to inflict on another to any degree.
Im trying to debate that. You think thats bad faith for some reason.
It's NOT about the dignity of the PARENTS. Rather, it's about the dignity of the (future) child.
When I was arguing that we cant be ethical towards a future person who does not exist, you went on and on about how it was not about the child. You said it was about the parent who was not inflicting suffering and preventing suffering and the non-presence of the child as recipient of the ethical behavior was irrelevant.
Now when I argue that (because there is no child) the human dignity AN ethics is trying to preserve has to exist in the living person who acts ethically (by preventing suffering and not procreating) you say its about the dignity of the future child.
I could level accusations of bad faith around too, but Im just trying to point out the logical inconsistencies and am open to reasonable opposing views.
For instance, instead of thinking I know how the never going to Chicago scenario is so different than the never having children scenario, why dont you lay it out? I think they are similar.
And instead of thinking I am fully aware of what Im saying and acting in bad faith, show me how what Im saying is not reasonable. Dont just say its bad, show me.
I dont think you are acting in bad faith towards me - I think you are being illogical and Im trying as many ways as I can to show you why its illogical. I could be wrong about what AN really is, or I could be wrong about how my arguments are unsound or invalid in themselves. But you havent shown me otherwise. And instead like calling me a bad faith straw man builder. Over and over.
Are you really going to leave this conversation without showing me MORE CLEARLY how I am wrong?
How do you explain people who value being "child-free"?
There is no need to. We are are discussing the logic of ending procreation to make the world more ethical and prevent future suffering.
There is a law that murder is wrong. The fact that I am never inclined to murder and likely never will be makes it easy for me to follow that law. Thats a different conversation than whether murder is wrong is a good law, is something universal everyone should follow, and something we should teach all to understand. Even if we logically showed murder is good I still wouldnt murder.
I can only present the argument faithfully and to the best of my ability and they can do whatever they want. They can handle snakes, pray to their god, say their holy Hosannas, spout out nonsense, red herring non-sequitors on an internet forum
I am trying to use logic only. I never raised any of these non-sequitors. You did, which makes it a non-sequitor to the conversation Im having.
I only point this out to show you how much Im trying to avoid bad faith. Im sticking to the text and bringing up logical issues with it and new premises (like suffering is of less import and less valuable than the life of the one who suffers). Im not resorting to anything else but my observations and wits - no insulting references to religious practices.
Im not belittling the AN person - Im attacking the logic behind the conclusion that in order to be ethical, we should not procreate.
If AN is an issue of personal faith, like other holy hosannas and spouting out other nonsense, then I wouldnt be arguing the way I am. But its a logical, ethical stance. One that doesnt seem sound to me.
Frankly dont know why this is antagonizing. Im trying to debate the logic of AN.
Because I had a long post and you ignored it. Yes it's about suffering. Duh. But it's not suffering "tout court" in this case. It's about what surrounds it. The context. In this case the context that occurs when deciding to procreate.
To me it seems you are saying there is enough suffering in every life that it is not debatable to evaluate that suffering as anything other than bad, harmful, fruitless, and unethical to inflict on another to any degree.
Nope, I am not saying that at all really because again, this is not my argument.
Are you really going to leave this conversation without showing me MORE CLEARLY how I am wrong?
Yeah I am ready to do just that because as with even this last post, you misconstrue it, make it into your own version of an argument (straw man), and then ask why I'm pissed.
I could level accusations of bad faith around too, but Im just trying to point out the logical inconsistencies and am open to reasonable opposing views.
And instead of thinking I am fully aware of what Im saying and acting in bad faith, show me how what Im saying is not reasonable. Dont just say its bad, show me.
I had a whole freakn' post with a bunch of detail you ignored.
There is no need to. We are are discussing the logic of ending procreation to make the world more ethical and prevent future suffering.
There is a law that murder is wrong. The fact that I am never inclined to murder and likely never will be makes it easy for me to follow that law. Thats a different conversation than whether murder is wrong is a good law, is something universal everyone should follow, and something we should teach all to understand. Even if we logically showed murder is good I still wouldnt murder.
Wow, you are so far from what the point of that was to prove. Try again.
I am trying to use logic only. I never raised any of these non-sequitors. You did, which makes it a non-sequitor to the conversation Im having.
I only point this out to show you how much Im trying to avoid bad faith. Im sticking to the text and bringing up logical issues with it and new premises (like suffering is of less import and less valuable than the life of the one who suffers). Im not resorting to anything else but my observations and wits - no insulting references to religious practices.
Im not belittling the AN person - Im attacking the logic behind the conclusion that in order to be ethical, we should not procreate.
If AN is an issue of personal faith, like other holy hosannas and spouting out other nonsense, then I wouldnt be arguing the way I am. But its a logical, ethical stance. One that doesnt seem sound to me.
Link to a post where you think Im not responding to you. The clear here is the AN argument and here is why it is the most logical ethic post or posts.
I dont see why you think the things Im saying are not relevant or in bad faith. Spell it out or give up.
I keep rephrasing what I think you are saying to show you clearly what I think you are saying, and then I post my objections.
Im playing as fair as I can despite your accusations.
You just respond to my objections by calling me names.
How about laying out your argument, or linking to something you already said the for Nth time.
Ill try it again anyway.
Is this AN??:
1. Living entails suffering.
2. Causing someone else to suffer (without their consent?) is bad (immoral, unethical), and preventing suffering or future suffering is good.
3. Procreation brings about new life, and the suffering entailed in that new life.
Therefore, procreation is a violation of the ethical rule stated in 2, procreation causes unconsented future suffering, and AN is the more ethical stance.
Is that AN? I am not sure whether consent is needed in the ethical rule of 2.
And instead of jabbing at wherever I have it wrong, show me where it is wrong, incomplete, unclear, but leave in the parts where it is right or clear (if any) so this can be a discussion that builds on prior assertions weve made. Lay it out so that I say Wow, I did sound like I was in bad faith. I did have it all wrong. Or really the point of any conversation, show me so I say Schop was right, AN makes sense.
Work in the asymmetry. Im sure I would screw that up if I tried. Maybe its not essential to sure up the argument.
Work in the fact that specific future people do not matter to take the AN ethical stance towards them (as you said to correct me), but that the dignity of future people is the point of AN (as you said to correct me). And maybe address the issue of these two seeming (to me) to be incompatible.
Yes it's about suffering. Duh. But it's not suffering "tout court" in this case. It's about what surrounds it. The context. In this case the context that occurs when deciding to procreate.
Suffering itself is a physical, mental lived experience.
The context around suffering, to me, would be the body and its environment, or the psychology - both interacting between the suffering subject.
The deciding to procreate doesnt make sense to me as the context surrounding the suffering. You need to be more precise.
Do you mean some suffering is neutral, not good or bad, but other suffering, like future suffering cause by procreating is good or bad, and in the CAE of AN, bad?
Dont follow needing to think of the context of suffering to understand the arguments.
Its not. Im saying, to convince me of the premise that my life is mostly suffering, you will have to add some suffering to my life.
Right, somewhat fair. In this case, I think it would take that accounting exercise though. Again, in the individual circumstance your delusion(Trademark - lol) is a + for your experience but I'm unsure why this matters. I also suffer the above-noted delusion but I'm still aware of all the suffering outside myself - with the addition of my being relatively sure I'm wrong about my own life. The former aspect is far more important than the suffering I actually acknowledge in my own life, as I see it. Forgive the somewhat combative nature of that approach too - it was tongue-in-cheek.
because [s]your[/s] life is mostly suffering, you should not procreate.
No, no. Let me be clear. This is wrong. I have struck through the erroneous word that I think is doing a lot of lifting. Without that word, it becomes as described in the first response paragraph in this post. Its actually pretty damn key to remember that zooming in on a specific life is the wrong method here, and I just don't see it as relevant in the wider discussion because of the potential that you're just simply wrong about your quality of life - despite that wrongness improving your quality of life hehe (though, noting that almost no antinatalists think suicide is a reasonable response to any of life, once it gets going).
Because they are alive. You're doing the wrong calculation. Suffice to say, your point here stands but your reasons for it are simply not at all relevant to coming to conclusions on whether to have more children versus what you think about your existing children, or what they think of you. They are already alive. Not in the discussion, as individuals.
There is no aggregate until there are individuals to pile up into that aggregate. An aggregate construction doesnt get off the ground without constructing all of its individual stories first.
And yet, the individual stories aren't relevant and the aggregates are. *shrug*. Not an uncommon reality.
That wasn't really asserted. I've been very clear that what I think about any particular life isn't relevant (nor is what you think, for that matter). I'm unsure how better to explain that?
Your position seems to result in the notion that it is never permissible to require behaviours from people who are ignorant of the harm those behaviours cause, because they don't report the harm. IF you're consistent in that, I can't really fault your reasoning But i think you're wrong about the states of affairs. If we all accept that life is on balance, a shit experience, having kids would be morally wrong ipso facto - no law needed. Having kids at 80 (males) is in this box. No one thinks Al Pacino isn't all hunky dory for being a father to his newborn at his age. Most agree it's wrong.
This is somewhat false. Many antinatalists would prefer there were restrictions on procreation on ethical grounds. Otherwise, your description is good.
The argument relies on the asymmetry of preventing suffering and not preventing suffering.
Not quite. This is what supports it. It relies on the state of affairs being that suffering is the overwhelming mode of experience for humans.
The a-symmetry simply supports the ethical solution of not procreating. Not the position itself.
But often being angry about something means there is something of consideration that you find worthy of having to be addressed.
This is why I have a semi-constant smirk on. Every time I've been pressed on this by non-philosophers they get quite angry at their inability to find fault. I think people assume i'm telling them their choice to have children makes them worse people in my eyes
AN defeats its own good, which are ethical human beings.
I think this is wrong. If the goal is to reduce suffering in humans, eliminating humans is its ultimate good. The fact that Ethics then cease to exists doesn't say anything about it. No humans is a success.
A further comment on the a-symmetry being leaned on here: It is a crucial part of hte position, but you can actually jettison this and still hold AN views. This is why you can see it supports the action rather htan the position. A lot of people will say "Ok, but why would that mean I shouldn't have kids?" and the a-symmetry comes in.
But this also, and it needs to be clearly understood, makes it obvious that the AN accepts that nearly every living person should continue living as death causes a large proportion of the suffering being calculated.
And yet, the individual stories aren't relevant and the aggregates are. *shrug*. Not an uncommon reality
The individual stories arent relevant individually, but in order for the aggregate to display more or less suffering, you cant gather individual stories about wood-working - you need individual stories that provide some insight into suffering levels.
f the goal is to reduce suffering in humans, eliminating humans is its ultimate good. The fact that Ethics then cease to exists doesn't say anything about it. No humans is a success.
This sounds more pragmatic or utilitarian. Which may be the best spin on AN. If we treat humans like any other animal and for whatever reason want to reduce the suffering of humans, we could end procreation and let it all fade out.
Im just saying if we humans think our ethics and morals are so important that we must live by them and uphold them above our own instincts and choose not to procreate for the sake of being moral and good, then we are defeating the seat of ethics in the world along with the lives that could have otherwise recognized and lived ethically; because it is wrong to inflict suffering is an ethic, and if this ethic is the reason we act, and our actions are to never procreate, then we are not only removing all of the suffering humans from the universe, but the ethics that inspired their removal in the first place.
No one has explained how it is logical for an AN person to say thou shalt not procreate but, after a person breaks that rule and gets pregnant, how they can also say it is permissible to get an abortion. That would mean, it is wrong to create a newly conceived fetus, because that causes suffering, but once you create one, you can still kill it. Where is the internal logic there?
I missed this, so will give my response here, and then add responses to your most recent below:
Ah, but this is entirely fine and there's nothing wrong with those two positions. It is wrong to bring a fetus to term because thence begins suffering. Being pregnant, per se, isn't an issue. If you were 100% sure to miscarry every child you ever had implanted in your womb - go for gold, but get a therapist.
An abortion prevents the human life entering the pool of suffering. There's no failure in logic that i can see unless there's some underlying imports i'm not grasping.
you need individual stories that provide some insight into suffering levels.
I agree, and in the process of getting to the 'data set' these are meaningful, just not to antinatalism. It's the contour of the aggregation that's used in this discussion, rather than the fine-grain you're at(or were before).
If we treat humans like any other animal and for whatever reason want to reduce the suffering of humans, we could end procreation and let it all fade out.
I think, in a poetic sense, this is more or less where most antinatalists lie. Just don't do anything to increase the number of people. The rest can take care of itself, if we dodge an asteroid in the meantime. Quoting Fire Ologist
we are not only removing all of the suffering humans from the universe, but the ethics that inspired their removal in the first place.
Yes. I see no issue, though. The ethic which leads us to remove bigotry would be defeated by a defeat (removal) of all bigotry in the world. This is an oddity of most ethical views, but they are about how to act. If we can't act, its not up for consideration I think.
Reply to Fire Ologist
Read this more carefully. Then re-read it. Make sure you can summarize the main points to yourself. Then when you answer, probably best to go paragraph by paragraph and ask a question if you don't understand, or raise an objection to discrete points, but don't lose track of the bigger picture each point is trying to paint. Here it is again:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/915425
Not quite. This is what supports it. It relies on the state of affairs being that suffering is the overwhelming mode of experience for humans.
The a-symmetry simply supports the ethical solution of not procreating. Not the position itself.
So the initial asymmetry is presented by Benatar as the following:
3 the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone;
4. the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.
So I further explain this asymmetry by reformulating it a bit. The reason is because people often think that 3 runs into the "non-identity" issue because it is an impersonal "good". In other words, "Who" is benefiting from the absence of pain? And if no one, then how is it in any sense "good"?
Now, I think this is easily defeated in modal understanding of future conditionals. That is to say, we just say "It is a good state of affairs" that no one was harmed, WHEN THERE VERY WELL COULD HAVE BEEN SOMEONE HARMED. That's all that is needed to defeat this point.
However, even if someone had a weird metaphysics that denies future conditional states of affairs, you can rephrase the asymmetry as this:
1) Having a person will cause the harm/cause the breaking of some principle. This is a bad situation.
2) Not having a person will not cause the harm/cause the breaking of some principle. This can be either good or neutral situation, it doesn't matter.
All that matters in this is 1 (the bad situation) doesn't obtain.
This is somewhat false. Many antinatalists would prefer there were restrictions on procreation on ethical grounds. Otherwise, your description is good.
Explain what kind of "restrictions" you are talking about here. You might be correct as a great many of people with a shallow understanding of the principles involved would encourage this quite strongly (people who watched a youtube video and decided it sounded about right). Anyone with a more thorough understanding in favour of enforcing such ideas by law are extreme radicals and should probably be treated with contempt by everyone else (they will be by me for sure).
Rather, it's about the dignity of the (future) child. [ ] That is say, no person exists to be violated prior to procreation. The violation only takes place once procreation occurs.
Ok, the violation occurs when procreation happens. But you didnt say the rule thats violated (and Im not going to dare to assume anything). The violation of what rule specifically in your words for me to parse out?
But I got this rule is violated once procreation occurs.
prevent the harm if possible, especially if it is unnecessary to let the harm happen in the first place!) versus remediative harm (the harm is already taking place, now a set of actions is needed to remediate it!).
That sounds like a rule in there. The rule seems to be to prevent harm when possible, especially when unnecessary. Then, once procreation happens and the rule has been violated, you move to a different rule where, if there is harm already done a set of actions is needed to remediate it.
I think you said before AN has nothing to do with remediative actions. Which makes sense since AN is a pre-procreation moral guidance.
in a given context of a society means having to move about in public spaces- in the situatedness of a social sphere. This means, inevitably you will cause unintentional harm.
This seems to be about a wider moral position, and has stepped outside of a narrow focus on AN. The above all talks about how to treat other currently living people. In this context, and if I got the rule right, the rule being: prevent harm when possible, especially when unnecessary, in the wider context of other living people we still must try to prevent harm, especially when unnecessary, but there can be harmed caused that is unintentional harm. And any step we take is towards remediation, not prevention first.
[Could negligent behavior blur the line between preventative and remediative acts? Is there a duty to try to prevent negligence, and while some acts are purely unintentional, others are wanton and grossly negligent sorts that we all have a duty to prevent? This is a tangent - forget the question.]
Positive ethics DOES matter in the sphere of existing to some extent, as long as it doesn't unnecessarily violate others. Remember the bridge argument? The fishermen want to catch the biggest fish of their life. It's blocking YOUR right to go to your car. Whatever pleasure they get from fishing and the collateral damage of causing your harm, it was unnecessary to "recruit" you into their project. This is different than being one car of many in traffic "recruiting" you into traffic. With the road situation, it is tacitly accepted that this is part of how roads worked. However, if a car wanted to stop traffic so they can look out the side of the road at some attraction, that is now falling into unnecessary "recruiting" territory.
I sum this up as making the point that what is wrong about procreation is that we are recruiting a future person into a life of suffering, and failing to prevent obviously unnecessary suffering.
I can only present the argument faithfully and to the best of my ability
I think you are making me do all the work and judging by your abilities you could do it way better, and tighter. You just dont want to waste your time on a bad faith opponent - well youre judging me harshly. Im doing my best too.
The ethic is to not unnecessarily create more people that suffer, and to force people into a world based on one's own estimation of how much suffering is good (especially since the amount and kind of suffering for another is unknown as just a fact of the matter). It's then the inclination that must be re-educated, not the ethic.
You said especially since the amount of suffering is unknown. That adds an interesting element. Amount of suffering as a concept, plus this amount being unknown.
I dont think the amount of suffering matters, and I dont think the fact of suffering is unknown. We know every time we procreate we are recruiting someone into suffering. Period. Right?
As far as the re-education, I agree it would be in the face of inclinations and old habits. But Im still trying to parse out the content of the education. That is a 2.0 discussion about inclinations and where they come from and why someone might resist AN. Im just sticking to what AN is.
You even said yourself after talking about people who arent inclined to have kids, about religion and family as urging kids, as existential need for purpose.. Though of course, there are also plenty of horrible parents as well, but all of this is besides the point.
So I dont think I need to parse that part out yet to focus on what AN is.
Im not intending to mischaracterize anything you are trying to explain, so if I do, that wasnt my intent, so dont accuse me of bad faith anymore, please. (If something is wrong, clarify it for me. Nothing wrong with wiping the blackboard clean and laying out a tight argument from the top again.)
It is more than just suffering. If it was just suffering, I would consider myself a hedonic utilitarian or some such. It is rather about not using people by force recruiting them into projects that will harm them. Suffering matters here, but it is the particular nature of preventing suffering absolutely in the case of procreation that makes it exceptionally different than already-existing scenarios,
So it is more about not forcing someone to be born at all, regardless of any suffering; it is about how recruiting them into projects is wrong. The fact that it is a project that will harm them makes it all the worse, but it is more than just suffering. [ ] It is rather about not using people by force.
This is why you dont like my arguments about the amount of suffering. Suffering in life is a part of what is wrong about procreation, but it is the involuntary recruitment that might be the real heart of the rule that is violated.
So I had the rule as (trying to quote you) prevent the harm if possible, especially if it is unnecessary to let the harm happen in the first place. But there is a second rule or complication to the rule (again that I hope you will clarify) something like (as tight as I can make to build less room for misinterpretation): do not impose harm, especially when it can be avoided.
So this confuses prevent with not impose. But I am seeing AN as more saying do not impose in order to get the involuntary recruitment aspect into it.
But that undermines all of the time spent parsing out prevent from remediate. That wasnt really the issue. And that issue was related to the suffering, where first you must prevent suffering, but then once procreation happens and you are with the currently living you are following a rule relating to remediating suffering. But we also said that the suffering isnt the heart of the issue.
So I think all of the arguments over prevent versus remediate and suffering and amounts of suffering, were off the mark (or at least my objections and rebuttals to those aspects of the arguments were off the mark). Because that wasnt the real heart of the problem. Thats why it can be ok to cause some suffering in living people, because they can consent to that suffering.
The mark for AN has to do with the lack of consent to live at all.
It is wrong to force a being into existence when no such being could give its consent, therefore one should not procreate.
Suffering matters here, but it is the particular nature of preventing suffering absolutely in the case of procreation that makes it exceptionally different than already-existing scenarios, where we are simply remediating suffering (doing the best with what we have, trading greater with lesser harms, negotiating our interests, etc.).
It is right. It sounds right to me. I still dont think Im mischaracterizing anything you are saying.
And I also still think it can all be summed up in a tighter argument where every word counts better than Ive done here. Im not sure if the best formulation of the rule involved ( prevent harm or not imposing harm).
There are holes that I cant seem to fill, and that Im afraid to fill for fear of strawmanning!!
There is an apparent vacillation on the place of the future non-existing baby that is both prevented from existing (as a future possible baby), and in which suffering is prevented from existing. I know that the baby never exists when the rule is followed and no violation occurs. But the rule itself seems to invoke the existence of a baby that cannot give its consent, to whom life is being imposed involuntarily; theres a tension there that you (not me) introduce into the text. The existence of the baby seems to matter (actual) and not matter (potential) to the world this ethic describes.
And I still see a hole in the value of suffering to the AN argument. Something needs further clarity here. Does AN hold its ground regardless of any suffering or not?
But Ive gone too far astray from the text.
Before you respond to all of the things I got wrong, can you at least admit how far I DO seem to understand it? Most of this whole post was me trying to restate you without causing any cringing.
Before you respond to all of the things I got wrong, can you at least admit how far I DO seem to understand it? Most of this whole post was me trying to restate you without causing any cringing.
Yes, thank you for actually trying to analyze and parse out the arguments. I appreciate that, and now we can have a much more interesting discussion :clap: because we are not talking so past each other, but seriously engaged in the content. This was actually very good, along the lines I was looking for.
That sounds like a rule in there. The rule seems to be to prevent harm when possible, especially when unnecessary. Then, once procreation happens and the rule has been violated, you move to a different rule where, if there is harm already done a set of actions is needed to remediate it.
This seems to be about a wider moral position, and has stepped outside of a narrow focus on AN. The above all talks about how to treat other currently living people. In this context, and if I got the rule right, the rule being: prevent harm when possible, especially when unnecessary, in the wider context of other living people we still must try to prevent harm, especially when unnecessary, but there can be harmed caused that is unintentional harm. And any step we take is towards remediation, not prevention first.
[Could negligent behavior blur the line between preventative and remediative acts? Is there a duty to try to prevent negligence, and while some acts are purely unintentional, others are wanton and grossly negligent sorts that we all have a duty to prevent? This is a tangent - forget the question.]
Absolutely, but as further down it discusses that once born, "positive ethics" does come into play (people's interests, goals), complete avoidance of harm, and to what point negligence matters is a sticky situation. But correct, at this point tangential so can be tabled for another thread/discussion. AN does not matter for these cases being that it's still remediation, and then a matter of "To what degree?"
I sum this up as making the point that what is wrong about procreation is that we are recruiting a future person into a life of suffering, and failing to prevent obviously unnecessary suffering.
Correct. There are multiple violations here having to do with violating someone's dignity, encapsulated with "Don't harm" and Don't violate people's autonomy" (both of them being further grouped as types of the principle "Don't use/mess with people", but I'll explain that later).
You said especially since the amount of suffering is unknown. That adds an interesting element. Amount of suffering as a concept, plus this amount being unknown.
I dont think the amount of suffering matters, and I dont think the fact of suffering is unknown. We know every time we procreate we are recruiting someone into suffering. Period. Right?
Correct, but with a caveat. The non-harm/autonomy principles were violated, and it was unnecessary (no remediative reason for it), so in an absolute sense, always wrong. However, I don't discount that the extent of suffering is in play. But it is in play to the detriment of the pro-natalist argument, not the other way around. Whereas, if no one was born, literally no one would be deprived (non-identity issue) of the goods of life, once born there will be suffering/harm as a fact. And it is empirically true that this world holds a great deal of it in known and unknown quantities. That adds to the antinatalist case. It also leads into the idea that if we distill down the (six or so to my estimation) goods of life, causing people suffering so they can experience the goods is problematic itself in breaking the ethic of "not using people" (by unnecessarily harming them, and "messing" with them/violating other people's autonomy).
As far as the re-education, I agree it would be in the face of inclinations and old habits. But Im still trying to parse out the content of the education. That is a 2.0 discussion about inclinations and where they come from and why someone might resist AN. Im just sticking to what AN is.
You even said yourself after talking about people who arent inclined to have kids, about religion and family as urging kids, as existential need for purpose.. Though of course, there are also plenty of horrible parents as well, but all of this is besides the point.
So I dont think I need to parse that part out yet to focus on what AN is.
Yes, my point to bring that in the discussion was many people, and I believe earlier you did as well, try to invoke some procreative/natural "necessity" into the human psyche. But I am encountering with empirical evidence that humans don't even work that way. Rather, we are very much learned/cultural/existential/deliberative creatures, and less so "instinctual". This gets into a lot of side avenues of discussion but generally what I was getting at is that "Wanting to procreate" or "Wanting to have kids" is not an instinct but a (very culturally weighted) preference. Childfree-people and their GROWTH as societies get more educated (that is, away from familial and tribal and religious pressures), they tend to become more individualistic, and PREFER to procreate less over time. That to me indicates that "wanting kids" is not instinctual but very much contingent on social and existential pressures. I also mentioned that it's simply a personal preference one takes on because for many, it seems like an ultimate "purpose" because it is so all-encompassing. Also, I am acknowledging that this is a hard decision and a powerful "inclination" for many people. I am explaining possible origins, but also disregarding that any of it is relevant to the moral considerations at hand. Thus it's a classic case of "inclination" vs. "morality". You feel a "loss", but what if I told you that this feeling of "loss" can be transferred to any number of things that one might miss out on? (trips, experiences, rights of passage, etc.). This is a bit outlandish, but imagine a young Spartan who was all prepared to do all sorts of horrible things to their helot slaves. It was a right of passage they were looking forward to, but Athens takes over Sparta (this didn't happen) and forces Sparta to stop the practice of killing helots as a right of passage. Does the young Spartan have a right to feel a sense of loss? That's all he's ever known or looked forward to. Obviously, I recognize procreation is so integral to society as to be a matter of course and thus deemed as irrevocably different than the "obvious" example of inclination and preference I provided. But isn't this the point of these debates on this topic? That perhaps our normative understanding IS incorrect, and we must re-evaluate?
So it is more about not forcing someone to be born at all, regardless of any suffering; it is about how recruiting them into projects is wrong. The fact that it is a project that will harm them makes it all the worse, but it is more than just suffering. [ ] It is rather about not using people by force.
This is why you dont like my arguments about the amount of suffering. Suffering in life is a part of what is wrong about procreation, but it is the involuntary recruitment that might be the real heart of the rule that is violated.
So I had the rule as (trying to quote you) prevent the harm if possible, especially if it is unnecessary to let the harm happen in the first place. But there is a second rule or complication to the rule (again that I hope you will clarify) something like (as tight as I can make to build less room for misinterpretation): do not impose harm, especially when it can be avoided.
Yes good catch on the two themes/points of violation here. Roughly they correspond to non-harm principle violation (don't unnecessarily cause harm), and autonomy principle (don't unnecessarily mess with people/ violate their autonomy). And thus, as you state, the extent of suffering is not the crux of the position, but it can inform it. Why? Because part of the "non-harm" principle entails two things:
1) Known harm
2) Unknown harm
So the violation happens because you know there is harm, but you choose to impose it anyways. And you know that you cannot know "unknown harm" that might befall someone- so you are gambling with other people (again all these are principles of using someone.. harm/autonomy, etc.).
And this brings me to another point, that of the notion of "aggressive paternalism". This is the stance one takes when they deem that it is OK to violate these deontological principles of non-harm/autonomy (to use people). That is where this notion of "Your positive ethics does NOT justify violating someone else's negative ethics".
So I think all of the arguments over prevent versus remediate and suffering and amounts of suffering, were off the mark (or at least my objections and rebuttals to those aspects of the arguments were off the mark). Because that wasnt the real heart of the problem. Thats why it can be ok to cause some suffering in living people, because they can consent to that suffering.
Nice takeaway, and good example of walking through the dialectic and how it relates to the arguments and seeing where some errors could be on initial interpretations and arguments.
The mark for AN has to do with the lack of consent to live at all.
It is wrong to force a being into existence when no such being could give its consent, therefore one should not procreate.
Is this right?
Yes, but I don't think the rule relies solely on consent. There is definitely the principle of non-harm, so you can combine it with what you were getting at earlier, "One should not cause unnecessary harm, or violate someone's autonomy (consent)" This is an example of the more basic principle of "Do not use people". And to violate this would be to take a stance of "aggressive paternalism" where you deem "Ok to violate other people's negative ethics for the cause of one's own positive ethics". In other words, "You deem what is best for others, even if that brings with it harms/suffering for others."
And I also still think it can all be summed up in a tighter argument where every word counts better than Ive done here. Im not sure if the best formulation of the rule involved ( prevent harm or not imposing harm).
Indeed, I also wonder this because, as you stated, they both convey different but related ideas. You are preventing harm AND imposing harm. In the negative sense, you are not violating non-harm. In the positive sense, you WILL be imposing harm, presumably for some positive ethic. You are IMPOSING a project, creating unnecessary harm (aggressive paternalism- feelings that one has the right to violate negative ethics for one's own estimation of what should be/positive ethics).
But the rule itself seems to invoke the existence of a baby that cannot give its consent, to whom life is being imposed involuntarily; theres a tension there that you (not me) introduce into the text. The existence of the baby seems to matter (actual) and not matter (potential) to the world this ethic describes.
This is why I reformulate the general "asymmetry" here. Even though I might say that a potential child not born is "good" for not suffering. You might say that it is neutral. And I am willing to say that I am okay with this. We can say in fact, that prior to procreation, no ethical thing is happening good or bad. It is only one way that it is bad, the scenario of procreation. There may not be an equivalent "good", just "not bad".
And I still see a hole in the value of suffering to the AN argument. Something needs further clarity here. Does AN hold its ground regardless of any suffering or not?
This is indeed a whole discussion in itself. But to be brief, this is answered by being contra the "aggressive paternalism" stance. That is to say, it is hubris to assume for others that there is a certain amount of suffering that is acceptable or even "good for someone" to take place, even if it doesn't have to. You are indeed violating someone's dignity (using them) because you deem a certain set of positive principles as above and beyond the violation of someone else's negative principles.
Thank you for taking the time to do this "close/charitable" read! Now we can have productive conversations around the same set of ideas rather than talking past each other. Even if we disagree, we are at least doing it on the correct set of ideas, or at least near close to it (I'm sure we will still talk past each other).
Does adoption/taking guardianship over children abandoned by their genitors prolong suffering according to AN? Is it the fault of those that adopted him, who've abetted & aided in introducing him to a potentially painful existence within society? Or the fault of those who brought him into this world, the mother who gave birth to him, the father who inseminated?
Or an asexual who adopts a kid, though never brought the child into existence through procreation. Yet, similarly, the child will expect to experience immense suffering within his societal upbringing, is this the fault of the biological parents who are completely absent in this regard?
So you are introducing a bunch of strawman scenarios into the AN argument, as it looks like you are not understanding the domain of antinatalism. Antinatalism is purely about the decision to procreate a person. In the current world we live in, this is by the usual biological methods, though with fertilization technology I guess it can involve several participants. But the question for antinatalism is strictly "Is it okay to procreate someone who will be harmed/suffer once they are born?". The antinatalist answer is an emphatic "NO!".
The same ethic that wants to prevent future suffering of a person might also be at work in various other ethical applications, but that wouldn't be the domain of antinatalism- this includes the upbringing of a child once already born.
There may be several possible normative ethical foundations for a person's particular version of antinatalism. For example, mine might include the idea that procreation violates negative ethics (the non-harm/autonomy principles), and even if there is a positive project you might want from it (meaning in your life, heritage, legacy, etc.), that positive project doesn't override another person's negative right not to be harmed unnecessarily.
I have seen discussions where I've leant toward this not being the case. I.e not being sufficient to support the position entirely. The non-identity problem does get its day, essentially. But I think it can be defeated, regardless. I would have to revisit those discussions (i believe one was on an Antinatalist podcast with a very irking woman presenting, tbh, but Benatar as guest) to get to it, though, so feel free to disregard that.
I think its not entirely wrong to require that a lack of harm is pursuant to an individual. But, if its true for *insert any considered future person* then it is true for every other considered future person. These are, to the degree it matters here, individuals in consideration. So, you can take an individual who does not exist, yet is on the other side of the Yes/No choice being made (determinists shhh) - it's clearly wrong to create something which will primarily suffer.
But this actually gives us an even clearer formulation - "Inducing suffering is wrong".
Explain what kind of "restrictions" you are talking about here.
(to be clear, I personally don't really think these restrictions are apt responses to the AN position, but other ethical considerations to be discussed elsewhere). One possible route would be licensing for parentage. Another would be restrictions on how many children can be part of any given (defined) genetic circle. Quoting I like sushi
Anyone with a more thorough understanding in favour of enforcing such ideas by law are extreme radicals and should probably be treated with contempt by everyone else (they will be by me for sure).
I'm unsure contempt would be my response, as opposed to incredulity.
Reply to gadzooks All of your points have to do with individuals already living, and so are irrelevant.
schopenhauer1August 06, 2024 at 22:48#9233950 likes
I think its not entirely wrong to require that a lack of harm is pursuant to an individual. But, if its true for *insert any considered future person* then it is true for every other considered future person. These are, to the degree it matters here, individuals in consideration. So, you can take an individual who does not exist, yet is on the other side of the Yes/No choice being made (determinists shhh) - it's clearly wrong to create something which will primarily suffer.
I feel my post you quoted from sufficiently goes over reasons why the non-identity issue is a red herring. It's an abuse of language to reason that future conditionals are not in moral considerations. Also I gave some restatements of the Benatarian asymmetry that can change it to "states of affairs" language. The state of affairs of suffering can obtain (BAD), or it does not (good or at least NOT BAD). Obviously select the NOT BAD over BAD.
Reply to schopenhauer1 You have entirely missed that your arguments support action, while what I'm outlining supports the position.
I do not feel you post does what you've described. It's possible you missed that your arguments support action, while what I'm outlining supports the position. Maybe?
schopenhauer1August 07, 2024 at 03:23#9234560 likes
You have entirely missed that your arguments support action, while what I'm outlining supports the position.
I do not feel you post does what you've described. It's possible you missed that your arguments support action, while what I'm outlining supports the position. Maybe?
I really don't know what you're getting at here about action and position in regards to the non-identity issue.
I like sushiAugust 07, 2024 at 05:12#9234680 likes
One possible route would be licensing for parentage.
I have mentioned this before. That is not exactly something I would favour but it falls far away from the kind of of extreme I was talking about - an essential ban on procreation - which is not really what AN is about.
It's possible you missed that your arguments support action, while what I'm outlining supports the position. Maybe?
I have a feeling this is parallel to something I have tried to mention before on the subject of AN.
Often what is ethical is used synonymously with what is moral. With AN we are really talking about a 'moral' view (individual conscience) whereas as an 'ethical' view (general rule for society) it is something quite different.
The lack of common distinction with these terms causes discussions about AN to become fractious. This is why you see so many people believing that others are condoning the extinction of the human species - they see the 'ethical' stance as saying this is better for society (the destruction of society is better for society).
schopenhauer1August 07, 2024 at 06:18#9234790 likes
I have a feeling this is parallel to something I have tried to mention before on the subject of AN.
Often what is ethical is used synonymously with what is moral. With AN we are really talking about a 'moral' view (individual conscience) whereas as an 'ethical' view (general rule for society) it is something quite different.
The lack of common distinction with these terms causes discussions about AN to become fractious. This is why you see so many people believing that others are condoning the extinction of the human species - they see the 'ethical' stance as saying this is better for society (the destruction of society is better for society).
How did you derive this from position and action? Am I not understanding the common usage of those words?
I like sushiAugust 07, 2024 at 06:29#9234810 likes
This is why you see so many people believing that others are condoning the extinction of the human species - they see the 'ethical' stance as saying this is better for society (the destruction of society is better for society).
ANs do believe in the extinction of society being the ethically correct outcome of hte near-middle future. But, not by genocide. Not it's better 'for society'. It 'is better'. Full stop.
Reply to schopenhauer1 This is as regards the Asymmetry. The asymmetry supports acting to prevent more people. Not the position that more people is an unethical course of action. One pre, one proscriptive.
schopenhauer1August 07, 2024 at 21:07#9236200 likes
This is as regards the Asymmetry. The asymmetry supports acting to prevent more people. Not the position that more people is an unethical course of action. One pre, one proscriptive.
I'd give a slight rebuttal to this that it depends if you are a utilitarian or a deontologist about it. A utilitarian would say that it is about the outcome of suffering that needs to be prevented (negative utilitarianism), the deontologist would say it is the principle of not causing harm.
ANs do believe in the extinction of society being the ethically correct outcome of hte near-middle future. But, not by genocide. Not it's better 'for society'. It 'is better'. Full stop.
No they do not. Only if they proclaim AN as an 'ethical' paradigm that must be followed by others. When it comes to believing that it should be followed the same would not apply if should is framed as a suggestion rather than am order based on irrefutable reasoning.
You are a believer in AN? If so I am curious what your views are. I know already know well enough what Schopenhauer believes what about you? Even if you are one of those I said I would have 'contempt' for I would still like to try and understand why you think what you think :)
Reply to I like sushi As one, I can say confidently this is not the case. It is a clear entailment of AN thinking that the eventual non-existence of humans is preferable and an ethically correct outcome. They do believe people should not procreate. This is as prescriptive as one can be conceptually speaking.
My views are odd - because I am conceptually in line with AN entirely (including the above prescriptive thinking and hte delineation between living and potential persons) but I don't take anything seriously enough to think this is a view I could enforce. And nor would I want to. I have better things to do. Thsi is an intellectual position that I do believe in, but as with all of my positions, I think they apply to me. I can simply think one has their reasoning wrong without impugning htem intellectually.
Hell, I have two kids. That doesn't mean I don't feel guilt every moment of my life for that.
I like sushiAugust 08, 2024 at 01:48#9236770 likes
Reply to AmadeusD So in light of what I said you are framing yourself as 'moral' not 'ethical' in regards to AN? I say this because of the following:
My views are odd - because I am conceptually in line with AN entirely (including the above prescriptive thinking and hte delineation between living and potential persons) but I don't take anything seriously enough to think this is a view I could enforce. And nor would I want to. I have better things to do. Thsi is an intellectual position that I do believe in, but as with all of my positions, I think they apply to me. I can simply think one has their reasoning wrong without impugning htem intellectually.
This is directly in line with what I outlined as 'moral' and almost entirely opposed to the 'ethical'. Do you agree that what you say here aligns with what I stated as being a 'moral' stance rather than what I stated as an 'ethical' stance? If not why? (Note: I used these terms fairly loosely so there is wiggle room).
schopenhauer1August 08, 2024 at 02:16#9236850 likes
This is directly in line with what I outlined as 'moral' and almost entirely opposed to the 'ethical'. Do you agree that what you say here aligns with what I stated as being a 'moral' stance rather than what I stated as an 'ethical' stance? If not why? (Note: I used these terms fairly loosely so there is wiggle room).
As an aside, based on @AmadeusD's position, he doesn't want to do the following:
1) Impose antinatalism
2) Impugn others who don't believe in the rightness of antinatalism
Number 1 is simply a given being that antinatalism is properly an ethic and not a political policy. One can make it into one perhaps, but then that is antinatalist policy, not antinatalist ethics, which for all intents and purposes is what people generally refer to when they say "antinatalism". Generally antinatalists do not advocate imposing/forcing others to follow antinatalism. This is similar to veganism.
Number 2 seems a non-sequitur or self-refuting. Simply don't debate it on a philosophy forum then if you don't want to "impugn" others' stances. If he meant that in public life he doesn't do this, that is one thing. Most antinatalists don't usually go around advocating for it, though there are some that do this. It is not incumbent to be a missionary for antinatalism. However, being on a philosophy forum, and defending the position, would in a minor way be "impugning" those who are objecting, if one engages with it. So I am not sure if this is sort of tu quoque fallacy Amadeus is unintentionally making on himself by even arguing anything related to AN, given 2.
This is directly in line with what I outlined as 'moral' and almost entirely opposed to the 'ethical'.
Not quite, no. I do think it would be better if people were ANs to the point that I believe people should not have children. This is proscriptive, and is an ethical position.
Perhaps I need to be clearer: I have ethical positions I never intend to enforce on others. If you look at all the arguments and conclude "Not good enough", fine, but I'll think you're wrong and would try to persuade you otherwise. I do not have to commit myself to arguing with everyone who has kids to hold an ethical position such as AN. Practically speaking, what is the point in that? Just Stop Oil are a joke for a reason.
) Impugn others who don't believe in the rightness of antinatalism
Impugn "intellectually". Very different to impugning their ethics in my view. I think other people should not have children. Would I purposefully insinuate this to people? No. I'd prefer to suffer in silence on this issue unless asked. I wouldn't assert someone's mind was wrong (in terms of some kind of retardation(in the strict sense)) for not agreeing with my ethical position. Please keep in mind, though, I am an emotivist to the degree that i have an actual Ethical view.
I don't believe my ethical framework can be enforced. It should should be followed by me. No, this is not morality, but it is a bit of a get-out-of-jail card because it basically is a meta-ethical theory that asserts there is no objective morality. Moral theories in general don't make any sense in this light.
If you look at all the arguments and conclude "Not good enough", fine, but I'll think you're wrong and would try to persuade you otherwise.
You do this actively or only when questioned about your AN beliefs?
I do think it can be quite problematic to argue about moral positions unless you adhere to some kind of moral realism. I am assuming you are a moral realist? If not how does this fit into your views on AN?
Impugn "intellectually". Very different to impugning their ethics in my view. I think other people should not have children. Would I purposefully insinuate this to people? No. I'd prefer to suffer in silence on this issue unless asked. I wouldn't assert someone's mind was wrong (in terms of some kind of retardation(in the strict sense)) for not agreeing with my ethical position. Please keep in mind, though, I am an emotivist to the degree that i have an actual Ethical view.
I don't believe my ethical framework can be enforced. It should should be followed by me. No, this is not morality, but it is a bit of a get-out-of-jail card because it basically is a meta-ethical theory that asserts there is no objective morality. Moral theories in general don't make any sense in this light.
A sideline to this: it seems to me that most antinatalist arguments apply to animals as well (possibly even more strongly, given the amount of suffering).
If you're unwilling to enforce your framework or even really convince people, what about animals? Would you spay/neuter as many animals as possible, given the chance? Perhaps avoid their procreation in other ways?
Reply to Echarmion Largely, the suffering the AN refers to is a result of hte higher consciousness of humans. Though, some ANs absolutely go as far as to insist we should look at reducing wild populations of most animals. I think that's a bit of an 'unofficial' position some take though. It's not one for me for two reasons:
1. My current understanding of (most) animal psychology is either not good enough to assume, or leads me to believe that hte relevant animals do not 'suffer' the way humans do, but experience an aversion; and
2. I don't think we will ever have a very clear understanding of the above issue outside of some higher animals and fish.
If I could clearly understand 1. above to indicate that animals, on the whole, suffer the same way humans do, I would probably assent to your point.
You do this actively or only when questioned about your AN beliefs?
Not always directly on-point to AN stuff, but whereever it seems applicable to the discussion (several versions of a vague 'ethical' discussion would do this and hten, yes) and whenever I'm specifically prodded on the issue.
I am assuming you are a moral realist? If not how does this fit into your views on AN?
I am a pretty staunch moral antirealist (hence noting I am an Emotivist, to the degree that I will commit to an existing label). I don't think this has any affect or effect on my AN positions beyond noting that they are 'my' ethical beliefs. My meta-ethical position doesn't really give me any room to pretend i'm the arbiter of truth, no matter how sure I am that I have the 'right' idea.
I like sushiAugust 12, 2024 at 08:02#9246310 likes
You deem 'suffering' as 'bad' (or rather "Boo!") knowing it is your subjective emotions talking.
How then can you state, in any serious way, that something is 'right' or 'wrong'. The whole point of AN is to state that natalism is wrong. But you seem to be saying "it is 'wrong' (boo!) for me" not that it is out and out wrong (Boo!) for everyone or that there is anything dictating what is objectively viewed as 'right; or 'wrong' other than commonality of emotional expressions.
It is interesting how this, in part, appears similar to moral naturalism rather than moral scepticism.
Following this lien of questioning I find myself framing you as what I previously expressed as harbouring a 'Moral' stance of AN rather than an 'Ethical' stance of AN. I made this particular distinction in an essay I wrote on AN to highlight the flaw in some who make claims to both 'Moral' and 'Ethical' stances on AN as to do so is to hold contradictory positions.
Anyway, thanks for your replies. I think we could argue back and forth a bit more but it may be mostly a semantic issue given that emotivism is hard to articulate (a serious flaw of emotivism).
But you seem to be saying "it is 'wrong' (boo!) for me" not that it is out and out wrong (Boo!) for everyone or that there is anything dictating what is objectively viewed as 'right; or 'wrong' other than commonality of emotional expressions.
A lot here.
It is wrong for anyone(currently, anyhow) as far as I am concerned. Enforcement of that policy can only apply to me based on my ethical views.
(my view is that..)There is nothing that could even begin to dictate what is objectively right or wrong (in the meta-ethical sense of the term "objective"). Those words don't have objective bases.
The basis is necessarily one's emotional disposition (maybe predisposition? This could in a very weird and unsatisfying way open the door to a more-objective ethic) as there is nothing else which could inform us.
The commonality of emotional expression is probably hte best way (:optimal) to work toward policy. I don't take this to indicate anything truly ethical. But it does indicate the overall moral vibe of a society/culture.
It is interesting how this, in part, appears similar to moral naturalism rather than moral scepticism.
Could you expand? My understanding of Moral Naturalism is that it more or less indicates that morals are evolutionarily-required aspects of human development, which I don't agree with.
...what I previously expressed as harbouring a 'Moral' stance of AN rather than an 'Ethical' stance of AN...I think we could argue back and forth a bit more but it may be mostly a semantic issue given that emotivism is hard to articulate (a serious flaw of emotivism).
Hmm. Pretty hard disagree. I think in these exchanges I have navigated through that suggestion pretty well. The fact that I don't think I should be forcing other people to adopt my view doesn't make it less ethically-driven. Not doing much about it is a dispositional fact of my mind or, to be a bit more sanguine, a practical necessity to not hating my life and hte world I live in.
I disagree that Emotivism is either hard to articulate, or flawed in any meaningful way (beyond causing discomfort, that is - but that's baked into the position so LOL). But that would make sense if it's my position, so just noting this for thoroughness.
I like sushiAugust 13, 2024 at 01:42#9249180 likes
Reply to AmadeusD I think it is hard to articulate - hence the problem of vagueness. It is something some people struggle to fully grasp. Emotivism that is!
The fact that I don't think I should be forcing other people to adopt my view doesn't make it less ethically-driven.
In common parse, yes. In the framing I made for 'Moral' and 'Ethical' I am satisfied with how you have responded. If you had said some other things then I would have pulled you up about them. This is because AN only makes rational sense if it is either 'Moral' OR 'Ethical' in the way I framed those terms.
Could you expand? My understanding of Moral Naturalism is that it more or less indicates that morals are evolutionarily-required aspects of human development, which I don't agree with.
It just seemed that you were framing emotional dispositions as the grounding for moral choices rather than there being no moral choices. I made the leap from biological necessity to emotional dispositions. That is clearly not what you meant though.
What is Right For You (Emotivism) is not deemed Objectively Right. Ergo, your claim is Subjectively Led not Objectively Led - for emphasis this is what I meant in my distinction between Moral (Right for Your Perspective) and Ethical (The Right Objective Implementation).
It just seemed that you were framing emotional dispositions as the grounding for moral choices rather than there being no moral choices.
Oh, okay, I see what you mean. That might be a language issue - Emotional dispositions are the only possible grounding for moral choices. But that lives within the vagueries of "moral decision" so probably cannot be adequately defined (in either direction).
Moral (Right for Your Perspective) and Ethical (The Right Objective Implementation).
But this misses that Emotivism is a meta-ethical position. It says that human Ethics are dispositional. That framing Ethics as something objective, under which we must argue for our chosen source (God, Ayn Rand, deontology, utilitarian calc etc...) is wrong ethically. Ethics inform morals - so this ethical position means that all moral choices are in response to one's emotional state which is in turn in response to a moral proposition. You can't have a meta-moral system to explain this, because that's just ethics. And the "ethics" is that it is right to ascribe moral positions to their underlying emotional states. I'm unsure more needs to be said here, but feel free to pick it apart.
For what it's worth, I think people are ethically wrong to enforce their ethical position if their position entails an objective moral outcome. Strange, I know.
I like sushiAugust 13, 2024 at 01:52#9249240 likes
Reply to AmadeusD It was from a meta-ethical standpoint I said this. That is why I reframed 'Moral' and 'Ethical'. Anyway, I think we mostly understand each other here even if we disagree about AN :)
schopenhauer1August 25, 2024 at 19:01#9279190 likes
I thought this was a thoughtful, respectful, conversation with two more-or-less differing views on antinatalism. It's weird to listen to a debate without the vitriol you generally see on forums like this.
schopenhauer1August 25, 2024 at 19:21#9279230 likes
Just my thoughts on the above video language discussion on the word "better". The question was basically, "Who is it "better" for not to exist, if "they" don't exist to be better?". My response to that would be that it is simply from the perspective of someone already existing. I've had that conversation on here many times before. If there are no humans in the world, or ethical agents at the least, there is no need for ethics. As long as there is at least one person who has a "perspective" for lack of better terms, they can still fathom what better means from their actions. As long as an ethical perspective is around at all, then "better" exists, and thus ethics come into play such as, "This state of affairs will be better". That's how I would have answered that part of the debate.
Reply to schopenhauer1 I think, for me, it's a bit simpler: Not needing ethics would be a goal in this context. No human seems to be the only possible way for that to obtain. Therefore, antinatalism leads to the ultimate ethical goal of never needing ethics.
Fire OlogistAugust 27, 2024 at 23:24#9284980 likes
Therefore, antinatalism leads to the ultimate ethical goal of never needing ethics.
Which is another way AN harms itself as a reasonable ethical system.
If the goal of ethics is to eliminate ethics, we could just ignore any pangs of morality now instead. Like ignoring pangs of procreation when trying to be an ethical AN.
If Its all pang manipulation, why base the manipulations on any ethics, let alone an ethics that seeks to undo its application anywhere?
Sure, pain and suffering suck and sex feels good and so does a cheeseburger when you are hungry, but using scales of ethics and motality to help decide ones way forward for sake of eliminating ethics is a bit like using math to show how numbers cant exist (or in this case shouldnt exist).
Which is another way AN harms itself as a reasonable ethical system.
I'll try to sort out your comments below, but I do not see how that, in any way, harms itself. If the ethical goal is to no longer require ethical systems (because the world is perfectly ethical) then it is precisely, as an ethical system, that AN succeeds (obviously if you disagree with it then success is subjective, but I hope you get the sense in which I mean this).
we could just ignore any pangs of morality now instead
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but this seems to violate the former idea: If we're ignoring moral pangs (though, I couldn't give a shit what your moral pangs are. Show me the results of your behaviour) then ethics would say this is unethical, in some sense. You are not attended to ethics in this case. The case I'm, at least superficially, putting forward as a goal of AN would be that there are no ethics to attend. I think there is a clear distinction, myself, because you're right - the conception you've described here is inapt, and probably self-defeating.
using scales of ethics and motality to help decide ones way forward for sake of eliminating ethics is a bit like using math to show how numbers cant exist (or in this case shouldnt exist).
I do not see this at all, unfortunately. They are not the same thing, or comparable. To be fair, morality would likely only pertain to the acts of hte living. Ethics are to do with the effect of those acts so there can be a difference between the two 'scales' being considered, I think - though, I ahve written this on the fly while editing a settlement statement so go easy LOL
Fire OlogistAugust 28, 2024 at 03:15#9285380 likes
Dont you mean because the world is perfectly non-ethical?
LOL, Yes, I suppose so. May not non-ethical, but ethically bereft/empty/inapt. I hope you groked what I was getting at though... Simply that there is no need for ethical thinking (and no humans would be just that). In fact, it may be that it's not possible in that scenario. But probably that leads into some kind of exegesis which isn't my bag. I say that because, having re-read my passage it would require a "view from nowhere". Speculatively, I don't see an issue though - we're not in that world :P
@Baden Anti natalism is such a broad subject. Why squash all the conversations that can be had on the subject in to one thread? It's messy and isn't really conducive to a nice flow of different conversations that would be better suited apart from one another, not mingled altogether.
Anti natalism is such a broad subject. Why squash all the conversations that can be had on the subject in to one thread? It's messy and isn't really conducive to a nice flow of different conversations that would be better suited apart from one another, not mingled altogether.
Your observations are correct. I used to have posts that dealt with various aspects that are disparate enough to warrant their own topic.
Reply to Baden
I wonder, would it be possible to have a subforum within Ethics just for antinatalism topics? If not that, is there some middle ground whereby topics can be clearly delineated within the same thread? I think this category has enough demand to not confine it to the ghetto of a monolithic Antinatalism thread whereby individual topics are hard to discern on a broad and multifaceted issue.
I think this category has enough demand to not confine it to the ghetto of a monolithic Antinatalism thread whereby individual topics are hard to discern on a broad and multifaceted issue.
1. Discuss amongst ourselves (i.e those holders of the view, or sympathetic to the view); or
2. Put up with people who clearly misunderstand hte position, can't put together coherent objections and consistently insult us on the basis of a view we're not forcing on them.
I would hazard a guess neither is actually worth the time. That said, 180 is a never-ending fountain of bad replies which certainly help to elucidate the wrongness of some objections, so maybe there's that.
I like sushiAugust 29, 2024 at 03:22#9287640 likes
Reply to ShadowRajul It really doesn't warrant anything like that. I dedicated sub forum for Kant or various other philosophers/philosophical ideas would make more sense.
Antinatalism is fringe. SO fringe the word is not even recognised by spellcheck yet :D
I like sushiAugust 29, 2024 at 03:35#9287670 likes
Reply to AmadeusD I did. The guy in the video is holding two contrary views and had this pointed out to him (he probably won't listen though because I have heard some of his youtube stuff before and it is pretty close-minded stuff).
He showed an "Ethic" and "Moral" stance simultaneously (with the meanings I gave you some weeks back) and these are contrary.
It should also be stated that just because someone disagrees it does not mean that they do not understand. If that is the place you leap too maybe you should question your own understanding of what they are saying otherwise you are essentially claiming your position is correct and anyone who does not agree simply does not understand. Wrong. Either they do not understand you fully or you do not understand them fully; but most likely an admixture of the two.
Personally I am some kind of moral sceptic so the whole matter for me is pretty moot at its core. The AN position is Anti-Ethical as pointed out by the guy in the video if your position in in the sphere of what I coined "Ethic" rather than "Moral". As a Moral stance it has more apparent validity.
Reply to I like sushi I'm not sure what "I did" pertains to, or what video you're specifically referring to so shan't comment, but your conclusion here tells me you don't quite understand, so I'm not sure where to take that. I don't particularly care either, I'm just responding as I see fit.. A small remark, based on our exchanges, is that you did not present me any reason to think this AN position is not ethical. You might say "anti-ethical" but that must be on an ethical scale, so not sure its doing the job you think.
your position is correct and anyone who does not agree simply does not understand
No, not at all. I think, again, you have seriously (and uncharitably) misunderstood the point. I do not care whether 180 agrees. He doesn't make any sense to me msot of the time, so why would i care? The point is his constant misrepresentation, trolling remarks, insults and pure ignorance of what's been put to him.
It is genuinely fun. But, do not get it twisted: "you don't understand", for me, has absoltely nothing to do with agreement or disagreement :)
I like sushiAugust 29, 2024 at 03:49#9287690 likes
Reply to AmadeusD 180? I was referring to the video posted recently AND your post.
1. Discuss amongst ourselves (i.e those holders of the view, or sympathetic to the view); or
2. Put up with people who clearly misunderstand hte position, can't put together coherent objections and consistently insult us on the basis of a view we're not forcing on them.
I like sushiAugust 29, 2024 at 03:50#9287700 likes
Reply to Baden - My two cents - I think the decision that was made was the right one. It's not ideal, but I don't see a better option given the current constraints of PlushForums.
Leontiskos: Benatar's argument for anti-natalism would hold good even in a world where everyone received a pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness. Therefore the argument is not reasonable; it proves too much.
Schopenhauer1: Supposing only a pin-prick was the suffering, I guess the question could be reconsidered.
Leontiskos: Reconsidered in what way? If Benatar's argument is sound then it would hold good in that world. If it would not hold good in that world then it is not sound.
The fact that you admitted to reconsideration shows that you do see the force of the reductio, but you failed to follow through and actually do the hard work of reconsidering Benatar's argument and your position.
I like sushiAugust 29, 2024 at 03:55#9287720 likes
The point is his constant misrepresentation, trolling remarks, insults and pure ignorance of what's been put to him.
From your perspectives maybe. Have you considered that what you see as 'trolling' others see as valid points that are not addressed by the argumentation.
I like sushiAugust 29, 2024 at 03:59#9287730 likes
@AmadeusD This video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osfgpM4uCVw&t=1s
Have you considered that what you see as 'trolling' others see as valid points that are not addressed by the argumentation.
Of course. This is now coming across as fairly bad faith (i know it isn't but please note what you're doing - telling me I'm not intellectually in the game, as it were). Assuming i've not considered the points adequately is a bit weird if you're getting at me for pointing out others have clearly not done the same (and even self-admitted they don't care to?) These are very different scenarios. Though, I don't fault you. You're doing roughly hte same as me.
Several people clearly don't, and yes, that's from my perspective. I have no other. All you can actually do is disagree with me, but it doesn't even seem that you're doing so.
Whether they(interlocutors) agree is a totally different issue - one which doesn't matter if they clearly don't understand my views. I would be the only person in a position to know whether you have understood them.
That said, in terms of the wider issue you're point out, given there are three or four usual suspects in this respect, I don't find an issue with my take. I accept lots of people wont like it, and lots of people wont agree or understand. That's how life works.
Thank you for the link. When my current assignment is over, it might be something to go over with you.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 04:25#9287790 likes
My two cents - I think the decision that was made was the right one. It's not ideal, but I don't see a better option given the current constraints of PlushForums.
Funny you defend this ghettoizing of the topic of antinatalism (something you vociferously disagree with), and yet you bring up a topic we discussed way back.. Something which I can't easily look up BECAUSE of this ghettoization whereby EVERYTHING related to antinatalism, no matter what thread/topic is squished into one long thread. So perhaps it is the limitations of PlushForums, but I am proposing a way to give people the ability to create new threads on the topic, so that conversations can be logically viewed.
The fact that you admitted to reconsideration shows that you do see the force of the reductio, but you failed to follow through and actually do the hard work of reconsidering Benatar's argument and your position.
Oh fuck no, because I don't see this world as ever being just a pinprick. Did you find my response? It came right after: Quoting schopenhauer1
My point was that empirically-speaking, in the real world, there are no such charmed lives, so it is de facto out of the question other than a thought experiment. Supposing only a pin-prick was the suffering, I guess the scenario could be reconsidered. But I just want you to know, every single ethical consideration can be reconfigured if you change the conditions for which ethics plays out... So for example.. What if when you stab someone, they reanimate every time you do it instantly.. would that be wrong? I don't know, but that's not the world we generally live in..
But ok, let me take your bait for taking the strongest position just for the sake of argument..
Benatar thinks indeed, being that no one being deprived of this "almost charmed life", there is no foul. No person harmed, no foul. Rather, the violation still takes place in this scenario. It's not like the child is being "saved" from non-existence, so this isn't a palliative situation either.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 04:31#9287800 likes
Put up with people who clearly misunderstand hte position, can't put together coherent objections and consistently insult us on the basis of a view we're not forcing on them.
I would hazard a guess neither is actually worth the time. That said, 180 is a never-ending fountain of bad replies which certainly help to elucidate the wrongness of some objections, so maybe there's that.
It seems to be the case that general decorum for debate in this forum has long ago been deemed as unnecessary.. people like to pull out the roots rather than prune the branches. Robust debate is replaced with "getting one's goat". It's obnoxious and un-philosophical. It is certainly sophistic, but I thought philosophy was trying to veer away from such tactics and stick to substantial issues. This I guess is why philosophers snipe at each other's beliefs, not in real time, but over the course of many years in journal articles. We are playing speed chess, academic philosophy is playing a much longer game, so they can afford to "stick to the topics" more-or-less, in their paid positions to do so in ivory towers. But, this forum doesn't have to resort to gutter tactics. I simply do so when it's necessary to meet in kind, when I sense that people are dodging, uncharitable, rude, or strawmanning my position with sweeping generalizations that don't address the issues.
Funny you defend this ghettoizing of the topic of antinatalism (something you vociferously disagree with), and yet you bring up a topic we discussed way back.. Something which I can't easily look up BECAUSE of this ghettoization whereby EVERYTHING related to antinatalism, no matter what thread/topic is squished into one long thread. So perhaps it is the limitations of PlushForums, but I am proposing a way to give people the ability to create new threads on the topic, so that conversations can be logically viewed.
Use the link I already gave you, which makes it super easy to navigate the discussion. You can make such a search more precise by searching for "schopenhauer1" instead of "." In that case it will only display the posts of mine within this thread that include your username. You can also reverse the search to see a chronological list of your posts to me within this thread. Problem solved. :wink:
Oh fuck no, because I don't see this world as ever being just a pinprick. Did you find my response?
By burying your head in the sand in this way you prove yourself unserious.
Suppose we lived in that world. And suppose Benatar came along and gave the same argument you think is so great. What would you say to him? Would you "shh!" him and sweep him under the rug!? "Don't give that argument in this world! I like birth in this world! Arguments aren't about what's true, they are about what I want, and we don't talk about the arguments that don't suit what I want!"
You're doing the same basic thing when you bury your head in the sand. You recognize that the argument proves too much but you want to believe its conclusion so you refuse to address the objection. This is precisely the sort of irrational motive I spoke about in the other thread. It's like playing soccer with a guy who uses his hands whenever he starts losing. My solution is to find someone else, who is actually interested in playing soccer. Or find a game in which the person is not irrationally devoted to a predetermined outcome. For whatever reason you show yourself unable to play by the rules of rational argument when it comes to anti-natalism.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 04:50#9287830 likes
Nah, we can just do that for any topic right? The instant you make your 30th post on Kant, you should have its own thread to wade through in the Search. Let's do that with every topic:
Meaning of life
Plato
Kant
Aristotle
Systems Theory/Semiosis
Theoretical Physics etc. etc.
Let's ghettoize all the topics equally then and make it similarly as many unnecessary steps to search for it. Quoting Leontiskos
By burying your head in the sand in this way you prove yourself unserious.
So AGAIN, you ignore the answer I gave you? That is twice you ignored my answer. Why didn't you quote what I quoted you??
Would you "shh!" him and sweep him under the rug!? "Don't give that argument in this world! I like birth in this world! Arguments aren't about what's true, they are about what I want, and we don't talk about the arguments that don't suit what I want!"
What are you talking about? I would listen and see if he had a point that indeed, in that world even a pinprick is not worth it. In fact, if you ACTUALLY read his book (don't have it in front me, but if you want to do a chapter by chapter reading, I suppose we could), he DOES cover this. So, let's get at it then.
You're doing the same basic thing when you bury your head in the sand. You recognize that the argument proves too much but you want to believe its conclusion so you refuse to address the objection. This is precisely the sort of irrational motive I spoke about in the other thread. It's like playing soccer with a guy who uses his hands whenever he starts losing. My solution is to find someone else, who is actually interested in playing soccer. Or find a game in which the person is not irrationally devoted to a predetermined outcome. For whatever reason you show yourself unable to play by the rules of rational argument when it comes to anti-natalism.
This is rhetorical blather. First off, I DON"T EVEN USE Benatar wholesale. His asymmetry, if I do mention it, is a way to jump off but I have my own variations of it, which I have taken painstaking time to outline over the course of MANY threads over MANY years.. To have you pin me to one line of reasoning, like that is a subtle but malicious form of uncharitable reading.. But keep mistaking me for Benatar.
But the funny thing is, EVEN if I defend Benatar qua Benatar (not my variation of him), I STILL defended him sufficiently, and you IGNORED my actual response to make rhetorical blather.
So AGAIN, you ignore the answer I gave you? That is twice you ignored my answer. Why didn't you quote what I quoted you??
Because your quote was a dodge. I asked you why you would reconsider in that world and you pulled the escape hatch and refused to answer, instead changing the subject. I answered your red herring in the thread:
It wouldn't be wrong in the same way as it is now. But your theoretical does not function as a reductio to any argument that I have offered, and that is the primary difference.
1. Suppose every living human being is guaranteed a pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness.
2. [Insert Benatar's antinatalist argument here]
3. Therefore, we should never procreate
Are you starting to see the reductio? The reductio has force because we know that any (2) that can get you from (1) to (3) is faulty argumentation.
What is your parallel supposed to be?
1a. Suppose one is reanimated whenever they are stabbed.
2a. [Insert anti-stabbing argument here].
3a. Therefore, we should not stab.
4a. (Any 2a that can get you from 1a to 3a is faulty argumentation.)
This fails because we have no reason to believe either 3a or 4a. There is no parity between these two approaches. It's an ad hoc dodge.
This is rhetorical blather. First off, I DON"T EVEN USE Benatar wholesale. His asymmetry, if I do mention it, is a way to jump off but I have my own variations of it, which I have taken painstaking time to outline over the course of MANY threads over MANY years.. To have you pin me to one line of reasoning, like that is a subtle but malicious form of uncharitable reading.. But keep mistaking me for Benatar.
You are drawing up more escape hatches because you see your argument failing. You are the one who brought up Benatar, not me. It isn't courageous or rational to give your arguments conditionally, such that if they succeed then your position is vindicated but if they fail then you're none the worse for wear.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 05:15#9287890 likes
It wouldn't be wrong in the same way as it is now. But your theoretical does not function as a reductio to any argument that I have offered, and that is the primary difference.
Now what you did not quote nor did you actually address was this: Quoting schopenhauer1
But I just want you to know, every single ethical consideration can be reconfigured if you change the conditions for which ethics plays out... So for example.. What if when you stab someone, they reanimate every time you do it instantly.. would that be wrong? I don't know, but that's not the world we generally live in..
1. Suppose every living human being is guaranteed a pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness.
2. [Insert Benatar's antinatalist argument here]
3. Therefore, we should never procreate
This is rhetorical blather. First off, I DON"T EVEN USE Benatar wholesale. His asymmetry, if I do mention it, is a way to jump off but I have my own variations of it, which I have taken painstaking time to outline over the course of MANY threads over MANY years.. To have you pin me to one line of reasoning, like that is a subtle but malicious form of uncharitable reading.. But keep mistaking me for Benatar.
SO you are still arguing against your own arguments.. ones cleverly concocted to make you win an argument against yourself.. as they are YOUR contrived arguments (uninformed version of Benatar and my own individual philosophy), not mine.
1a. Suppose one is reanimated whenever they are stabbed.
2a. [Insert anti-stabbing argument here].
3a. Therefore, we should not stab.
4a. (Any 2a that can get you from 1a to 3a is faulty argumentation.)
This fails because we have no reason to believe either 3a or 4a. There is no parity between these two approaches. It's an ad hoc dodge.
Not at all.. If one is reanimated when stabbed, that changes the very conditions of the world itself. Death is not really death. It's something else. Just as a pinprick world might not be the kind of suffering we are used to. This is the most uninteresting argument I've seen in a while. You haven't even incorporated Schopenhaueran suffering/pessimism in there, something that would come into play in my understanding of suffering (look at my profile if you need to understand that), but you reduced to some kind of hedonoistic/common version all in one swoop because you think you can win some rhetorical points -> NEXT!
However, I don't want to get caught in the weeds of that particular version of the argument. I think it is best reformulated clearly as this:
Preventing happiness is less a moral obligation than preventing suffering. All things being equal, in the case of non-consent, and ignorance (like this Veil of Ignorance argument is saying), it is always best to prevent suffering, even on the behest of preventing happiness.
The fact is, this is from the perspective of the decision-maker. That SOMEONE exists who can understand what will result is all that matters, not that the subject of the action exists.
Oh so where I even said right in your quote "reformulated as" and went into MY OWN version?
Not at all.. If one is reanimated when stabbed, that changes the very conditions of the world itself.
Why should I believe 3a or 4a?
The other problem here is that most 2a's presuppose the falsity of 1a, whereas 2 does not presuppose the falsity of 1. Or in other words, Benatar's argument contains no implicit logical clause, "...Unless the world is situated such that happiness far outweighs suffering for all." That's the very problem with his argument that is being highlighted.
Contrariwise, prohibitions against stabbing are premised on pain, injury, and mortality, and therefore the sort of world you suggest logically invalidates the prohibitions (and hence 3a). This is completely different from Benatar's argument, for the case I gave clearly does not invalidate his prohibition. That's why, in a fit of honesty, you told me that the question may need to be reconsidered in light of such new circumstances. So if you want to pull your head out of the sand you will answer the question: What would you say to Benatar in that scenario? Why trust an argument in our world that you would not trust in that world? The argument by its very nature cannot be invalidated by the minimization of suffering, and yet this is what you are committed to.
I like sushiAugust 29, 2024 at 06:30#9287990 likes
Of course. This is now coming across as fairly bad faith (i know it isn't but please note what you're doing - telling me I'm not intellectually in the game, as it were). Assuming i've not considered the points adequately is a bit weird if you're getting at me for pointing out others have clearly not done the same (and even self-admitted they don't care to?) These are very different scenarios. Though, I don't fault you. You're doing roughly hte same as me.
Well, right back at you. This is my point. If you are stating that you can only speak to people who understand and that anyone who does not is a waste of time that speaks volumes for the position you are favouring.
Of course, it may have just been poor wording. Nevertheless am I somehow acting in bad faith by pointing out how one-sided it sounded. I do not think so. We basically understood each other in a discussion here pretty well and it is quite clear to me that you are happy to disagree and you know I am.
Anyway, think we are sort of saying the same thing again and understand each other :D
I can, and maybe will, point out when I think you or anyone else has said something a little one-sided or poorly expressed AND I will consider the fault can be with me too in appreciation of what is said too. This is just me flexing my writing muscles now and hoping to improve so will shut up :D
Whether they(interlocutors) agree is a totally different issue - one which doesn't matter if they clearly don't understand my views. I would be the only person in a position to know whether you have understood them.
Well, the vast majority of the time this is probably true enough for everyone. I am well aware that we can easily hoodwink ourselves too. But yeah, probably, for the most part.
That said, in terms of the wider issue you're point out, given there are three or four usual suspects in this respect, I don't find an issue with my take. I accept lots of people wont like it, and lots of people wont agree or understand. That's how life works.
I do not find an issue with it either as what you seem to say falls on what I coined the "Moral" for the most part. From what Schopenhauer has said in the past too I would say he does too (unless he has changed his views a little since then), so I have no issue with the positions you both hold. I do not agree with them though and neither has put forward a proof because a proof cannot be put forward, only expressed opinions - as is the nature of most of Ethics dealing with obligations.
The strongest argument IMO for antinatalism (AN) seems to be the one from deontological ethics, i.e. that if we are not sure that life will be a good for the future human being, it's ethically questionable to 'take the risk', especially due to the impossibility of any consent from the future human being ('I cannot chose for others'...).
1) My first question is (especially for those who do not beleive in some 'objective ethics'): what is the foundation of ethics for an antinatalist? It seems that in AN there is a very strong ethical component but if 'ethics' is reduced to some kind of social contract or something 'natural', it seems that AN doens't have a strong justification to be 'better' than others.
2) Also, if one accepts that we also have a 'deontological duty' for others, for the whole human community and if one agrees that 'extinction' of humanity is bad for the whole community then it seems that what the 'deontological' argument for AN leads to is not AN itself but an 'ethical dilemma', i.e. we arrive at a situation where we have two contradictory duties, i.e. we shouldn't decide to 'give life' due to the ignorance/lack of certainty of what that will entail (if we assume that life might be bad in some cases) and the impossibility of consent and at the same time we should, among other things, continue to sustain the whole human community. If all of this is true, why antinatalists think that AN is the best choice?
what is the foundation of ethics for an antinatalist?
The ethics are simple self-preservation.
Antinatalism spares you from a future in which you will be making hefty child-support payments for children that you barely see and over whom you have no authority anyway.
Consequently, antinatalism spares you from the absolutely most stupid hobby ever.
In that sense, antinatalism is a naturally emergent property of the country's legal system.
Antinatalism is the 3rd part of the "4 no's" policy as a reaction to the country's legal system:
No civil marriage, no cohabitation, no children, and preferably no sex.
The only way in which the individual can defeat antinatalism consists in physically moving to another jurisdiction. Otherwise, antinatalism is just common sense.
Last night I had a dream that I was back in elementary school and on this day we were taking standardized tests. There was an oppressive seriousness and nervousness about the whole thing, as if 5th graders were sitting for the SAT. On top of this, due to some sort of funding problem the test questions were poorly written and the test booklets included copy errors and print deficiencies, which added a deciphering element to the testing. In the grand scheme of things the whole endeavor was a bit ridiculous, and there was the sense that if one of the 5th graders had started giggling the whole room would have broken out in laughter, popping the bubble of faux seriousness.
This seems reflective of antinatalism. It is Harry Potter exorcising the Boggart with the charge, "Riddikulus!" That is the correct response to Benatar, and the reductio is meant to aid one in seeing it. The entire paradigm is warped and corrupted, and the argument is bizarrely indifferent to the very moral nuances that it ought to be self-consciously attentive to. Such an argument is like a necessitarian Magic 8-Ball with only one response, "Therefore, antinatalism," which response is given regardless of the circumstances.
A lot of this comes back to the wisdom of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. A key to unlocking that text is the idea that the foundation of practical ethics is identifying and emulating the virtuous man. Much of Aristotle text is just drawing out what we already know about the virtuous man, and part of this is the fact that the virtuous man possesses liberality or generousness. When we simply set the generous man alongside the stingy man we know indubitably that the generous man is to be emulated and the stingy man is ridiculous. The virtue of liberality has to do with one's fundamental orientation towards life, and this is inevitably related to one's fundamental orientation towards posterity.
When a child cuts their finger and collapses into hysteria the witty parent will take them in their lap, study the finger carefully and seriously, and then pronounce the judgment, "There's nothing for it. We need to amputate!" The child cannot help but laugh, and in laughing their whole demeanor is changed. The parent's playful humor makes the child generous and overcomes their stinginess and self-centered gravity.
In fact I was recently at my cousin's wedding, and the food at our table was extremely late, arriving about 90 minutes after dinner was supposed to begin. At about 30 minutes into the dinner my nephew received his kid's meal: chicken strips, mac and cheese, and cauliflower. Everyone was gratified to see that at least someone had received their meal, and it looked to be the ideal meal for a hungry toddler. But to everyone's surprise he lost his shit and had a complete meltdown. This caused the whole table to erupt in laughter and festivity. We later learned that his mother had been misinforming him for weeks that the wedding would be wonderful and he would have a delicious meal of chicken strips and French fries - oops! I don't know that he even prefers French fries to mac and cheese, but the expectation threw him. It was a teaching moment for him where he learned that life is bigger than his misplaced French fries, and in time he will learn that life is bigger than many other disappointments, too. As Eichendorff said, "Thou art He who gently breaks about our heads what we build, so that we can see the skytherefore I have no complaint." (The irony here is that children solve the problem of antinatalism, for it is hard to believe that anyone with the task of parenting a child could subscribe to antinatalism.)
It seems that all the opposed are agreed that antinatalism will not be cured by more of the overly serious, self-centered gravity of analytical argument. Such is not its cause and such is not its cure. What the antinatalist lacks is the subtle virtuous demeanor that Aristotle attempts to paint, and such a thing cannot be bought and sold with mere arguments. The cure for the ridiculousness of antinatalism is laughter, for like the child on the parent's lap we cannot help but laugh at the prognosis. You need only join in and we will be laughing with you and not at you. :wink:
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 13:59#9288490 likes
1) My first question is (especially for those who do not beleive in some 'objective ethics'): what is the foundation of ethics for an antinatalist? It seems that in AN there is a very strong ethical component but if 'ethics' is reduced to some kind of social contract or something 'natural', it seems that AN doens't have a strong justification to be 'better' than others.
You'd have to qualify "foundation" but there are MANY foundational ethical frameworks for which AN conclusions have been drawn or at least "fit into", such as deontological ones (which I hold). Many fall under a negative utilitarian variety. Others are vaguely consequential (environmental ones, probably ones least like the ones I hold). One can even argue for a virtue theory version, that can correspond with Schopenhauer's notion of compassion being THE only real moral sentiment (because it sees everyone as what they truly are.. fellow-sufferers). In this theory, anti-procreation would be a natural course of a virtuous (i.e. compassionate) person. They see what befalls man, and wants to prevent it. In this sense, AN can also be philosophical pessimistic in its foundation. That is to say, there is something INHERENTLY negative about existence that makes it fundamentally never redeemable through social, personal, or political actions. This goes to a vaguely existential understanding of the situation.
2) Also, if one accepts that we also have a 'deontological duty' for others, for the whole human community and if one agrees that 'extinction' of humanity is bad for the whole community then it seems that what the 'deontological' argument for AN leads to is not AN itself but an 'ethical dilemma', i.e. we arrive at a situation where we have two contradictory duties, i.e. we shouldn't decide to 'give life' due to the ignorance/lack of certainty of what that will entail (if we assume that life might be bad in some cases) and the impossibility of consent and at the same time we should, among other things, continue to sustain the whole human community. If all of this is true, why antinatalists think that AN is the best choice?
So deontology generally puts the locus of ethics at the individual level (not all the time, but most.. things like rights/duties). To me, the outcome doesn't matter. That is to say, we don't have a duty towards the outcome of "preserving humanity". Humanity isn't a subject for ethical concern. Rather, we have ethical considerations of individuals and their suffering, or right thereof not to be unnecessarily and non-consentingly caused the situations/conditions wherewith (ALL!) suffering takes place. That is not your right to confer for someone else. And there is no symmetrical duties/obligations for creating happiness, especially with understanding that there is no one who exists to be deprived of happiness you would not be thus conferring.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 14:06#9288530 likes
The other problem here is that most 2a's presuppose the falsity of 1a, whereas 2 does not presuppose the falsity of 1. Or in other words, Benatar's argument contains no implicit logical clause, "...Unless the world is situated such that happiness far outweighs suffering for all." That's the very problem with his argument that is being highlighted.
So this is why we shouldn't debate Benatar's full position here without actually having Benatar's full positions available to us. I am not going to defend Benatar with my vague memories of some ideas he had or piecing together from secondary sources. If you want, let's agree to actually obtain a copy of Better Never to Have Been, and we can start looking for how he defends it and critique from there. We would be foolish to make half truths about positions he may not even hold or already addressed and we are ignoring.
Contrariwise, prohibitions against stabbing are premised on pain, injury, and mortality, and therefore the sort of world you suggest logically invalidates the prohibitions (and hence 3a). This is completely different from Benatar's argument, for the case I gave clearly does not invalidate his prohibition. That's why, in a fit of honesty, you told me that the question may need to be reconsidered in light of such new circumstances. So if you want to pull your head out of the sand you will answer the question: What would you say to Benatar in that scenario? Why trust an argument in our world that you would not trust in that world? The argument by its very nature cannot be invalidated by the minimization of suffering, and yet this is what you are committed to.
Same as above. Let's see what Benatar says himself! I think his book actually goes over this and if I remember, he said that the asymmetry didn't necessarily hold on its own, but rather was bolstered by various other asymmetries that needed to also be true to support it, such as psychological phenomenon, etc.
If you want, there seems to be a preview of the audio version here.. I guess this is a good start, but still isn't enough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DuLJMhbzZM
Funny you defend this ghettoizing of the topic of antinatalism (something you vociferously disagree with),
I don't vociferously disagree with it actually. Depending on how "it" is presented. E.g. If someone said to me, "I don't want to have children because the world is a dangerous and corrupted place and I don't want them to suffer", I'd say "makes sense". But as we discussed before, you were creating literally dozens of threads on the same theme, and it is a niche topic, hence this is the solution.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 14:20#9288570 likes
ristotle text is just drawing out what we already know about the virtuous man
This has a lot of unjustified assumptions.. such as, why should virtuous men matter? If you say that because the know how to live a "good life", AN always knows that starting a life for someone else means you have a project for them to follow. But here belies an actual UNVIRTUOUS thing- the forcing of someone else into the burdens of life to live out the project of X (the virtuous man!.. cue marble statue staring into the horizon clutching robe!!). It reeks of an aggressive paternalism and assumption (for someone else), that their negative rights should be violated (and that is indeed part of the debate, is it a violation), because you think "someone living out a virtuous life" is okay to go head and be aggressively paternalistic to allow for a deontological violation to take place.
The Lord of the Rings, obviously, an author and work who would be against my philosophy or antinatalism, however, does have themes that I am getting at. The Ring itself can represent the controlling nature of humans- the ability to want to control people, destiny, the world. Wanting to see X thing from another person, even if it means burdening them is perhaps one of these unconscious factors that we hold. The Ring seems to be a good idea.. it seems to have the answers, but in fact, it is simply the human desire to control things, to see their projects carried out by way of using other people, even their sufferings to make this happen. '
You will claim "NO! LOTR was talking about unrestrained control- like Sauron wanting to enslave everyone!". But there is indeed where the debate lies. "Does procreation represent an aggressive paternalism.. does this too go too far in how we want to control people, even violate ethical principles, to see our project carried out?". And I get the impulse to defend it.. It's the very basis for which our whole society has operated. But perhaps it isn't as unassailable as you might think. And for millennium, as long as there has been societies that had the abilities to reason beyond the tribal unit, there have been lifestyles of ascetics who eschewed the worldly projects. I am not necessarily advocating that, however, but just showing that this difference in notions of established familial traditions exist.
In fact I was recently at my cousin's wedding, and the food at our table was extremely late, arriving about 90 minutes after dinner was supposed to begin. At about 30 minutes into the dinner my nephew received his kid's meal: chicken strips, mac and cheese, and cauliflower. Everyone was gratified to see that at least someone had received their meal, and it looked to be the ideal meal for a hungry toddler. But to everyone's surprise he lost his shit and had a complete meltdown. This caused the whole table to erupt in laughter and festivity. We later learned that his mother had been misinforming him for weeks that the wedding would be wonderful and he would have a delicious meal of chicken strips and French fries - oops! I don't know that he even prefers French fries to mac and cheese, but the expectation threw him. It was a teaching moment for him where he learned that life is bigger than his misplaced French fries, and in time he will learn that life is bigger than many other disappointments, too. As Eichendorff said, "Thou art He who gently breaks about our heads what we build, so that we can see the skytherefore I have no complaint." (The irony here is that children solve the problem of antinatalism, for it is hard to believe that anyone with the task of parenting a child could subscribe to antinatalism.)
It seems that all the opposed are agreed that antinatalism will not be cured by more of the overly serious, self-centered gravity of analytical argument. Such is not its cause and such is not its cure. What the antinatalist lacks is the subtle virtuous demeanor that Aristotle attempts to paint, and such a thing cannot be bought and sold with mere arguments. The cure for the ridiculousness of antinatalism is laughter, for like the child on the parent's lap we cannot help but laugh at the prognosis. You need only join in and we will be laughing with you and not at you. :wink:
Far be it from me to begrudge anyone laughter. But as I indicated with the Lord of the Rings analogy above, there is a bit of a weird aggressive paternalism in the notion that you need to teach someone, and see your project carried out... I have wants and desires, but do I have the right to unnecessarily and non-consentingly burden you with them? Well, no I don't have that right. But somehow a blind eye is seen in the case of procreation because of the romantic notions of learning and virtue of the philosophies you describe here. Don't get me wrong, go have fun.. don't be a dour asshole to your children, but my point is perhaps we may even question the impetus for control and wanting to see projects carried out from others, rather than assume that this is what is right. The doting grandfather laughing at his grandchildren in merriment as they work through the small problems of life gradually being raised to become productive members of society, etc. But what of this? I question this project, its motives, and what we are wanting from other people.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 14:22#9288580 likes
I don't vociferously disagree with it actually. Depending on how "it" is presented. E.g. If someone said to me, "I don't want to have children because the world is a dangerous and corrupted place and I don't want them to suffer", I'd say "makes sense". But as we discussed before, you were creating literally dozens of threads on the same theme, and it is a niche topic, hence this is the solution.
I get that, but how does one differentiate between all the threads of argument dealing with the subject?
That difficulty is the trade-off. 58 pages of continued effort to discuss the issue suggest, that while the context is not ideal, the results have not been fruitless.
only you know if there is anyway to close the rifts in your own family.
Aging can help. I should leave each individual in my family a personal letter they can read when I die and hopefully keep to read again when they are old and enter the purgatory of old age. That time when our lives are behind us and all that is left is the memories and a need to make peace with our lives.
I appreciate my grandmother so much more today than when I was young and rushed away from home to have my own life. I kept in touch with family but lived far from family.
I get that, but how does one differentiate between all the threads of argument dealing with the subject?
Loose one's memory, then each time is the first time and new things can be discovered. I just called old age purgatory but I am also enjoying, thinking, and rethinking things and noticing changes and new awareness. What really matters is if am enjoying the moment.
New people are constantly coming into the arguments and really can't we treat each day as a new day? It really sucks to be enjoying a thread and then reading the subject has already been covered and a grumpy demand that the discussion end. If someone doesn't want to cover the subject again, just stay out of the discussion but there is no reason to ruin everyone else's fun. Especially not a newcomer's first-time experience of the subject. We can not be a part of the past discussions, only the present ones.
Anti-life discussions (personal or otherwise) will be merged below. Please join this discussion rather than starting any new threads on this theme.
That really bites! I usually avoid threads that are too long. I really don't care what all the important people here have to say about anything. If I want to participate in a discussion of something, I want that to be my experience, not your only spoken thoughts. My thoughts and your reaction to them is what makes being here fun. If all I want is knowledge, I will buy a book that is highly recommended and read that. I do not come to forums and look for subjects to read that were closed discussions 5 years ago. If any of you have written books I should read, let me know.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 16:23#9288750 likes
Reply to Athena
I do wish there was a middle ground whereby the AN topic can be cogently discussed in separate threads without "cluttering" the main forum. The only other way would be to banish it to The Lounge, but then that doesn't show up on the main feed, so I'm opposed to that too. I also think, as loathsome as it might be to some sensibilities, it is squarely philosophical (generally in the realm of ethics), and should be discussed robustly and openly in the main forum.
So this is why we shouldn't debate Benatar's full position here without actually having Benatar's full positions available to us.
Whenever we are considering a position on TPF we are considering a determinate and static position. Thus "Benatar's position" within our conversation denotes the argument you attributed to Benatar early in our conversation (link). You used a Wikipedia article and a personal gloss to represent the argument. That is what I am referring to.
Now it seems that you recognize that his argument cannot meet my objection, and the logical thing for you to do is to say, "Okay, I see the problem. I will have to get back to you on this. Maybe I will look at my Benatar books and see if he has anything to say to this."
It is not a legitimate move to say, "No, that objection doesn't count because you haven't read his book(s) on the topic." If we had to read a book on TPF every time we made an argument there would only be a few posts each week. You presented a version of Benatar's argument, I responded to it, and now the onus is on you to respond in your own words. Take your time and review Benatar's books if you like, but don't say that my objection is null because I haven't read a book. Besides, the first you've spoken about his books addressing this objection was yesterday.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 18:45#9289070 likes
Take your time and review Benatar's books if you like, but don't say that my objection is null because I haven't read a book. Besides, the first you've spoken about his books addressing this objection was yesterday.
No bro, you haven't answered my objections and we seem to be at an impasse, as I have answered you about the stabbing that reanimates. That's my answer to it if we are talking about the "statistical approximation of Benatar" and not Benatar himself.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 18:47#9289090 likes
Reply to Leontiskos Also to add, yet again, when I mentioned Benatar, it was to bring up AN (not THE ONE AND ONLY) asymmetry that I then elucidated on, as my take on it. It wasn't to introduce Benatar simpliciter.
as I have answered you about the stabbing that reanimates
No you haven't. You haven't answered <the most recent post> on the so-called "stabbing counterargument." You just pointed to Benatar's book hopefully without engaging any of the points.
Also to add, yet again, when I mentioned Benatar, [...] It wasn't to introduce Benatar simpliciter.
Well it sounds like you were not talking about Benatar simpliciter and I was not talking about Benatar simpliciter. So we can stop talking about Benatar simpliciter and instead talk about the determinate and static argument that we have associated with him.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 19:02#9289130 likes
The other problem here is that most 2a's presuppose the falsity of 1a, whereas 2 does not presuppose the falsity of 1. Or in other words, Benatar's argument contains no implicit logical clause, "...Unless the world is situated such that happiness far outweighs suffering for all." That's the very problem with his argument that is being highlighted.
Contrariwise, prohibitions against stabbing are premised on pain, injury, and mortality, and therefore the sort of world you suggest logically invalidates the prohibitions (and hence 3a). This is completely different from Benatar's argument, for the case I gave clearly does not invalidate his prohibition. That's why, in a fit of honesty, you told me that the question may need to be reconsidered in light of such new circumstances. So if you want to pull your head out of the sand you will answer the question: What would you say to Benatar in that scenario? Why trust an argument in our world that you would not trust in that world? The argument by its very nature cannot be invalidated by the minimization of suffering, and yet this is what you are committed to.
So I said way back that a world where pain was ONLY comprised of a pinprick is NOT OUR WORLD. That is an interesting one, but not this one. I present to you this world is the following, as taken from my profile:
Life has necessary and contingent suffering. Necessary suffering is often considered "Eastern", similar to how Buddhism defines it. That is to say it is a general dissatisfaction stemming from a general lack in what is present. Relief is temporary and unstable. If life was fully positive without this lack, it would be satisfactory without any needs or wants.
Contingent harms are the classic ones people think of. It is the physical harms, the emotional anguish, the annoyances great and small. It is the pandemics, the disasters, the daily grind of a tedious work day. It is the hunger we feel, and the pain of a stubbed toe. It is any negative harm. It is contingent as it is contextual in time/place, and situation. It is based on historical trajectories and situatedness. It is based on the "throwness" (in Existentialism terminology). It varies in individuals in varying amounts and intensity, but happens to everyone nonetheless.
With that being said, does Pinprick World have the necessary suffering in it? Is it the case that ALL contingent harms are reduced to a single pinprick at one instance in time? If so, none of that resembles the NATURE OF SUFFERING as it pertains to this world. Thus, how am I going to compare morality when it is centers on suffering in such a world where suffering is so redefined and the realities of the situation thus so radically different? This world would have no suffering due to feelings of dissatisfaction, lack, boredom. It would have no force social situations like doing tasks and work one would rather not do, or come into contact with anything negative whatsoever. How can I speak to such a world without all that is the reality of the situation when suffering is so redefined into one instance of a pinprick and nothing else?
If so, none of that resembles the NATURE OF SUFFERING as it pertains to this world.
So you have at last provided a shadow of a counter-argument. You are effectively claiming that an equivocation is occurring such that the "pinprick of pain" in premise (1) is an equivocation on the suffering in Benatar's (2). Your argument requires that the pinprick of pain is not a legitimate instance of Benatar's "presence of pain" or the "suffering" that you say one is morally obligated to prevent. You are saying, "Ah, but that pinprick isn't the sort of suffering that Benatar and I think need be prevented." Thus you deny that premises (1) and (2) imply conclusion (3).
Congratulations on finally making a counterargument, though I'm not sure it is a very good one. It certainly opens the can of worms as to which sorts of suffering need to be prevented and which sorts don't, and that is a can of worms that antinatalists take many precautions to keep closed.
1. Suppose every living human being is guaranteed a pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness.
2. [Insert Benatar's antinatalist argument here]
3. Therefore, we should never procreate
I think this is more-or-less the discussion ANs have (and honestly, the one whcih is usually attempted cross-positionally). The type though doesn't seem that interesting - it's the balance (ironic, given apokrisis' objections in the other thrad) between suffering and other considerations. The position is that suffering always wins out
I think this is more-or-less the discussion ANs have
I can't remember who I have all spoken to about antinatalism on this forum (and therefore who has shaped my understanding of it), but I can say that schopenhauer1 has been my primary interlocutor, and that I have not seen him engaging in this discussion of balancing suffering with other considerations. Perhaps there are different approaches than his.
The position of antinatalism? If the position of antinatalism is that suffering always wins out then how could there ever be a balance between suffering and other considerations?
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 21:15#9289420 likes
Congratulations on finally making a counterargument, though I'm not sure it is a very good one. It certainly opens the can of worms as to which sorts of suffering need to be prevented and which sorts don't, and that is a can of worms that antinatalists take many precautions to keep closed.
That is to say, what is the asymmetry about? It's about the following:
3. the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone;
4. the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.
That is to say, the thrust of the argument is the obligations we have towards adding happiness to the world versus adding suffering/harm/pain into the world in the case of non-existent but potential people (that is someone who could exist if X, Y, Z actions are taken). The antinatalist will always say that in the case of future people, we have no obligation to add happiness for them, but ALL the obligation to prevent the harm.
Thus, I generally make sure to qualify the notion that "One should not cause unnecessary suffering unto another if it can be prevented. Why do I add "unnecessary"? Because a "potential future person" (one in consideration of whether it should exist or not), would suffer without any need for this to happen to them. At least in the case of the "procreational decision", we are in a unique vantage point, where we can prevent ANY suffering for another person, by simply not doing something, full stop. After someone is already born into the world, then we must play the game of "mitigation ethics" whereby we now start dealing not in digital but analog whereby we cannot avoid suffering, and in some cases it might be incumbent to cause it to prevent greater harm (e.g. raising children, education, inoculations, all sorts of learning experiences and enculturation). But the idea that one should cause suffering SUCH THAT we can THEN LATER MITIGATE IT (i.e. favoring OUR positive projects over SOMEONE ELSE'S negative ethics), is what is the violation going on here.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 21:16#9289430 likes
The antinatalist will always say that in the case of future people, we have no obligation to add happiness for them, but ALL the obligation to prevent the harm.
Yes, and because of this the "balancing suffering with other considerations" evaporates into thin air and you are placed into the same quandary where you began. If the pinprick is acceptable for posterity in the pinprick world then it cannot be true that one has "all the obligation to prevent the (future) harm," for if one had "all the obligation" in this sense then there could be no balance between suffering and other considerations for posterity.
I think you're overlooking the simple fact that premise (1) was already about posterity. If mitigation and balancing considerations can only be applied to the current generation and not to posterity, then Benatar's argument succumbs once again to the reductio.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 21:31#9289470 likes
I think you're overlooking the simple fact that premise (1) was already about posterity. If mitigation and balancing considerations can only be applied to the current generation and not to posterity, then Benatar's argument succumbs once again to the reductio.
So I am offering two arguments:
1) Suffering in Pinprick World isn't "suffering" as we know it, and thus disqualifies for 2 in the asymmetry.
2) Since there is no one to miss out on the "good", no obligation was intendent on the missed opportunity. In other words, your world could be COMPLETELY all BLISS.. and if you did not create someone into that world, you are still NOT in the wrong by preventing that birth.
2) Since there is no one to miss out on the "good", no obligation was intendent on the missed opportunity. In other words, your world could be COMPLETELY all BLISS.. and if you did not create someone into that world, you are still NOT in the wrong by preventing that birth.
Put differently, "If we omit the pinprick from (1) then (3) does not follow from (2)." I agree and I have not said otherwise.
Because I see apokrisis' objections as apt I see it as inevitable that questions of balance must emerge.
Yep. I don't see them as apt at all given they were responding to me making that point.
It seems like your position is that there must be balance - not "carry out a balancing exercise". That is not reasonable at all, if that;'s the take. And if it's not then you've missed that ANs do the balancing exercise, and suffering tips the scales. Given this is the case across the board in relation to procreation then the exercise has been carried out and the answer is clear. I'm not sure what else you could want? To deny the result of hte exercise (on their account, that is?)
how could there ever be a balance between suffering and other considerations
There is no need for one, unless for some strange metaphysical reason you believe this is hte state of things, arbitrarily. That seemed to be apokrisis' position. I found it funny, and a not just a little silly.
ANs do the balancing exercise, and suffering tips the scales.
Ah, okay, I see what you are saying.
The question then is this: Why does the suffering of the pinprick do nothing to tip the scale?
I see two possible answers. Either the suffering of the pinprick is for some reason not counted as suffering; or else the antinatalist is in fact balancing suffering with some other consideration, in which case suffering does not always tip the scales.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 23:45#9289810 likes
Either the suffering of the pinprick is for some reason not counted as suffering; or else the antinatalist is in fact balancing suffering with some other consideration, in which case suffering does not always tip the scales.
Generally, AN is about suffering AND consent- that is to say, the deontological principles of non-harm and non-autonomy are both broken in regards to procreation. So there is that, and one can go down that line of reasoning as well.
However, keeping it just to suffering, for the sake of this particular argument, the consideration is that there are no people deprived of good and that is not bad. Therefore, in the decision for procreation, at least, the balance is always against causing the violation of the non-harm principle because it was unnecessary to cause to another individual. It is undisputed that, in this actual world, at least there will be suffering, and therefore a state of affairs will occur which violates the principle and someone will suffer. This should be prevented of course.
It is undisputed that in this world, at least there will be suffering
I would say that it is also undisputed that in the pinprick world there will be suffering, at least until you give an actual explanation for why a pinprick does not count as suffering. The prima facie answer is that it does count as suffering.
schopenhauer1August 29, 2024 at 23:51#9289840 likes
I would say that it is also undisputed that in the pinprick world there will be suffering, at least until you give an actual explanation for why a pinprick does not count as suffering.
And I answered you. If you want to attempt again to read it charitably, have a go.
I think this is more-or-less the discussion ANs have (and honestly, the one whcih is usually attempted cross-positionally). The type though doesn't seem that interesting - it's the balance (ironic, given apokrisis' objections in the other thrad) between suffering and other considerations. The position is that suffering always wins out
@schopenhauer1 seems to assume that "other considerations" could only be positive experiences, which I was not assuming.
That said, I don't really understand Amadeus' post here. This is how I read it:
Interpretation:I think the discussion of which sorts of suffering need to be prevented is more or less the discussion that antinatalists have among themselves (and it is also the discussion that others wish to have with antinatalists). The type of suffering doesn't seem that interesting - it's the balance between suffering and other considerations that is interesting. The antinatalist position is that suffering always trumps any other consideration.
You haven't. Getting answers out of you is like pulling teeth. It literally took three months to get a real answer to my reductio, and that was the simplest argument on offer by design. Even then I had to draw out the argument you were intimating. Answers are not forthcoming, and you fall into petitio principii at the drop of a hat. :roll:
Reply to Leontiskos It's certainly possible I'm not quite groking the question, so if this doesn't seem apt - that'll be why lol.
Prima facie, I would say it doesn't tip the scales because other pleasures out weight a pinprick (scratching a decent itch would be enough v a pinprick). But the suffering of life is vastly more intense, prolonged and intractable than a pin prick.
That said, I don't really understand Amadeus' post here. This is how I read it:
Ill try to re-word your interp. to see if it gets you anywhere..
I think the discussion of what level of suffering need be prevented is more or less the discussion that antinatalists have among themselves (and it is also the discussion that others wish to have with antinatalists). The type of suffering doesn't seem that interesting - it's the balance between the "intensity, length and meaningfulness of the suffering" and other considerations* that is interesting. The antinatalist position is that suffering always trumps any other consideration.
As a clarifying point, to me, 'other considerations' could be positive experiences, bare pleasure (in an abstract sense), character-building, the achievement of some life-long goal etc.. etc.. But the problem with all of this is it's speculation. We're only talking about unborn people - in this way, we can see that suffering is ensured (by the journey to Death) but positive experience is not vouchsafed by being born. One could have an all-in-all 'good' life, but that's highly unlikely on the view of the world and life ANs take, and at any rate, the suffering which comes with one's death (ones anxiety, fear etc.. and the pain of those around us) would usually trump that possibly-good life. Only religion can break that loop, and I think that's a poor way to gt around it myself.
schopenhauer1August 30, 2024 at 01:14#9290040 likes
As a clarifying point, to me, 'other considerations' could be positive experiences, bare pleasure (in an abstract sense), character-building, the achievement of some life-long goal etc.. etc.. But the problem with all of this is it's speculation. We're only talking about unborn people - in this way, we can see that suffering is ensured (by the journey to Death) but positive experience is not vouchsafed by being born. One could have an all-in-all 'good' life, but that's highly unlikely on the view of the world and life ANs take, and at any rate, the suffering which comes with one's death (ones anxiety, fear etc.. and the pain of those around us) would usually trump that possibly-good life. Only religion can break that loop, and I think that's a poor way to gt around it myself.
But the idea that one should cause suffering SUCH THAT we can THEN LATER MITIGATE IT (i.e. favoring OUR positive projects over SOMEONE ELSE'S negative ethics), is what is the violation going on here.
Projects is a good word IMO as it captures exactly what is hoped for or tacitly desired- character-building, someone to learn through trial and error, achievement, the goods of life. It need not be bare pleasure. But its the parents positive project, overriding (I want X to happen) over the childs negative ethic (right for non-harm and non-consent to be unnecessarily violated).
Prima facie, I would say it doesn't tip the scales because other pleasures out weight a pinprick (scratching a decent itch would be enough v a pinprick).
Okay, so are you saying that a pinprick (or small amount) of suffering would not suffice for antinatalism? There must be more suffering before the arguments in favor of antinatalism become plausible. Is that right?
But if it is right then it seems like suffering does not always trump any other consideration, for the suffering of the pinprick does not trump the consideration of other pleasures.
Ill try to re-word your interp. to see if it gets you anywhere..
Good, this is my main concern: If suffering always trumps any other consideration, then how is it that the balance between suffering and other considerations constitutes an interesting discussion? How could one be talking about balancing suffering with some other consideration if suffering always outweighs any other consideration?
As a clarifying point, to me, 'other considerations' could be positive experiences, bare pleasure (in an abstract sense), character-building, the achievement of some life-long goal etc.. etc..
Okay. Well at first blush it seems like you may be willing to balance suffering and other considerations in a way that schopenhauer1 is not.
schopenhauer1August 30, 2024 at 01:20#9290060 likes
Okay. Well at first blush it seems like you may be willing to balance suffering and other considerations in a way that schopenhauer1 is not.
As I saw it, he was saying something very similar to me. He was saying those other considerations (not just purely pleasure) matter not against the one consideration that matters- suffering.
There must be more suffering before the arguments in favor of antinatalism become plausible. Is that right?
But if it is right then it seems like suffering does not always trump any other consideration, for the suffering of the pinprick does not trump the consideration of other pleasures.
I think it would clearer to say that "the sum total of suffering ensured by living a human life outweights any version of hte calculus a ANist can provide".
I.e, on our understanding of suffering, pleasure and how to balance them (those terms are obviously lacking nuance) we cannot find a reason to risk the most likely outcome - that one's sum total of suffering vastly out-weights the other considerations in one's life. To bring a person into existence when there is a very high - almost inescapable - chance their life will be, on balance, bad for them, is wrong. (i would think that statement stands to reason - you need not agree, but it explains the position I think).
Being an AN is a result of running the calc, and never coming out with 'life' as the winner. Not that its pre-decided. Obviously, that would be stupid. But if its a 2/98 chance, i'm going to force someone into the race.
If suffering always trumps any other consideration
It only does so once the calc is run. The statement is not meant to be a position of it's own. It's more "I've run this calc 60,000 times and zero came up on the side of procreation". Again, disagree, sure, but it's wrong to take this as a position rather than what causes the position to be taken up.
you may be willing to balance suffering and other considerations in a way that schopenhauer1 is not.
Possibly. Reading down just this page I get the feeling he's just being imprecise in a way that sort of hides what I'm saying about in some more let's say confident language.
schopenhauer1August 30, 2024 at 01:32#9290120 likes
Reply to AmadeusD
Fair enough, slightly different than what I meant but in the ballpark. My way of interpreting the balancing is more deontological I think than your approach which is more perhaps consequential but this just shows the diversity of AN whilst basically agreeing on the same foundation @Leontiskos
It only does so once the calc is run. The statement is not meant to be a position of it's own. It's more "I've run this calc 60,000 times and zero came up on the side of procreation".
And I see this as substantially different from schopenhauer1. This is something like consequentialist antinatalism as opposed to deontological antinatalism, and it does seem more rational and plausible to me. It certainly does not fall victim to the two counterarguments I formulated for schopenhauer1's position.
And I see this as substantially different from schopenhauer1. This is something like consequentialist antinatalism as opposed to deontological antinatalism, and it does seem more rational and plausible to me. It certainly does not fall victim to the two counterarguments I formulated for schopenhauer1's position.
This would I would think fall more into those objections as presumably, some condition of life would simply need it to be 51% good to procreate when you run the calculus. To me thats a limited natalism. Thats actually a weaker/more conservative position than negative utilitarianism. A negative utilitarian would say for example, to cause the least amount of preventable harm the situation, especially because its very doable, unlike post-birth scenarios. I just dont think the aggregate approach is amenable to certain ethics- even NU should be geared towards individuals. Not using people for a great calculus machine aggregating all suffering from everywhere seems to be a good start. [but a calculus for preventing an individuals suffering makes sense].
I like sushiAugust 30, 2024 at 02:28#9290440 likes
I would say that it is also undisputed that in the pinprick world there will be suffering, at least until you give an actual explanation for why a pinprick does not count as suffering. The prima facie answer is that it does count as suffering.
Learning is also a kind of 'suffering' too. The impossibility of clarity for the term 'suffering' makes AN a particular kind of subjective view. Like most items in ethics it is more or less opinion.
Reply to schopenhauer1 Personally, I see that version (deontastic!) as inapt. It essentially says
"there's a risk, so don't" which I can't quite see as a good enough reason not to procreate. The A-symmetry seems to rely on the consequentialist concept, even if the actual justification is more broad (i.e to live is to suffer. We shouldn't cause others to suffer. Don't have kids). I think I see why Leontiskos had a problem with this. It's more-or-less arbitrarily nihilistic. I think the consequentialist description overcomes some objections that are in concept, rather than execution. I wouldn't say life simply is suffering. I would say it is most likely the vast, vast, vast (perhaps 99.85%) of people born will, on balance, suffer more than they enjoy their life. Therefore, the possibility (0.15%) of a life worth living tells us not to create lives, on balance rather than because life is awful prima facie.
And I see this as substantially different from schopenhauer1. This is something like consequentialist antinatalism as opposed to deontological antinatalism, and it does seem more rational and plausible to me. It certainly does not fall victim to the two counterarguments I formulated for schopenhauer1's position.
This would I would think fall more into those objections...
Nah. Note, for example, that the reductio objection that we have been considering recently simply has no force at all against Amadeus' position. Amadeus' position does not support the conclusion (3) as Benatar's does.
This also conveniently shows that the objection is not ad hoc, it is not superfluous, and it does not prove too much. Instead it is tailor-fit to your own account in a way that does not necessarily fit alternative antinatalist accounts.
You'd have to qualify "foundation" but there are MANY foundational ethical frameworks for which AN conclusions have been drawn or at least "fit into", such as deontological ones (which I hold). Many fall under a negative utilitarian variety. Others are vaguely consequential (environmental ones, probably ones least like the ones I hold). One can even argue for a virtue theory version, that can correspond with Schopenhauer's notion of compassion being THE only real moral sentiment (because it sees everyone as what they truly are.. fellow-sufferers). In this theory, anti-procreation would be a natural course of a virtuous (i.e. compassionate) person. They see what befalls man, and wants to prevent it. In this sense, AN can also be philosophical pessimistic in its foundation. That is to say, there is something INHERENTLY negative about existence that makes it fundamentally never redeemable through social, personal, or political actions. This goes to a vaguely existential understanding of the situation.
Well, I see what you mean, but AN makes the claim that 'giving birth is intrinsically bad'. This is an ethical evaluation and quite clearly is incompatible with a 'subjectivist' view of ethics, for instance. Viirtue ethics is probably the best 'foundation' of ethics in general. We might assume that, say, a good action is both good for the recipient of the action and for the agent himself/herself. So, yes, compassion is a good ground for ethics and I agree with Schopenhauer.
It's also compatible IMO with a 'deontological' view: being compassionate is also a duty to both oneself and to others - one should/must seek the good for oneself and others.
'Giving birth' is tricky here because the 'human being' doesn't exist (unless one believes in some kind of existence before birth*, but let's assume that this is not the case). Let's say that we cannot know the 'final outcome'** of the future person life (i.e. if that individual will be satisfied with life or irreversibily unhappy), in this case, clearly we must admit that, after all, we can't say that 'giving birth' is a good act. In this sense I agree with the antinatalists. However, I am not sure if 'giving birth' qualifies as a 'bad' act, even when one considers the future individual.
So deontology generally puts the locus of ethics at the individual level (not all the time, but most.. things like rights/duties). To me, the outcome doesn't matter. That is to say, we don't have a duty towards the outcome of "preserving humanity". Humanity isn't a subject for ethical concern. Rather, we have ethical considerations of individuals and their suffering, or right thereof not to be unnecessarily and non-consentingly caused the situations/conditions wherewith (ALL!) suffering takes place. That is not your right to confer for someone else. And there is no symmetrical duties/obligations for creating happiness, especially with understanding that there is no one who exists to be deprived of happiness you would not be thus conferring.
Probably, 'deontological' was the wrong word. I believe, however, that ethics itself is intrinsically social. Ethical agency doens't seem to me to make sense without a community. In other words, if, say, 'I act in order to bring the good to myself and to others', then I cannot 'ignore' the presently existent human beings and the human community in general. If one accepts that seeking the 'good' is also a social 'enterprise', then trying to preserve society seems, after all, a 'good' act. If one believes that, clearly there is a contrast with AN.
*For instance, Hindu, Jain and Buddhists believers in reincarnation/rebirth see the 'birth as a human' as something good, precisely because it gives the chance to get better rebirths and liberation. So, if this belief were true, then antinatalism would be wrong.
**As in the other thread, if one believes (as say Christian universalists) that in the 'end' 'all will be well', then of course IMO life would be good for everyone (ultimately).
Well, not sure of your point. If, say, one has no economical problems, would you still think that 'giving birth' is morally wrong?
Also, generally antinatalists argue that 'giving birth' is wrong becuase it is a choice that affects others (in unknown ways) not becuase it undermines our 'self-preservation'. At best your argument is for a personal choice of not giving birth.
Well, not sure of your point. If, say, one has no economical problems, would you still think that 'giving birth' is morally wrong?
It is not about economic problems but legal ones. You are very likely to end up at some point becoming the noncustodial parent of the child. That is a stupid hobby.
Above a certain national divorce rate, it looks like a bad decision to have children with a person of that particular nationality:
It is preferable to pick a country with a much lower divorce rate, choose a romantic interest there, and have children there instead.
I ruthlessly discriminate against anybody from a high divorce rate country. So, yes, I consider it to be morally wrong to have children with these people. Better safe than sorry.
schopenhauer1August 30, 2024 at 09:13#9290910 likes
Nah. Note, for example, that the reductio objection that we have been considering recently simply has no force at all against Amadeus' position. Amadeus' position does not support the conclusion (3) as Benatar's does.
What are you talking about? Its either effectively the same (a threshold needs to be met, but empirically, this seems to never be the case..and this always wrong de facto) or its premises are wrong (that the threshold is met or can at some point be met).
Also your non sequitur tying 3 has no support. If the threshold is never met, 3 effectively always stands (its good no one suffers..as the threshold represents suffers here or pain). True its not as digital as deontology, but the aggregate amount of too much pain that this life holds seems to be his definition of suffering.
But this isn't an argument for antinatalism. Antinatalism is the view that is morally wrong to give birth. You are merely saying that in some circustances one might choose to not have children.
I would say it is most likely the vast, vast, vast (perhaps 99.85%) of people born will, on balance, suffer more than they enjoy their life.
Why not check rather than pulling numbers out your arse?
Two thirds of adults globally (64%) report being happy: 14% very much so and 50% rather so. Countries with the highest proportion of adults considering themselves as very happy are Canada (29%), Australia, Saudi Arabia and India (28% each), Great Britain and the United States (27% each).
schopenhauer1August 30, 2024 at 14:51#9291390 likes
Reply to apokrisis Can I do anything I want to you based on percentages, or do you have a right to not be so callously violated, disregarding your autonomy and the principle of non-harm? That's also why I bring in the idea of "unnecessary suffering." There was no mitigationif you're going to spin it in some political aggregate way, that government force X, or parents force X. In this decision, no mitigation was needed because it was completely unnecessary to cause the harm in the first place. And obviously, even if you try to give me parenting/government examples, I can just give you slippery slope arguments about causing harm that statistically has positive outcomes but violates individual non-harm and autonomy principles.
Down The Rabbit HoleAugust 30, 2024 at 15:42#9291530 likes
This average happiness is potentially overshadowed by life's inevitable suffering - "Nearly 1 in 2 people born in the UK in 1961 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime", "12.7% of all deaths registered in the UK in 2018 were from dementia and Alzheimer disease".
What are you talking about? Its either effectively the same (a threshold needs to be met...
What are you talking about? The reductio objection has nothing at all to do with a threshold, and that is the problem. For Benatar's argument even a pinprick suffices to trigger antinatalismad hoc counterarguments aside. The objection requires only the presence of suffering, not a threshold. The whole premise of the objection is that Benatar's argument absurdly greenlights antinatalism even when suffering is outstripped by happiness by 1,000 miles.
Amadeus rightly notes that any position which assumes antinatalism before considering the balance between suffering and other considerations "would be stupid":
Being an AN is a result of running the calc, and never coming out with 'life' as the winner. Not that its pre-decided. Obviously, that would be stupid.
His key distinction is between suffering trumping other considerations before a balance-analysis, and suffering outweighing other considerations after a balance-analysis. The deontological antinatalist is committed to the former, which Amadeus disagrees with.
This average happiness is potentially overshadowed by life's inevitable suffering - "Nearly 1 in 2 people born in the UK in 1961 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime"
Apokrisis' statistic already included such folks. It was baked in.
The consequentialist antinatalist apparently thinks that if we polled everyone on their deathbed and asked them if life was worth living or they wished they had never been born, the vast majority* would wish they had never been born.
* For Amadeus this is something like "99.85%"
Down The Rabbit HoleAugust 30, 2024 at 17:36#9291820 likes
Your second paragraph suggests you understand what I was getting at. Of those polled only a fraction would have been people experiencing the suffering at the end of life.
99.85% does seem rather high, but I don't think it unreasonable to determine the majority of people have net bad lives.
Amadeus rightly notes that any position which assumes antinatalism before considering the balance between suffering and other considerations "would be stupid":
But then thinking that nothing in this actual world does or ever will meet that threshold, effectively makes this a nonissue.
The deontological antinatalist is committed to the former, which Amadeus disagrees with.
I am fine with that. But I gave my thoughts on pinprick world. Its either not suffering as we normally define it, or indeed, since no one is obligated to bring happiness only prevent suffering in this instance, it can be defended. Why would it matter if no one existed in the first place? The problem is using Benatar as if hes purely doing hedonic calculus and not explaining the difference of good and bad in respect to non-existence. Not existing hurts no actual person, only existing does.
Either way, Benatar goes out of the way tgat even if you dont bite the bullet in pinprick scenario, THIS world is not that world hence he has a litany of follow-up empirical evidence of how we are often mistaken psychologically and empirically just how bad it is in regards to present pain and pain reflected or projected.
Down The Rabbit HoleAugust 30, 2024 at 21:18#9292150 likes
If you are talking about a poll like the one that showed 64% happy - 36% unhappy, ostensibly, the percentage of people that would rather they had never been born would be lower than the unhappy 36%, when considering things like unhappy people that prefer to have been born "otherwise they wouldn't have had their children" etc.
My same objection to the happiness poll would apply to the birth preference one though. I don't know how many of those suffering at end of life wish they had never been born.
Further, I would rather prevent a life of suffering in spite of a future person's preference. There are many people that hurt themselves, and society determines it just to thwart their preference.
99.85% does seem rather high, but I don't think it unreasonable to determine the majority of people have net bad lives.
The case against antinatalism is not about its logic. That is all too easy to dismiss. It is about people confirming themselves in the social role of being victims of life itself. It is about the nonsense of forming a communal identity around a justification for not feeling better about their world.
Suffering can't be avoided so one can't be criticised for not even trying.
This thought used to be framed as existentialism and nihilism. Now it is framed in this really bullshit legalism of existence being an unconsented fact. Of no person having a right to impose a burden on another.
Systems of laws arise out of the need to organise successful human communities and not the other way around. If you think there is a problem, changing the system is what you should strive for.
But systems of laws recognise rights and responsibilities. They are based on a pragmatic balance between individual wants and communal needs. Burdens will be imposed. All that is asked is that they are reasonable.
"Nearly 1 in 2 people born in the UK in 1961 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime", "12.7% of all deaths registered in the UK in 2018 were from dementia and Alzheimer disease".
In modern society, what are we truly the victim of? The industrial food industry. Big pharma. The banking industry. The atomising effects of neo-liberal economics and social policy.
If you live a healthy life, the odds of metabolic diseases are greatly cut. We can live in ways that avoid cancer and dementia. But also a lot of that is down to the fact we now all live so long.
What are the actual death bed regrets of people? They are about not doing more to be part of a personally meaningful community. About not getting out and living life more.
So from a moral philosophy point of view, there are some real issues to be addressed. The modern world has many pluses compared to other times, but also plenty of questionable economic and political settings.
You know something has to be out of balance when most folk are more familiar with Kim Kardashian's intimate life than they are with their next door neighbour's.
In this context life as something to be lived antinatalism is just whiny bullshit. A wet legalistic self-justification.
Sure, the decision to be a parent ought to be taken with a clear-eyed view of the risk/reward balance. Studies show that 10% of parents in developed countries wished their kids had never been born. :grin:
But taking a rational view of life is the habit we would want to encourage. People who can cope with balancing complex risk/reward decisions and so likely to make the best of their lives as well as of their communities.
Fire OlogistAugust 31, 2024 at 01:32#9292490 likes
Ethical agency doens't seem to me to make sense without a community. In other words, if, say, 'I act in order to bring the good to myself and to others', then I cannot 'ignore' the presently existent human beings and the human community in general.
I agree with that. Ethics is born, or created, in between, or out of, two or more people.
To me, the outcome doesn't matter. That is to say, we don't have a duty towards the outcome of "preserving humanity". Humanity isn't a subject for ethical concern.
In my view, saying ethics is to call up a community, such as humanity. So it doesnt make sense (to me) to talk about AN without talking about both humanity and the individual; otherwise we arent doing ethics (or even psychology).
Humanity can be limited to all of those humans alive now, but this humanity is where any ethic is inflicted upon the universe. This ethics only emerges among humans (at least emerges as a topic of discussion only humans currently call ethics).
We, here on this thread, are building an ethical discussion. This is where ethics lives. Both within each individual as you read, and among us now exchanging these words of ethical wisdom.
Ethics itself, like this thread, is particular to humans, and out of this, the ANist shows that consent and suffering are paramount considerations, and out of these that we (humanity as each individual) must not procreate.
I still find AN difficult to fully grasp in its use of ethical reasoning to promote a world bereft of ethical reasoning, a world bereft of human procreation (humans being the creatures who use ethical reasoning as a thing).
I agree we are broken. I agree suffering is unavoidable and ubiquitous. And I agree compasssion is essential to ethics, a good, a virtue to be cultivated. And I agree it is good not to inflict suffering without consent. But I dont see anything reasonable about eliminating the infliction of suffering by eliminating the ethics and compassion (along with the human species) that show us suffering is something to be compassionate about in the first place. It makes ethics itself potentially unethical, or non-sensical. It is either suicidal or nihilistic, not simply good anymore as good is no longer good.
When we end human procreation, we end the existence of compassion in the same universe that led us to be ethical and not procreate in the first place.
Its like this: we all get together write a rule down and all sign it with full consent and the rule is all of those who make rules must not procreate. There need be no good in the rule or reason why the rule is written, because all good and reason will cease to provide account of anything at all where all those who make rules do not procreate.
I like sushiAugust 31, 2024 at 02:05#9292550 likes
Reply to Down The Rabbit Hole Anyone actually bothering to take such a poll must be bored. It is surprising that that many say they are happy :D
I like sushiAugust 31, 2024 at 02:08#9292570 likes
@Leontiskos You might want to quiz them regarding their views on their views becoming legally binding or not. You will probably find another disparity there.
I agree with that. Ethics is born, or created, in between, or out of, two or more people.
Right. Also IMO human beings are, so to speak, essentially social. Ethics, in particular, seems to me based on how an individual relates to other individuals. Making an ethical claim by 'abstracting' oneself or another person from the social context seems to me a contradiction.
BTW, I don't think that we must have kids. But I think that the antinatalist ethical 'prohibition' to have kids is wrong. One can choose to not have kids and making arguments for that choices, sure. But saying that it is always ethically wrong to give birth is a different matter.
I see the consequentialist antinatalist rationale as something like this:
1. If we polled everyone on their deathbed, X% would wish they had never been born
2. Therefore, X% of potential future persons would not want to be born
3. Therefore, we should not give birth to new human beings
Further, I would rather prevent a life of suffering in spite of a future person's preference. There are many people that hurt themselves, and society determines it just to thwart their preference.
You seem to be saying, "It looks like X isn't going to be high enough to justify (3), therefore we can't give them a choice." This is a bit like the father at the theme park who reasons, "My daughter wants to go on this ride, and if she goes on it she will probably enjoy it, so I can't let her go on it." This is reminiscent of the "paternalism" that schopenhauer1 claims to oppose.
My same objection to the happiness poll would apply to the birth preference one though. I don't know how many of those suffering at end of life wish they had never been born.
The consequentialist antinatalist apparently thinks that if we polled everyone on their deathbed and asked them if life was worth living or they wished they had never been born, the vast majority* would wish they had never been born.
It certainly opens the can of worms as to which sorts of suffering need to be prevented and which sorts don't, and that is a can of worms that antinatalists take many precautions to keep closed.
The problem is using Benatar as if hes purely doing hedonic calculus
Again, there is nothing about balancing or hedonic calculus involved in the objection. At this point your reading comprehension is coming into question.
What would you say to Benatar in that scenario? Why trust an argument in our world that you would not trust in that world? The argument by its very nature cannot be invalidated by the minimization of suffering, and yet this is what you are committed to.
The point can be rephrased in any number of ways. "The woman learns that any children she has will inherit her extremely painful disease. Should she bear children?" "The antinatalist learns that any child she has will experience a pinprick of pain. Is this sufficient to exclude children?" To be blunt, the idea here is that your argument is stupid because it justifies stupid decisions. It makes no sense to say, "Ah well the advice does justify stupid decisions, but it is still good and reasonable advice."
he has a litany of follow-up empirical evidence of how we are often mistaken psychologically and empirically just how bad it is in regards to present pain and pain reflected or projected.
...and paternalistic gaslighting is the icing on the cake. "Humans think life is good even in spite of the pain, but they're wrong so we're going to exterminate the race through lack of births." What is the difference between this and genocidal insanity?
schopenhauer1August 31, 2024 at 21:49#9293990 likes
Pain isn't suffering? This is ad hoc, and it brings with it more problems:
It certainly opens the can of worms as to which sorts of suffering need to be prevented and which sorts don't, and that is a can of worms that antinatalists take many precautions to keep closed.
Pain vs. Suffering certainly does bring on debate. Does a pinprick followed by no other suffering (necessary or contingent) count as suffering? Well, interestingly, one can argue that the pinprick being the ONLY version of suffering, as the mark-for-what-suffering-is revolves solely on that, might be considered the worst thing ever because it literally is in that world. So, perhaps from the perspective of Pinprick World, this threshold itself would be suffering, and thus indefensible to enact upon on another.
Of course I can cut all this short and just go with my #2 response which is that people should not be unnecessarily harmed and non-consented under any circumstance. Nothing wrong with that. And you can make a whole incredulous response to this, but then you never really addressed how it is that non-existence hurts anyone.
But, even if that sort of response seems off to you because it is so rigid, all you need is as I said, that the "Threshold never reaches the level of pinprick world". And you may say that a future point would lead there, but then you are using people in the meantime to get there- and indeed, it would be generations to get there. Notice, you can say two pinpricks, three... and increase it, but even if you were to increase it by a factor of 100s but still less suffering than our world, that isn't currently our world, and using people to get there would nullify it.
The point can be rephrased in any number of ways. "The woman learns that any children she has will inherit her extremely painful disease. Should she bear children?" "The antinatalist learns that any child she has will experience a pinprick of pain. Is this sufficient to exclude children?" To be blunt, the idea here is that your argument is stupid because it justifies stupid decisions. It makes no sense to say, "Ah well the advice does justify stupid decisions, but it is still good and reasonable advice."
No you are assuming some baseline "common sense" sensibility beyond the violation. This just Kant-objections redux. There's a reason why 1st degree murder and 2nd degree and 3rd degree murder is considered murder yet have different blameworthiness/punishment aspects to them. There's a difference between murder and manslaughter as well. So is pinprick world akin to manslaughter as opposed to murder? Perhaps, the situation might be "wrong" in some very abstract sense, but there can be allowed degrees of it. In your world, which is a ridiculous reduction. For example, in your world there is no gambling with lives aspect, whereby there can be varying amounts of pains and pleasures. It's all the same amount of pain and all the same outcomes. That drastically changes how that world operates compared to ours. Yet you claim that it's a "reductio" rather than being so irrevocably different that they count as different kinds, not just degrees. I am pushing back on that. At some point, for example, murder is no longer murder, though someone might have died, and someone was involved.
...and paternalistic gaslighting is the icing on the cake. "Humans think life is good even in spite of the pain, but they're wrong so we're going to exterminate the race through lack of births." What is the difference between this and genocidal insanity?
Yeah this is certainly strawmanning the argument to a laughable level. "We are going to exterminate the through lack of births..." sounds like the goal of AN is to exterminate the race rather than prevent a violation of suffering/non-consent.
I can think of my own thought experiments for you here:
I have a game that I think is worthwhile for other people to play. I enter you into the game without your consent. In the game, you may have good moments, but there are also some tragic ones, harmful ones, and throughout the game, you are put through a lots of negative experiences. In order to escape the game, the person can only kill themselves. They are in it permanently. Are you justified to put someone through that game because you think it is good for them?
schopenhauer1August 31, 2024 at 21:55#9294000 likes
Systems of laws arise out of the need to organise successful human communities and not the other way around. If you think there is a problem, changing the system is what you should strive for.
But systems of laws recognise rights and responsibilities. They are based on a pragmatic balance between individual wants and communal needs. Burdens will be imposed. All that is asked is that they are reasonable.
It might be this assumed stance that I most vehemently reject as being moral. It is circular reasoning. Why should burdens be imposed? You will use your systems theory to justify it. However, being that we are counterfactual-acting creatures, we could always choose not to burden someone, so the system itself can produce people that can choose the counterfactual than what you claim the "system" wants to have happen. Yet, hypothetically, all people could choose to not procreate. What you are tacitly suggesting is that there is some instinct or logos, or necessary aspect to procreation. But with deliberative creatures, there is no necessity to procreation. Thus, saying that "Burdens WILL be imposed" is just wrong. Burdens NEED NOT BE imposed.
schopenhauer1August 31, 2024 at 22:02#9294010 likes
Probably, 'deontological' was the wrong word. I believe, however, that ethics itself is intrinsically social. Ethical agency doens't seem to me to make sense without a community. In other words, if, say, 'I act in order to bring the good to myself and to others', then I cannot 'ignore' the presently existent human beings and the human community in general. If one accepts that seeking the 'good' is also a social 'enterprise', then trying to preserve society seems, after all, a 'good' act. If one believes that, clearly there is a contrast with AN.
No, "society" doesn't suffer, individuals with POVs do. I make a distinction between mitigation ethics and preventative ethics. Once born, we are in mitigation ethics mode where indeed, we may have to trade greater harms for lesser harms. Uniquely for the procreational decision, we can be in preventative ethics, where absolutely/purely we can make a decision to prevent ALL harm to a future person whereby no drawback (lesser harm) is had for that person. No ONE is deprived. And ANs generally all agree that (unlike your definition of ethics), positive ethics (other people's projects.. like continuing humanity, wanting to take care of a new person, etc.), should not override individuals' negative ethics (rights not to be harmed, non-consented).
Edit: Notice also the pyramid scheme aspect to this. By society existing, it becomes self-perpetuating as you can throw another person in the fray, burden them, cause them to eventually deal with life/suffering, and you can always justify it by saying, "If we don't sacrifice the rights of individuals not to suffer, our society will collapse!". And this to me, is just a justification for doing harm, not an actual answer to the problem that exists.
schopenhauer1August 31, 2024 at 22:07#9294020 likes
I agree we are broken. I agree suffering is unavoidable and ubiquitous. And I agree compasssion is essential to ethics, a good, a virtue to be cultivated. And I agree it is good not to inflict suffering without consent. But I dont see anything reasonable about eliminating the infliction of suffering by eliminating the ethics and compassion (along with the human species) that show us suffering is something to be compassionate about in the first place. It makes ethics itself potentially unethical, or non-sensical. It is either suicidal or nihilistic, not simply good anymore as good is no longer good.
When we end human procreation, we end the existence of compassion in the same universe that led us to be ethical and not procreate in the first place.
Its like this: we all get together write a rule down and all sign it with full consent and the rule is all of those who make rules must not procreate. There need be no good in the rule or reason why the rule is written, because all good and reason will cease to provide account of anything at all where all those who make rules do not procreate.
Again, this doesn't make sense to me, as we discussed in earlier discussions. Ethics only exist because humans exist. Once there are no more humans, ethics need not exist. We don't exist SO THAT ethics can persist, but rather ethics exists because humans exist.
Down The Rabbit HoleAugust 31, 2024 at 22:17#9294060 likes
You seem to be saying, "It looks like X isn't going to be high enough to justify (3), therefore we can't give them a choice." This is a bit like the father at the theme park who reasons, "My daughter wants to go on this ride, and if she goes on it she will probably enjoy it, so I can't let her go on it." This is reminiscent of the "paternalism" that schopenhauer1 claims to oppose.
No, I'm not convinced that the majority of people end up preferring they had been born. On top of the people that already wish they had never been born you have those suffering at the end of life wishing they had never been born.
Considering my view that most people are likely to live net bad lives, it would be more like the daughter wanting to go on the ride (after eating lots of candyfloss), and if you let her go on it will make her sick.
It would actually be worse than this, you would be putting her on the ride and making her sick before she even had a preference on it. @schopenhauer1 was the master of these thought experiments. Forcing people onto rides, Willy Wonka World etc :smile:
schopenhauer1August 31, 2024 at 22:28#9294080 likes
schopenhauer1:Let's say I am Willy Wonka..
I have created this world and will force others to enter it... My only rule is people have the options of either working at various occupations which I have lovingly created many varieties of, free-riding (which can only be done by a few and has to be done selectively lest one get caught, it is also considered no good in this world), or living day-to-day homelessly. The last option is a suicide pill if people don't like the arrangement. Is Willy Wonka moral? I mean he is giving many options for work, and even allowing you to test your luck at homelessness and free riding. Also, hey if you don't want to be in his arrangement, you can always kill yourself! See how beneficial and good I am to all my contestants?
There are lots of ways to feel strife and anxiety in my world.. There is generalized boredom, there are pressures from coworkers, there is pressure of joblessness, there are pressures of disease, disasters, mental illness, annoyances, malicious acts, accidents, and so much more that I have built into the world..
I have also created many people who will encourage everyone to also find my world loving so as to not have too many dropouts.
schopenhauer1August 31, 2024 at 22:30#9294090 likes
I like sushiSeptember 01, 2024 at 02:26#9294450 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 So ethics is just a matter of opinion. Moral Scepticism. Which begs the question what kind of moral sceptic are you? If you are not then your position is contrary as you believe ethics is a human thing not an universal thing.
apokrisisSeptember 01, 2024 at 03:00#9294490 likes
It is the dialectical reasoning of the systems science view. The complexity of a system arises from the fruitful balancing of its contrary impulses. Rights and responsibilities are one such way of capturing the essence of modern social structure.
I only used your emotive jargon - burdens - to make the connection to your own reductionist position. You can see that burdens are really just the global responsibilities that can justify a person also having their particular local rights.
Speaking more generically, a system is a hierarchical balance of the dichotomy that is constraints and freedoms.
So at every level of natural order, we have the same general idea of a balancing of top-down long-run constraints and bottom-up constructive or creative freedoms.
What you call burdens are in fact the constraints that shape up a society as a collection of individuals with their freedoms. The freedoms that are meaningful and pragmatic as they are how the society can continually renew its own globally persisting being.
But you dont seem to have an understanding of nature as a developmental or self-organising system. This is why your logic is so broken.
boundlessSeptember 01, 2024 at 09:52#9294850 likes
No, "society" doesn't suffer, individuals with POVs do. I make a distinction between mitigation ethics and preventative ethics. Once born, we are in mitigation ethics mode where indeed, we may have to trade greater harms for lesser harms. Uniquely for the procreational decision, we can be in preventative ethics, where absolutely/purely we can make a decision to prevent ALL harm to a future person whereby no drawback (lesser harm) is had for that person. No ONE is deprived. And ANs generally all agree that (unlike your definition of ethics), positive ethics (other people's projects.. like continuing humanity, wanting to take care of a new person, etc.), should not override individuals' negative ethics (rights not to be harmed, non-consented).
I agree that 'society' doesn't suffer but individuals do. And I also agree that we should avoid to cause unnecessary suffering, especially when there is no possibility of consent. 'Not intentionally causing unnecessary harm' seems to be a 'regulative ideal' that we should follow.
And yet, I think that as an ethical duty, if you want, we also have a moral obligation to act for the benefit of others. In fact, I think we should act with the benefit of everyone in sight, although of course we cannot directly benefit to everyone due to our finitude - hence I see this as a 'regulative ideal'. The fact that ethics seems to work only when a community of ethical agents is present seems to me that this second regulative ideal is necessary.
It seems to me that these two 'ideals' give us an ethical dilemma, if we accept both as ethical regulative ideals. Of course, if we give the prominence to the first one, it seems that, unless one holds to some kind of religious/metaphysical beliefs, antinatalism would be right. I'm not convinced, however, that the second 'ideal' is 'lesser' than the first. So, it seems to me that antinatalism isn't the 'best' ethical position for both the 'single individual' and 'all individuals'. I would like to find a way to avoid giving 'prominence' to one ideal over the other. But I admit that at least until now, I never found a solution.
Fire OlogistSeptember 03, 2024 at 15:30#9297900 likes
We don't exist SO THAT ethics can persist, but rather ethics exists because humans exist.
I agree - we dont exist for ethics.
But AN is the ethical system that places the ethics above the humans.
For the ANist, the ethical principal is a higher good than the agent, because the ANist is willing to destroy the possibility of all future ethical agents for sake of upholding its ethical principal.
But if ethics tells me ethics should not exist, why would I think I should be ethical?
I exist, then ethics exists. If the ethics exists because of me, but this ethics tells me I should not exist, then the ethics should not exist either. So what is wrong about inflicting suffering without consent again? I was wrong to exist then so is my ethics wrong to exist. So why do a fabricate this whole ethical dilemma? Why not let the Forrest fire burn, the earthquake crumble, the storm drown, and the human procreate? Why not, if our ethics is nothing and for nothing?
The AN position upholds ethics above the ethical agent, in order to eliminate the agent and so eliminate the ethics.
That is what makes no sense to me.
There is nothing good about being ethical in a world that should not have ethics in it because it should not have humans in it.
schopenhauer1September 03, 2024 at 15:51#9297930 likes
But AN is the ethical system that places the ethics above the humans.
I'm not sure how you get this. Placing ethics before humans would be the opposite. For example, some forms of utilitarianism would have it that you should violate people's basic rights if it helps the greater community. One example might be, having a set of people secretly tested for scientific experiments without consent (this did happen to a group of Tuskegee Airmen in the American South, for example) .. But there are many many examples of this kind of thinking.
For the ANist, the ethical principal is a higher good than the agent, because the ANist is willing to destroy the possibility of all future ethical agents for sake of upholding its ethical principal.
So this fails to be an example of "placing ethics above the human", as "the possibility of all future ethical agents" is not an actual human, but a reified concept (the possibility of a human). Quite the opposite, whereas creating suffering because we prefer to keep "Humanity and civilization going" would be using real people for an ethical principle (i.e. some positive project such as "humanity and civilization"), AN is actually ABOUT preventing suffering and non-consent of an ethical agent who will so be affected by that.
I exist, then ethics exists. If the ethics exists because of me, but this ethics tells me I should not exist, then the ethics should not exist either. So what is wrong about inflicting suffering without consent again? I was wrong to exist then so is my ethics wrong to exist. So why do a fabricate this whole ethical dilemma? Why not let the Forrest fire burn, the earthquake crumble, the storm drown, and the human procreate? Why not, if our ethics is nothing and for nothing?
Your conclusion does not follow at all from the premise. The ethics isn't "You should not exist". Rather, the ethic is, "Do not cause unnecessary harm". All else you are saying is thus misguided and confused. Once you exist, it is incumbent to not cause unnecessary harm. The purest form of this is in the procreational decision which can prevent ALL harm with no cost to an actual person, and thus, to follow this ethic, at least in its purest action, would be to not procreate.
The AN position upholds ethics above the ethical agent, in order to eliminate the agent and so eliminate the ethics.
Your first part is wrong as I've explained above. The ethics is not "above the agent". Rather, the ethics is incumbent on humans that already exist to follow in regards to future ethical agents (by preventing a future person's birth). The principle is all about how we are NOT to treat a (possible) ethical agent from the perspective of one who already exists.
There is nothing good about being ethical in a world that should not have ethics in it because it should not have humans in it.
This actually makes no sense. If humans exist, ethics towards other agents exist. If humans don't exist, this ethic is no longer needed. No humans = no ethics. If there are humans, then the ethic (of not procreating) remains.
Fire OlogistSeptember 03, 2024 at 16:59#9298010 likes
the possibility of all future ethical agents" is not an actual human, but a reified concept
And the concept of "no consent" and the concept of "inflicted suffering on another" and the concepts of "good" and "ethics" are reified concepts. Not actual humans. No difference.
Rather, the ethics is incumbent on humans that already exist to follow in regards to future ethical agents.
You can't discard my reference to "the possibility of future ethical agents" as a mere reified concept, and then say ethics is incumbent on current people "in regards to future ethical agents."
This is the problem with the logic. You need certain things be in place as premises and principals, in order to demonstrate a world where none of these premises or principals need exist.
You need human civilization to exist for any human preference to exist at all. The ANist is using a preference to base a conclusion that preferences should not exist. If preferences should not exist, why prefer not to inflict harm? Unless you uphold the principal over the person.
Rather, the ethic is, "Do not cause unnecessary harm".
There is more to ethics than principles. Ethical principles are calls to action, prescriptions for behavior impacting other ethical agents - they are guides for physical, actual behavior in a society. AN ethical behavior based on principals (do not cause harm; procreation causes harm without consent) is for the sake and goal of eliminating all ethical action by eliminating all ethical actors. On principle, the ANist doesn't want any creatures that would have or construct principals to exist at all. On principle, principles should not drive action. That makes no sense.
So I ask, why would we use ethical principles (don't inflict harm) to make the world better if that better world doesn't need or have any ethical principals in it (because no ethical agents)? Why would I think it is good to follow any ethical principal that had the goal of building a society that had no need or place for ethics?
Rather, the ethics is incumbent on humans that already exist to follow in regards to future ethical agents.
What drives the notion "ethics is incumbent"? Why would you say that? We choose our ethics just as we choose our actions according to our ethics. If choosing and choosing ethically are so good they are "incumbent", why would we destroy the presence of these goods by building a world that had no ethical agents in it? Choosing must therefore be bad.
If humans exist, ethics towards other agents exist. If humans don't exist, this ethic is no longer needed. No humans = no ethics. If there are humans, then the ethic (of not procreating) remains.
If humans exist, ethics is possible, but need not exist - we are the only creatures who construct ethics, but before we construct it, ethics does not exist. AN is constructing ethics to construct a world without humans, as if the ethics of "not inflicting harm" was more important than the human that constructed this ethic. And all with the outcome of world where no creature could reconstruct this ethic and recognize how good all of those humans who did not procreate were back when they were living, ethical agents.
schopenhauer1September 03, 2024 at 17:16#9298060 likes
And the concept of "no consent" and the concept of "inflicted suffering on another" and the concepts of "good" and "ethics" are reified concepts. Not actual humans. No difference.
No, you are misconstruing my argument. The "no consent" and "inflicting suffering", if violated, WILL affect the person involved. "No humanity/civilization" would be [s]inflicting suffering/non-consent[/s] doing something FOR a reified concept.
You can't discard my reference to "the possibility of future ethical agents" as a mere reified concept, and then say ethics is incumbent on current people "in regards to future ethical agents."
This is the problem with the logic. You need certain things be in place as premises and principals, in order to demonstrate a world where none of these premises or principals need exist.
All that's needed is actual people with a perspective that exist to know that a future person would be so affected if they violated these principles.
You need human civilization to exist for any human preference to exist at all. The ANist is using a preference to base a conclusion that preferences should not exist. If preferences should not exist, why prefer not to inflict harm? Unless you uphold the principal over the person.
Again, this seems like muddled thinking. The "preference" is based on following a principle of non-harm/non-consent. That principle exists because humans exist. Once humans no longer exist, no need for preferences. I am not sure why this is so hard.
There is more to ethics than principles. Ethical principles are calls to action, prescriptions for behavior impacting other ethical agents - they are guides for physical, actual behavior in a society. AN ethical behavior based on principals (do not cause harm; procreation causes harm without consent) is for the sake and goal of eliminating all ethical action by eliminating all ethical actors. On principle, the ANist doesn't want any creatures that would have or construct principals to exist at all. On principle, principles should not drive action. That makes no sense.
So I ask, why would we use ethical principles (don't inflict harm) to make the world better if that better world doesn't need or have any ethical principals in it (because no ethical agents)? Why would I think it is good to follow any ethical principal that had the goal of building a society that had no need or place for ethics?
This question makes no ethical matter. In a way, you are undermining your own accusations of me. It seems you have a hidden agenda in your ethical principles (i.e. that they need to have some sort of "goal" that is above and beyond not inflicting suffering/not violating consent to an individual). No one is talking about "building a society" here. That is not this ethic, which is negative (nothing about building). In fact, as I've explained previously, no positive ethic in this case, where there is no tradeoff to an existing person, would matter when it violates a negative ethic. Your right to "build X, Y, Z" shouldn't override unnecessarily harming/violating consent, especially as there is no person who "loses out" on you doing so (i.e. preventative vs. mitigation ethics).
What drives the notion "ethics is incumbent"? Why would you say that? We choose our ethics just as we choose our actions according to our ethics. If choosing and choosing ethically are so good they are "incumbent", why would we destroy the presence of these goods by building a world that had no ethical agents in it? Choosing must therefore be bad.
The "presence of these goods".. This sounds like people are instruments for "goods" to take place, precisely the thinking that I think is UNETHICAL... people should not be used (caused to be harm) so that your vision of a positive project is carried out ("these goods of life"). At some point, it is up to the individual to "choose" what they think is ethical. I am presenting the case that unnecessarily harming people (causing to suffer for no reason), is unethical- it doesn't matter if you had a positive vision in mind in doing so (when there is no need to have actually caused the harm in the first place).
AN is constructing ethics to construct a world without humans, as if the ethics of "not inflicting harm" was more important than the human that constructed this ethic. And all with the outcome of world where no creature could reconstruct this ethic and recognize how good all of those humans who did not procreate were back when they were living, ethical agents.
Why does this matter that there would be no one to "recognize" that good was done or to "reconstruct this ethic" (whatever that means)?
Fire OlogistSeptember 03, 2024 at 18:13#9298230 likes
That principle exists because humans exist. Once humans no longer exist, no need for preferences. I am not sure why this is so hard.
But what is wrong with inflicting suffering? Why is it wrong to torture babies to death and make more babies to torture them?
You need an ethics to argue torturing babies is wrong. Its not obvious. Otherwise, like an orca teaching its young, torturing babies to death is just another motion in space, like any other, neither good nor bad.
WE say it is bad to inflict suffering without consent. WE create this rule, this ethic. Now that its created, WE can choose to act on it. And the ANist can determine that to not-procreate is to act on this new rule we created. And what is the good of this act?? What is the good of the rule? In the end, what is the reason there were humans once but are no longer any humans? The reason would be because of the ethics we created. Not any other reason.
So the ethics itself, the principle itself, for the ANist, is the higher goal than some condition or state in the ethical human being.
We create a problem (inflicting suffering without consent) to create a solution (not procreating) for sake of .
upholding the principle, NOT for sake of any person. All things people are, to the ANist, something that SHOULD NOT persist, should not have come to be.
So AN upholds ethics to defeat ethics. It is literally for the sake of nothing.
In that case, it is legitimate to ask Why be ethical at all?
Instead of killing off the human race, we could all choose to kill off ethics. We could fight our instinct towards compassion (fight the pangs that arise when suffering is inflicted on another) instead of fighting our instinct to procreate?
Why must our response to compassion be the creation of ethics? If the answer involves humans (an individual, a community, possible future humans ) than antinatalist ethics make no sense as its goal is no more humans is a good.
schopenhauer1September 03, 2024 at 20:46#9298610 likes
But what is wrong with inflicting suffering? Why is it wrong to torture babies to death and make more babies to torture them?
You need an ethics to argue torturing babies is wrong. Its not obvious. Otherwise, like an orca teaching its young, torturing babies to death is just another motion in space, like any other, neither good nor bad.
I base the deontology as rooted in the idea that people have inherent dignity and should not be used as a means to an ends. I agree, if you don't agree with this basis for morality, that either people do not have inherent dignity and thus they should not be used, then none of this would matter. Some people think instrumentally, for example. I think that basis is wrong, precisely because it denies the individual worth of the individual. I also think that this entails that preventing things like suffering and non-consent are more important than whatever machinations you had in mind for a person that would violate those basic principles. Thus I say, your positive ethics doesn't override someone's negative ethics, if it need not be the case (you can prevent versus putting someone in mitigation mode where they must have some suffering but now trade greater for lesser, etc.).
And what is the good of this act?? What is the good of the rule? In the end, what is the reason there were humans once but are no longer any humans? The reason would be because of the ethics we created. Not any other reason.
Notice you said "any other reason". Well yeah, there would be a "reason" nonetheless. Some "reasons" are ethical and some are not. That's the debate here. It just so happens, the ethical ones ends in no human being procreated. Again, I see no problem with that. Your argument seems to be something akin to credulity but with no force behind it. You are essentially saying, "But look at this outcome! But look!"
So the ethics itself, the principle itself, for the ANist, is the higher goal than some condition or state in the ethical human being.
If you mean by this that ANs generally don't prioritize positive projects over negative ethics, then yes. For example, a positive project from a philosopher might say they want to see, "The flourishing of a virtuous person" (which may or may not be the outcome, but even that point is irrelevant here, though can be the basis for weaker arguments like the "gambling with other lives" arguments, which are also valid). A less philosophically inclined person might just say they want "A person they can raise and do family stuff with". It's all positive projects though, whatever it is.
We create a problem (inflicting suffering without consent) to create a solution (not procreating) for sake of .
upholding the principle, NOT for sake of any person. All things people are, to the ANist, something that SHOULD NOT persist, should not have come to be.
So AN upholds ethics to defeat ethics. It is literally for the sake of nothing.
You are phrasing it so that it comes out this way. Rather, a violation of a person will take place, you are preventing that violation of a person. It doesn't matter if someone is not benefiting from this, rather a PERSON will not suffer and be non-consented. It is for the sake of the person not suffering and being non-consented, that WILL BE SO AFFECTED.
1 There is a null state (no person), and
2 there is a state with some bad
3 and some good.
2 is the only one that has moral relevance here.
That there is a null state is not morally wrong...
That some good happens (3) is not morally relevant.
All that matters is 2 does not occur, as THAT is the morally relevant/bad/wrong state of affairs.
Instead of killing off the human race, we could all choose to kill off ethics. We could fight our instinct towards compassion (fight the pangs that arise when suffering is inflicted on another) instead of fighting our instinct to procreate?
Why must our response to compassion be the creation of ethics? If the answer involves humans (an individual, a community, possible future humans ) than antinatalist ethics make no sense as its goal is no more humans is a good.
See, you are caught up in the "no more humans". It is precisely this thinking that I question. Why is this project important to you other than incredulity or appeal to tradition? And you are going to say a whole bunch of statements about civilization, the wonder of a sunset, love, and all this, and all the "goods" of life, but if you go back to 1, 2, and 3. Why are we forcing suffering unto others so that X, Y, Z happens? Why does X, Y, Z matter? That people need to experience "goods of life", seems oddly messianic, and aggressively paternalistic. What makes you believe that these projects of "good life" or "positive experience" mean you get the right to make people suffer? Indeed, this would be using people's suffering for your messianic/paternalistic notion of what "MUST happen FOR them" or simply "What MUST HAPPEN" in general. If suffering isn't the paramount thing, then there is something that is not ethics going on here.. Perhaps ego? Perhaps forcing one's vision of "the good" on others? Perhaps, misplaced messianism (YOU know what's good, and YOU must be the one to carry that out). But as I've stated more eloquently here:
This has a lot of unjustified assumptions.. such as, why should virtuous men matter? If you say that because the know how to live a "good life", AN always knows that starting a life for someone else means you have a project for them to follow. But here belies an actual UNVIRTUOUS thing- the forcing of someone else into the burdens of life to live out the project of X (the virtuous man!.. cue marble statue staring into the horizon clutching robe!!). It reeks of an aggressive paternalism and assumption (for someone else), that their negative rights should be violated (and that is indeed part of the debate, is it a violation), because you think "someone living out a virtuous life" is okay to go head and be aggressively paternalistic to allow for a deontological violation to take place.
The Lord of the Rings, obviously, an author and work who would be against my philosophy or antinatalism, however, does have themes that I am getting at. The Ring itself can represent the controlling nature of humans- the ability to want to control people, destiny, the world. Wanting to see X thing from another person, even if it means burdening them is perhaps one of these unconscious factors that we hold. The Ring seems to be a good idea.. it seems to have the answers, but in fact, it is simply the human desire to control things, to see their projects carried out by way of using other people, even their sufferings to make this happen. '
You will claim "NO! LOTR was talking about unrestrained control- like Sauron wanting to enslave everyone!". But there is indeed where the debate lies. "Does procreation represent an aggressive paternalism.. does this too go too far in how we want to control people, even violate ethical principles, to see our project carried out?". And I get the impulse to defend it.. It's the very basis for which our whole society has operated. But perhaps it isn't as unassailable as you might think. And for millennium, as long as there has been societies that had the abilities to reason beyond the tribal unit, there have been lifestyles of ascetics who eschewed the worldly projects. I am not necessarily advocating that, however, but just showing that this difference in notions of established familial traditions exist.
Far be it from me to begrudge anyone laughter. But as I indicated with the Lord of the Rings analogy above, there is a bit of a weird aggressive paternalism in the notion that you need to teach someone, and see your project carried out... I have wants and desires, but do I have the right to unnecessarily and non-consentingly burden you with them? Well, no I don't have that right. But somehow a blind eye is seen in the case of procreation because of the romantic notions of learning and virtue of the philosophies you describe here. Don't get me wrong, go have fun.. don't be a dour asshole to your children, but my point is perhaps we may even question the impetus for control and wanting to see projects carried out from others, rather than assume that this is what is right. The doting grandfather laughing at his grandchildren in merriment as they work through the small problems of life gradually being raised to become productive members of society, etc. But what of this? I question this project, its motives, and what we are wanting from other people.
Comments (1785)
In the last four-plus decades, what I have learned by daily study and from lived experience is this: work everyday towards easy sleep (ergo a good death) by not doing to anyone what you find harmful to yourself. All the rest follows.
:death: :flower:
Totally up to you. There are billions of reasons (you make your own meaning through your use of time, your job, interests, friends, family, nature, pets, causes, helping others, whatever) and many people, even those living with great suffering, privation and war are often optimistic and future focused. Nevertheless lots of people go though a 'what's the point of it all' phase early in life. Some people feel the onset of this in middle age, as priorities suddenly change. In my experience, many people find helping others the most effective pathway out of meaninglessness and depression. Sometimes too much ruminating over meaning leads to a state of analysis paralysis.
It would help if you would say where you are in the spectrum of ageing: twenties, thirties,...
When I was in my twenties, evading the Union Army as it burned Atlanta, I became an existentialist, realizing there is no divine purpose to life. One must create meaning. It then becomes a task to do just that and one begins the search having a purpose.
Antinatalism is a pseudo-solution to the problem of suffering which to explicate is how to live/exist without hurting? This is, as you already know, the perennial philosophical problem (eudaimonia/the good life). Obviously, recommending death/nonexistence is to completely miss the point, oui monsieur?
Thats a fantastic question, and a highly important one.
Its also, perhaps frustratingly, a deeply personal one. No general answer can be given from me or anyone else. It has to come from you, and one day it may.
There are not reasons to live at all. You only have to have to do it. I think you would make a big mistake if you put yourself in a search for a cause of living.
Instead of live, you need to "survive" this life. Don't commit suicide. As you expressed, the effects would be devastating to your love ones.
Suicide could be only acceptable if you are alone and such act would not affect anyone.
Keep in mind that if you kill yourself your family or friends will suffer with the remorse of thinking "what they did wrong with you to end up killing yourself"
That out of the way, if the question is aimed at antinatlists who recommend nonexistence then the answer is rather simple: death/dying is painful and given how hyperalgesic antinatalists are death i.e. suicide isn't really an option for them. Remember that nonexistence isn't the problem (re Epicurus) it's the transition from existence to nonexistence (dying) that is.
Think of all the cool stuff that might happen, that you will miss if your not around. Maybe we will be visited by aliens, maybe Donald Trump will convert to humanism, maybe science will find some new answers, maybe people's lives will get better, they have got very much better imo since we first came out of the wilds, maybe a good person will love you, maybe a new child in your family will give you renewed purpose and hope, maybe someone else will learn something from you that helps them, maybe you will make a difference somewhere, maybe your favourite food ever will be discovered by you soon, maybe you will watch a show that makes you laugh harder and longer than you have ever laughed before. Maybe you don't know just how important you are to the lives of others that have never told you so or maybe you will become so.
Your like may in fact be incredibly rare in the vast Universe.
Immerse yourself in the wonders of life.
The song below can sound pessimistic, yet the advice from Thom Yorke at the end is: Immerse yourself in love.
I'm pretty happy these days, but the older I get the less attached to life I feel. Does the fruit ripen on the tree? Is there less to prove ? I wrote to a friend yesterday that it's like learning that a video game can't be beat...so that losing your last player is no longer so scary...
I think it's just an intimate topic. Folks aren't that afraid. What's 'wrong' with someone might just be their timing or expectation of intimacy. Suffering and gloom are not in short supply. They are maybe even the rule and not the exception, at least as people age. So there's not much use talking about it ... unless you can light up the shitshow with a joke we haven't heard yet.
So in other words, preferring life over death seems to me a default, almost axiomatic valuation of living beings, and doesn't need any further justification really.
Considering that, my question to you then would be, what prompted you to flip this basic instinctive valuation on its head?
What causes life to turn on life?
...perhaps you are doing it wrong?
:up:
I love a good cup of coffee, a lonely bikeride on a cool night, snuggling my torty, laughing at a piece of a bit in an old book that only the aging cool kids remember...
I can relate. One can even start laughing in the swamp of misery, with the gods at the one's own folly and the folly of humans in general. Gallows humor. And then there is the true platitude that suffering sometimes burns off a mask or a delusion. I don't claim that all suffering can be partially forgiven this way. The world offers pure stupid hurt too.
I am truly saddened by the fact that you don't seem to find joy in life. Since I am not you and don't know your experiences, it would be presumptuous of me to suggest what and how you should think. From what I have observed and experienced, however, I think I can say that moulding our perspectives can play a big role in defining the good we see in our lives. Whenever I've met the financially less-fortunate people in my area, I've noticed that they are simply content with having a decent relationship and being able to sustain themselves. They learn whatever they can and say that they don't need to create some sort of ultimate purpose that transcends their "mundane" existence. Happiness is fundamentally subjective, so I believe that there is truth to the idea that we shouldn't have unrealistic expectations. And it's possible for us to have them subconsciously without even being aware of them. If someone had told me prior to my illnesses that reading my favourite novel would give me satisfaction that would outweigh the intense pain high fever brings, I would have likely dismissed them. However, lo and behold, this is precisely what happened. Sentient experience is quite diverse (and maybe that is what plays a major role in what makes life beautiful). I think that instead of absolute natalism or universal antinatalism, a nuanced approach is desirable.
You also raised a point that I see being mentioned frequently, viz., the fact that you wouldn't need happiness if you don't exist. Now, I actually believe this to be true (assuming physicalism is correct), but this is an incomplete conclusion. If we should not be afraid of/averse to non-existence because we cannot be deprived of something when we don't exist, we should also not chase/worship the void, since the absence of suffering has no value for an inexistent being. You're not going to be in some better/more satisfied state due to the lack of harms. In view of this, non-existence has no value/disvalue. What one does with their life, therefore, becomes a highly individualised affair that differs from person-to-person and what action/emotion brings them happiness when they exist. Lastly, I wouldn't say there's something "wrong" with you. I am not a fan of blind optimism. All I would say is that, considering that value only lies in existence, I think that it can be rational to try our best to discover a source of joy that can provide us happiness for as long as possible instead of seeking cessation which is necessarily limited in its capacity to provide fulfilment. Maybe some people are too uncomfortable thinking about non-existence so they quickly jump to therapy. After having discussed this issue with many individuals, I feel that I am not one of those aforementioned people. Nonetheless, I believe that therapy can definitely help. If there is an opportunity for gaining ineffable value that is more powerful than the temporary and slightly distorted satisfaction that the void might give, it may be the better option.
I hope that you have a wonderful day ahead!
I think it's pretty common to go through phases thinking/feeling like this, especially in the first third of life. Most people I know had periods of anhedonia, accompanied by periods of suicidal thoughts. But things did get better.
If I outlive every person / activity I love, only then will I long for death. Until then, sleeping well suffices. :death: :flower:
Edit: I have had many discussions regarding AN on this forum. You could check my comments history if you're interested in my reasons for rejecting the philosophy. Here's an example: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/657516
I should forewarn you that these discourses are a bit long and somewhat tedious.
Agreed. I also had periods on my life related to these feelings. So, I feel better with myself knowing that is pretty common among the people when they grow up
Curiosity, which makes life a fascinating exploration of potential.
And the fear of death. Which is not really any different from being dead already.
Its not death you crave. You are dead already. You crave to truly live.
:lol: :up:
I think fear and curiosity are the two main drivers.
Each has subcategories or synonyms, love being a subcategory of fear.
Its the desire for things to stay the same vs the desire for change. Love and fear are both about attachment: desire for stability, safety and comfort, all ways of coping with fear. Making friendships(love) helps protect us from dangers
Harsh but true in some way, I think.
You need at a minimum 9 lives to be as curious as a cat! :snicker:
So after all, even for you life is preferable to death. Which is normal, after millions or billions of years of evolution have geared our motivations toward survival.
I think death becomes preferable to life when suffering exceeds happiness so much that it beats the survival drive. If the survival drive is strong as usual, this must be a singularly terrible situation but unfortunately it can happen too.
I agree that it's the end of self; all feelings, and emotions.
However, some things hang about for a while, like your effect on others.
Why is it a good deal not to feel anything at all?
Of all the emotions, which disturbs you the most?
Quoting Darkneos
So, do you not care about anyone else other than 'you'?
Quoting Darkneos
Suicide is always an option if anyone really wants to end their life.
You can go slow, slow, or quick depending on tool of choice. Not that I'm recommending it.
What 'current stance' are you talking about?
I agree the survival drive is strong. Why is that?
The need to pass on DNA? Are we here only as animals?
The best way to live.
Is it, as you say, to live comfortably?
Unlikely, even if it were possible. What does it mean to you, to live in comfort?
To be certain, to feel in control?
Quoting Darkneos
If you have decided your only option is to stay, then why not view life as less of a chore, more of a challenge? Not merely existing...
'Until death comes to claim you'?
Zoom out for a different perspective. Death can happen at any moment.
It's not about being claimed as if you are a worthless piece of baggage!
Quoting Darkneos
You are not alone. Even if you are on your own or feel lonely and an outsider.
Some quality responses here, yes? No dodges.
Who are the people that say you need therapy? How much do their opinions matter?
Is there anything else going on - depression?
Is your stance on this fixed for all time?
Or are you willing to listen to others? Read their words carefully. They have taken the time.
It sounds to me like you do care. Enough to share something we can all relate to.
Stay safe :sparkle:
Forgive this addendum:
[ Sometimes I wonder if such OPs are worth responding to, or if it's all attention-seeking]
Edit:
Previously discussed:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10121/reason-for-living/p1
7 pages worth.
Can we not just as easily make love primary ? I fear that harm will come to what I love. No love, no fear.
They're lookin' for you! Quick, hide!
Not that you'll ever be in a position to know it.
I don't feel the need to add anything to the general 'choose life!' message, firmly delivered.
I am sure I have an old faded 80's Wham 'CHOOSE LIFE' T-shirt somewhere in a drawer. Sadly, it won't fit me anymore but I might dig it out and stare at it for a while. Memories of past happy moments are also quite life-affirming. At least for me, anyway.
Love is basically mutual assurance. People giving each other hope and consolation. Its not a thing in itself. Without fear and insecurity, how could we give each other hope and comfort?
We do what we can!
I see us as tribal, social animals, evolved to work as a group. I view the relatively isolated self as a kind of invention or development in the story.
:pray:
You see the light in the dark! Good to have you on the team.
:flower:
Then why are you still around? I dont mean this to be callous and Im not encouraging suicide but genuinely curious. If you long for nothingness, why keep going?
1. It's not easy to embrace nothingness (at least until there is a liberal right to a graceful exit that allows one to find a completely peaceful and risk-free way out).
2. Since one is already here, they could focus on alleviating the suffering of existing sentient beings.
I am thankful that the extreme step has not been taken. I hope that we can someday live in a world in which people never have to do so in a state of pure misery and despair.
I think man has been isolated from the beginning, and that groups are at least one factor in that.
When someone sees me as a stereotype or representative of a group, they ignore my unique individuality, so I become isolated.
I dislike being misunderstood myself. This issue reminds me of Sartre. To be a mere object for the other is the essence of shame.
Well, you won't ever experience death. Death is simply, "The end". You'll experience dying if you're conscious at the time. But that's it. There is no peace, no rest, no etc. You're just dead. You won't be able to tell people how different you are anymore. You won't be able to chat with friends or family about how much of a chore life is. You won't be able to post on the philosophy boards in the hope of conversing or thinking.
You'll be gone. There will be no you. It will simply end. You won't even get the satisfaction of enjoying it or "being right".
You do enjoy life. Now it may not be roses and "the best", but you do, because you live. You actually do enjoy to some extent talking to other people. Making your voice known. People who really don't enjoy life at all don't talk. They don't write. They hate and despise everything about their very existence. You would loath eating, breathing, and doing anything. You obviously do not.
So no, you don't prefer death to living. You still live. You still eat. You still interact. Perhaps you wish life were better than it is. Perhaps you want peace and a release from pain, and confuse that for a desire for death. Many people do. But if you're talking about death as it is, an unromantic end that you won't get any feelings about or be around to experience, no you don't.
Value may only lie in existence, yes, so that is why I can see value in not having to perform the song and dance anymore. The same goes for the absence of suffering, your logic doesn't really follow for not chasing the void as the entire point is the end, the cessation of it all. Non existence has greater value as people view the end goal of utter oblivion to be preferable to anything life can offer.
That would be wrong to say. I talk to others because, well what else is there? I mentioned the goal was to make life tolerable until the end. Just because I talk to people doesn't mean I enjoy it, I don't hate it either.
I do prefer death to living, to not have to do any of this anymore, but I must live as I have no other option at the moment.
It's like you read nothing I said.
People underestimate just how strong the survival drive is and that it's not easy to overcome.
Well no it's not. I wouldn't call the survival drive "me" it's just an obstacle that I can't surmount. Life is not preferable to me, however that doesn't mean my continued existence is a testament to preferring life.
It does though. My main point about the good things in life is that you don't need any of that in death so they aren't reasons to really stick around. In short if you don't HAVE to live then there is no reason to do so. Such good things make life tolerable and seeking them out only makes sense if one HAS to live, which seems to be my case since seeking the end is inordinately difficult. Not only because society pretty much forbids it but apparently a lot of suicide attempts end in failure and leave you in a worse off state, not really how I prefer to spend my remaining days...locked in a hospital with people trying to "fix" me.
I guess people only rationalize living by stating "precious joys are worth cherishing" is due to death anxiety, as Ernest Becker put it. We tend to fear death and much of our lives are ruled by this fact, at least according to him.
It's not always about rationalisation; it's about the variegated nature of preferences and perspectives. I am aware of Becker's ideas. Part of the reason why people fear death is because they appreciate the goods of life. These goods could be complex, such as the relationships one has and could lose, to more basic ones, such as death resulting in some sort of horrible black void that takes away the positive state of we were in. I do think that there is a sort of paternalism when it comes to giving people the right to a graceful exit. Personally, I don't think that one's love for life should justify making someone else endure a valueless existence. Toxic positivity is a significant problem.
Ridiculous. This is a philosophy forum. Logically, you live because you choose to live. If you truly preferred death more, you would die. If you're interested in a "woe is me" or "life is pain" conversation, this isn't the place.
Further, I've had times in my life where pain and emotional despair was unbearable. I've felt the urge to suicide before. But I made the choice to continue to live. That logically means I preferred life to death, despite all the nearly unbearable misery. What a pathetic human being I would have been to whine to others that I preferred death as I continually chose to live again and again.
You don't get to choose life, then say you prefer death. That's illogical. That's just whining about life. When this clear logical discrepancy is pointed out you whine some more. No wonder people tell you to go to therapy. You should listen to them. Your life sucks, so do something about it and improve it.
Just a little nervous from the fall, chaps.
is usually a flowering of..well.. a view. Indicating some sort of understanding of the entire picture. Taking into account all sides of the story. Usually such a view isn't a reaction or a grasping of any one side.
One may start by inquiring what is this thing we call living. As if you have choice, HA. Freakin' mechanical robots. In any case, it seems that's where the inquiry begins.
The OP is confused. There is no peace in death. There is nothing. What the OP wants is peace in life. To get to a moment where they feel peace. You have to live to feel peace. They would prefer a life where they feel peace then a life where they feel pain. Death does not give peace. It gives nothing. There is no chance to find peace. There is no beating the pain. If you die in pain, its the last thing you will ever feel.
To believe that absence of your existence can be preferable to pain is true in some circumstances. Have all of your limbs cut off, your eyes blown out, your brain half blown to bits and you're surviving purely by modern science? Yeah, pull that plug. It does not sound like those are the circumstances of the OP. It sounds like someone who is in pain, and instead of dealing with that pain, looks to invent some fantasy to avoid the work needed to make the pain go away. The OP needs to deal with their pain. They can one day find peace if they work for it. They will not if they keep sticking to this romantic fantasy of death.
"Death" is the most peaceful experience one can experience while "living". Had it not been so, the body won't be programmed to slip into it every night. Surely more or less we understand biological death. But have we understood...for convenience, let's call it psychological death. Have we even asked such a question. Have we questioned if death and life are co-existent. Maybe two sides of the same coin.
But how can you question, if you lack the backbone needed to question your bias towards this thing you call living. Wherein, like some form of the Stockholm syndrome, you have fallen in love with your limitations, begging, beseeching life, to give you one more ounce of what you call "fun"/pleasure. Therefore to you, death is a terrible thing. A thing of fear and oblivion. So, you aren't really living life....but rather your fear. You are corrupted.
Death is incorruptible.
What you say has merit, but consider this edge case :
A man will be tortured for hours for information he does not have. He will then be killed. Is it reasonable for him to grab at a means to end his consciousness, if he knows all this with certainty ?
Or consider, more typically, a person aware that they are sinking into dementia...Are there states worse than death ? So that death is to be sought ? My position is yes.
I agree with this , and would add that the fantasy of peace in life that is the OPs longing for death is , like all experiences of peace or relief, a contrast or transition from a prior state. No state of mind or mood sustains itself in perpetuity because experiences are relational and contingent. An experience of peace will inevitably be followed by a new experience that addresses and transforms it. Peace can become trepidation, struggle, mourning , elation. More importantly, these transitions in attitude and mood change US. In a sense , with every shift in mood and outlook , the particular self that we are are at any given time is born of a previous self and dies as it is replaced by a new self. Even in just longing for and fantasizing about the peace of death , we are briefly achieving this feeling of peace. The old we who was struggling has died and briefly become the new we who is at peace. Soon this new we will pass over into yet another we who is beset with a fresh situation and attitude. This is all that death will ever give you. It is not death that is eternal but the contingency of desire.
I agree with you. But this is not the OP's case.
Are you sure about that?
Quoting Philosophim
Are you sure about that?
The issue has been 'worked' on before by Darkneos:
Quoting Amity
That's not to say it's not worthwhile discussing again. I did that!
Different time, different posters; pretty much same arguments, assumptions and responses.
However, it makes me question the intention of the OP, rightly or wrongly.
Quoting Darkneos
[ emphasis added]
Worth considering?
There seems to be an appeal to fellow would-be suicides...
Join the club. Us against the rest of the world.
Darkneos seems to have been doing this for years. Going from forum to forum.
Fishing.
How many pages will this run to...?
We love to hear ourselves talk, don't we?
So, death, it seems, in its correct context, is an ending. An ending to your fears, your pettiness, your jealousies, your beseeching, your pretenses your games, your neuroticism....ya know , don't you? After all these, and more, is what you call living. This "ending" has nothing to do with your biological continuity or dis-continuity. Clearly.
Heroin ... because the grass on the other side of the abyss always seems greener ...
[quote=Renton, Trainspotting]Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose a washing machine, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing gameshows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?[/quote]
:yawn:
OR
One can choose (e.g.) Epicurus & Lucretius, Montaigne & Spinoza, Zapffe & Camus, Buber & Beckett, Clément Rosset & James Baldwin, Philippa Foot & Martha Nussbaum, Albert Murray & George Steiner ... :fire:
Quoting Banno
:lol: :up:
Its hard and unreliable to kill yourself? I really cant see how thats true, but OK.
As for the survival instinct yes, true. But supposedly you long for death. If the drive to continue living is greater then you really dont want it. If you did youd be dead already provided that there are means to do so and, as I already mentioned, there are plenty of ways to do so.
People who consider suicide very often dont truly want to die theyre either without meaning and joy or are clinically depressed.
Do you consider yourself depressed? It sounds that way to me. In which case: there are ways out.
I hear you, but for me this is being a bit too concrete or literal. Death is often described as the end of suffering - which technically it is likely to be (unless you think there is a judgement coming after). Therefore death brings 'peace' in as much is it brings non suffering or 'nothingness'. From the perspective of a suffering life, death holds the appeal of relief or a metaphorically peaceful alternative - you may not be there to experience it, but you won't be there to experience ongoing suffering either.
then one puts a reasonable question, if i know there is biological death always lurking around the corner and all your BS is gonna leave you with nothing but sh## in your hands, then why doesn't the human end (psychological death) its weasel-ly-ness. Right.
To end it now! Because that's what biological death will do/does. You won't have a chance to negotiate/weasel out of, as much as want to. So the question then becomes, what is it to die. For example, to all your fears, to your prejudices, to your nonsense.
I think you're missing the point. In death there is no need for such things, it all ends. So there's no need to seek the good stuff. They don't fear death because of the goods of life, they fear the end when really they should not for it can be pretty great.
Ahh, again you misunderstand. This has nothing to do with peace in life, it's about the cessation of all things. Death does afford a peace, in a sense, even if you can't feel it. You can rest knowing the pain will pass and you won't have to do anything anymore. I think you are giving death less than it is.
Why deal with one's pain when they can just quit? You're still missing the point here trying to find something "Wrong" and that's the mistake you make as much as anyone else does. Nothing in life IMO is worth working for when one doesn't have to live. If society had a different mind they'd see that and allow people to exit if they choose.
You still aren't getting it.
Again making the mistake in thinking there is something wrong.
I've done the research and found out most suicide attempts end in failure, that there really isn't a "surefire way" to do it and those who survive end up in worse shape than before. You'd think it'd be easy and I do too. Trust me when I say I've googled painless ways to die, but you have to wade through a lot of the "therapy" nonsense.
I am glad to see you back on site because I after reading your posts about death and you not being on the site for a long time I had worried that you had killed yourself. The reason why I say I was worried is because I do see suicide as being about the worst way to die. I do have thoughts of it at times, mainly when I feel that I have more stress than I can cope with, but I am glad that I have never given into such thoughts. I have known people who have killed themselves, often in extreme situations of panic and despair.
Death is probably the end, and I say that because I used to believe in life after death but, now, see it as unlikely. Life does seem harsh at times and it seems that some people have harder lives than others. The things which I think would just be unbearable are having to sleep rough on the streets or becoming blind. I don't know what your own reason for wishing to die is but everyone will die at some point.
Generally, I wish to make the best of what happens and cope with whatever happens to the best of my abilities. I think that I would be too afraid to kill myself whatever situation I was in. Even though I don't fear hell like when I was a teenager I know of people who have tried to kill themselves and ended up with all sorts of injuries, including not being able to walk.
That's what I'm saying. The only reason people IMO live is survival instinct because to me death just makes more logical sense. Never having to do good things, or worry about bad things, it all ends. So why put it off?
I feel like everything used to justify the will to keep going is more just our survival instinct trying to rationalize things.
No. That's not what you were/are saying.
You seem to be concerned about "checking out", which is about biological death.
That's not what i have been looking into.
I have read your posts. As far as I can see death is a form of peace, a bit like sleep. It may be that each of us comes from a different, unique angle, making it difficult. I guess that it is that I do enjoy life providing it is not too painful constantly, with constant knockdowns. However, it doesn't seem that you come from that point of view and it your own position may be more along the lines of Camus's one, but I am not entirely sure of this. How do you find the thinking of the existentialist writers? Do you feel an affinity with them?
If you can't feel it, it isn't peace. It does not afford peace in ANY sense.
Quoting Darkneos
No. You don't know anything. You don't get to rest. You don't get ANYTHING. Your last memory will be pain, and that will be the last thing you know. There will be no sigh, no relief, no calmness, no anything. Whatever you have in your last moments will be the last thing you experience.
Quoting Darkneos
No, you are giving death MORE than it is. You think there is something. Some feeling, some assurence etc. There. Is. Nothing. There is not even the realization that there is nothing. There's no you staring into a black void. There's no, "Finally, I'm at rest." You're gone, period.
Quoting Darkneos
Because I'm not a coward. Lots of things in life will try to tear you down and end you. All the cells inside of you fight every day to keep viruses and bacteria at bay. They fight to do their jobs, and live. You spit on that. All the people who spent time and effort raising you to continue life. You spit on that. The fact that you have the gift of sentience when so much matter in the universe will never have it. Its absolutely a waste to throw that away when you should fight for it.
Quoting Darkneos
Well no duh. When you're dead, you don't have to do anything. Because you don't exist anymore. You can't even laugh at society. You're just a corpse to be eaten by worms.
Quoting Darkneos
No, I get it FAR better than you. My sister collects and cuts up bodies for a living btw. She's done organ donations, autopsies, etc. I'm very keen to know what death is. She's seen plenty of suicides. They aren't special. She's described decomposition in detail. How your last meal sometimes rots inside, swells your stomache, and has to be purged before cutting into the rotting flesh.
Death is not beautiful, peaceful, or relief. If you want real beauty, peace, and relief, you only find that in life. You will never find that in death. So get out of your morose state, stop feeling sorry about yourself and the world, and start working to actually get beauty, peace, and relief in your life. Looking at death for your such things is cowardly, lazy, and incredibly ignorant.
Inertia.
Besides, why rush the inevitable? Nothing lasts (i.e. entropy, anicca). The "chore" of respirating & metabolizing will end soon. Death is the only god that ever comes whether or not you cry out for her. Until then, savor sleep's daily respite; if, however, you're an insomniac, well Darkneos, you have my sympathies ... :sad:
Consider Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.
if one dies while still living, maybe they will finally know what it is to be Alive. Perhaps they will be in a better position of having a "view" on the age old question, "if there is such a thing as immortality?".
Its not a mistake. If someone longs for death, that person has a problem. Unless we want to vacate the words of any meaning whatsoever.
Quoting Darkneos
Whats so awful about pain? Why is some pain worse than death?
If one were to take a dive off a tall building theyd be dead.
Anyway Its really not that interesting. Feel free to have the last word.
Quoting Xtrix
The questions make no sense. Death is the ending of life, not a state. If life is filled with pain one wants pain to end. If the discussion is depressing one wants to end the discussion. The OP wants to escape from this - the present, not to achieve the goal of death. This happens when the mind is filled with the past, and projecting the past into the future as the continuation of the self. This projection of self into the future of years of mediocrity and meaningless routine and general discomfort, followed by the death one fears, is what fills and poisons the present, and thus himself is the prison in which he is confined. The desire to escape creates the very thing one seeks to escape from.
The solution is to face the fear, which is to face the present self which is nothing but this circle of thought going nowhere but round in a miserable circle, and in seeing that whole, there is a new thought and so a new life. That dies, and there is this. If one is every day new, then the thought of death will have no meaning to be either feared or desired. One has to escape the prison of thought to find the terrible beauty of life , that life and death are not separate.
If one lives as though it is good to inhale, but bad to exhale, one will not be happy for long.
The survival drive is part of your motivational makeup. You have motives to live and you have motives to die, and it seems that at the moment the motives to live prevail :)
Most profound questions! You must be Einstein's descendant! Please comtinue, you must...for our sakes...you must.
I don't think it's such a bad metaphor. It's like the difference between a surgery without or without general anesthesia. Is it absurd to prefer the anesthesia ?
:up: :clap:
I think we basically agree. My point was just that we can consciously choose unconsciousness. A person can risk death to protect their child. A person can stand up against a tyrant, make a grand speech, knowing it'll lead to the guillotine. Duels were common once. In short, it's part of our calculations, and I suspect that death is often thought of as a deep sleep, as a sort of zero state, neither good nor bad.
Of course not. It is not absurd to kill yourself either; I simply point out that in choosing oblivion over pain, one is trying to escape something, not achieve or gain something. That is where the notion of 'preferring' is misleadingly positive. Desire and fear are both projections to the future, but with opposite signs. They both equally take one away from one's real (present) life and create the prison of self from which one is seeking to escape.
Fair enough. The right amount/kind of desire can be fun though. Dopamine, immersion in the game.
:roll:
It makes perfect sense. Why does one prefer death to pain?
Sometimes the pain is excruciating thats obvious. Thats also not what Im talking about.
The rest of your post is Buddhist cliche.
What does this mean and what is it contributing?
Yeah, sure. I'm not a Buddhist, but you know best.
There's a sort of comfort in the routine. I like waking up, brushing my teeth (not that they are in a great condition!), listening to the birds, and thinking about my work for the day.
Ataraxia can be quite subjective (in terms of its origin). Wealth definitely helps and so does having genuine relationships instead of the numerous transactional ones we see these days.
The absence of necessity can be a source of rapturous gratitude for the precious reality.
Some things are interesting and some aren't. I think that the more one can limit unnecessary desires and see contentment as a worthwhile goal, the better things could be. Plenty of aspects of existence, such as aesthetic value and love, don't seem futile to many people.
When there is an indescribable serenity on the face that went through seemingly insurmountable odds when spending time with someone they care about, it serves to awaken one's will towards affirming the good.
None of this detracts from the necessity of reducing gratuitous harms, however. I hope that my fellow optimists can have a nuanced perspective and be more open-minded when it comes to ideas such as a liberal right to a dignified exit and transhumanism.
May you have a beautiful day!
I didnt say you were. But you know best.
:flower:
- Yukio Mishima on "The way of Samurai"
Looking at the examples available from natural selection and the evolutionary process, I think anyone anti-life should beware. The Darwinian rules don't seem to have many moral imperatives that humans would consider 'fair' or 'just.' If you invoke the Darwinian rules then that is what you personally might get.
The best hope for anyone antilife is the fact that those who love life care enough to try to convince them to think differently. We are their only hope against becoming spare parts for new life forms or any new animate or inanimate combination/structure way before they needed to due to their own confused choices.
The only value I see in them is they offer me a level of personal reflection and confirm for me how bad things can get on a personal level. I can say to myself 'well, at least you are not choosing to live life as some kind of daily, hour-to-hour curse.'
I assume anti-lifers struggle when nice things happen to them and to others around them as feeling good must be painful for them.
Yeah, but when it really comes to our own lives, we are all such egoist whimps. :sad:
If I die tomorrow, at least I'll be happy that my children are now so old that they will remember me. It would really suck to die when your children are so young that they won't remember anything. But at least I had them and a loving wife, so one notch to the "successful human/animal life"-table.
I have no suggestions if one finds life undesirable. Imagination is good, but living at the moment requires courage. That's it. Courage to face the mundane and the ordinary. Escapism has flourished over the last last decade or so. You've seen a lot of them in vlogs. Cottage fairies is one example. Another, is living a life in the 18th century, complete with costume and oil lamps and lack of modern technology. There's also the shopping addiction. Acquiring things to fill a void. Or just simply using drugs and alcohol to enter the state of stupor and mindlessness.
I don't know what to think of those people. I try to avoid them.
But I know that looking at the determination of animals in the wilderness, that's what I call living. They have enough energy pent up inside them that when they spring into action, all those energy is released like superpowers. Relatively, they live a short life -- when you always give your all and use all your energy to bag a prey, you're bound to have a shorter life. The wear and tear you sustain makes you powerful, but also short-lived.
What am I saying?
There's enough chemicals and enzymes in our body potent enough to fight hopelessness and boredom. We just need to know how to use them. When you use them, your mind is focused and even minutes of your life count. Of course, moments like that don't last 24 hours, 7 days a week. Eventually, the highs subside. That's when you sleep, or just do some physical activities. Or eat.
Youve already defeated your own argument that we are at home like other animals and extolled the existential /absurdist dilemma (of the specifically human condition) in one sentence.
Well you can't really be sure about that. Once I die it is blackness, I cannot verify past that. Also your point about disassembling is what Ernest Becker would call inventing stories to assuage death anxiety, in your case becoming part of something greater and eternal.
Also you will be forgotten, transhumanism ain't gonna fix that. I mean granted it's not gonna fix anything IMO.
Quoting universeness
Nah, it's just another blip in experience.
Living does not require courage, that's just rationalization to avoid having to reckon with death, same with calling death boring.
Quoting L'éléphant
That's sort of ignorance about what nature is like. Animals survive because they know nothing else. They aren't brave and I wouldn't call that living.
Quoting ssu
I think it would be better to die when they don't remember anything, it's less painful. Your reply sounds pretty self centered.
:death: :fire:
Quoting unenlightened
:strong: :smirk:
I don't see how what you just said rejects what I said. Care to explain?
Quoting Darkneos
Well, you're helping my argument, not hurting it. We are humans after all. So, yes, we use rationalization like animals use instinct. Courage consists of going against our tendency towards hopelessness. We use rationalization, of course. But there are enzymes and chemicals in our body at our disposal.
Quoting Darkneos
Pardon me. I went back to my post and see if I called the wild animals brave. I said, humans need that. The animals live the way they are designed to live. Because they know nothing else, they use their energy to fuel life.
Only one small path leads out, but its trailhead can only be seen by casting one's gaze above shoulder height, and none have yet looked that high up. They've heard of this Path of Hope, but never having seen it, they scoff and shrug, looking at the ground, firmly denying it.
:hearts: :sparkle:
I have many good memories of people that have died. They are not painful at all. Why would it be painful to have good (or even not so good) memories of people that have loved and cared about you?
If you think it's great to be an orphan who has no memory about his or her biological parents, I have to disagree. Do you really think that is better?
People die and if you remember the generation of your grandparents, the older people of you childhood, later you will notice that you have become part of that "old generation" to younger people.
Cioran is highly edifying in his inertia. Even suicide is caring too much.
No you dont, you can check out any time youd like. I think if you wanted to be dead you would be. You dont really want to check out though do you? What you actually want here is attention, to validate your feelings about how unimpressed you are with life as an option.
Im not one thats going to tell you life is precious or that you have a gift or you have good in your life if you'd just embrace it. I accept you get nothing out of life, that you see nothing special about living and that death/oblivion seems like a better option than living Ill concede all that to you right now.
What your wrong about is that any of those feelings have anything to do with how much life sucks or how much better an option death is. Life isnt the problem, you are.
Your thoughts are those of a depressed mind. Just because its a common response you get ( get therapy) doesn't mean its wrong. You might need meds or something else that you are unqualified to dismiss as a cure for your little dilemma.
If youre adamant about depression or other mental illness not being the source of your view here then youve already gotten the best advice in the form of a question:
Are you sure youre doing life right?
If you truly have nothing worthwhile to live for, then you are actually more free than most other people. With such little attachment to life you have a freedom, a liberation of action, that means you can fill your life with whatever you want. If you cant exercise that freedom, then thats on you, not life.
This is true for some but we have many people amongst us who are very humble and genuinely humanist. They just get on with helping people every day and hardly mention their own suffering. When you compliment them or show them admiration they tend to shrink away, truly embarrassed.
They are imo much more numerous, among the poor and weak than among the famous/rich and strong.
Incredible unsung hero like everyday people exist in all our communities. I am not suggesting such people are perfect but they certainly easily compensate for those I would label misanthropic.
Quoting ssu
WELL DONE SIR!! A great legacy!
Quoting Darkneos
Yes I can. Science has very strong empirical evidence for The law of Conservation of Energy, which states that Energy cannot be created or destroyed. In other words, the total amount of energy in the universe never changes, it can only change from one form to another. It is actually quite unlikely that after you die, some of your disassembled subatomic particles will never be involved in any new combination events until the end of the universe. YOU will be recycled.
Quoting Darkneos
I can only assure you and Mr Becker(in memorium) that I have no such death anxiety and I would suggest that you are simply trying to project your own anxiety onto me. I love life and will welcome death as a harbinger of change. I fear and I am anxious about the way I will die but I have no fear of oblivion for the obvious reason that there is no awareness.
Quoting Darkneos
You have no information regarding the legacy I will leave so you have no idea as to how long I will be remembered. Modern techniques store more and more information about our individual lives so future people will get to know a lot more about the lives of past people if they wish to. Future transhumanism has the potential to offer humans vastly improved robustness, ability and longevity. This will offer many new options. If you stick around you may witness its infancy. If you don't then there are many newborns to replace you. The global population has been increasing since we came out of the wilds.
There's always a way out. And I'm sure we don't mean death, which defeats the point.
Some motives you can't choose. Like, do you like certain types of food? Do you like orgasm? Do you dislike being hungry? Do you dislike being cold? All of these are ordinary motives that drive our lives and they are wired in our bodies or minds and thus are part of us. And they drive us toward pleasant feelings that make life worthwhile and away from unpleasant feelings that make life miserable. Getting killed is unpleasant and the survival drive drives you away from that.
:clap: In general and in history, I think non-humans have suffered more than humans. I wonder how many lions or lambs decide that life and living is just a bad idea and they should covet death instead? Why does the prey run from the predator when they offer the placid oblivion of death and I don't think that they would have the same concerns as @Darkneos that they might survive the attempt to cause their own termination. Surely that strong survival instinct that has already been mentioned many times and that all species seem to have must have important purpose behind it.
Right, I was talking about finding a way out of despair, not of life.
Yet helping others, bringing them happiness, make us feel good (at least me). And yes, people usually don't whine about their problems. Yet I don't think that humble and genuinely humanist people are totally indifferent about their own life. They don't want their lives to end.
Quoting universeness
Is that sarcasm, universeness? If so, why?
Ok, I have to admit that there was a bit of sarcasm with myself too in talking about a notch to the "successful human/animal life"-table.
The vast majority of people that have died before us are unknown and haven't left such an individual mark that we would remember them as historical figures. Yet very many of them are someones ancestors. Especially on a philosophy site the notion of continuation of life as a meaning for life might be boring and doesn't answer much, but it's something one cannot disregard.
I completely agree!
Quoting ssu
No! I think anyone who has a successful marriage and has produced children and has managed to bring them up in a loving environment and they have all reached old age and continue to thrive is a very good (or great) legacy. Perhaps my use of capitals made you suspicious that I was being sarcastic, maybe its normal in today's society where most people are still a little shell shocked from Trumpism, Bo Jo etc that all comments/compliments made by people you don't know are treated with suspicion.
I am sure there is a lot more significance to the legacy your life will leave than a loving marriage and reproduction but such achievements ARE in themselves very good components of your legacy.
Quoting ssu
This imo, is more true the further you go back in time than it is now. I already stated my general opinion in my response to darkneous above:
Quoting universeness
I think we have been, in the main, on the same page in our viewpoints on this topic.
Just a little bit more on this. I know some people who have traced the ancestry of their family and can describe a good deal of detail about many members of their family that go back centuries.
Historical figures that are known globally is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the information that does actually exist about the lives of non-famous people who lived. I find this quite wonderful.
I still remember a little about an everyday Roman soldier called Petronious Artibus because of some graffiti that was left about him. One stated 'Petronious Artibus got me pregnant!'
Yeah, that was it. Well, thanks for clearing this.
Quoting universeness
The basic problem is that only few of us have had great grandparents around to tell about their life. Hence it's usually this third generation where the personal link to history is lost. The thinking goes likes this: you surely remember what has happened in your lifetime. Everyone of us will remember for example the Covid-pandemic, which is likely a historical event (especially if the next pandemic won't hit us in the next 50 years). To events that have happened to your parents and grandparents one feels a link, especially if they have told themselves about it. But earlier generations, you don't usually know much if anything about their lives. Then it's hard to relate to them.
Usually people get interested about their family and roots only at older age. It should be something that children should interested in when there older generations still around. And as you said, some families have done this and have stories about people that have lived far earlier. I think it's valuable to keep these stories. And in my country it's quite interesting as the people have lived in the same places, not much immigration here before, and the Church books usually go to the Middle Ages.
I don't think this has ever been true as most parents attempt to nurture and teach their offspring how to survive and even how best to thrive in the world they live in. The level of legacy and influence that humans achieve is what makes the difference. From word of mouth traditions to the invention of methods to record (hieroglyphics, books etc) experiences and happenings, outside of the body, so that they last much longer than a human lifespan is the main reason why we gained dominion against all other species.
Quoting DA671
I am not sure what you mean here. The most unfortunate aspect of history is the distortion of truth and the manipulation of 'what really happened,' so I think the 'opinions of the posterity,' is crucial, especially, if those opinions are based on seriously dubious historical reportage such as those offered by theistic texts or historical events which were exclusively reported on by those in power at the time or those who conquered. History is rarely written by the vanquished.
All the points you make are valid, but as I said, this situation is changing. Think of how much information will be available to future generations about the lives of their ancestors. Current technology can hold every photograph, every textual or audio word you ever recorded, every piece of footage you ever recorded. You can gather it and back it up to a single SSD and to 'cloud storage' and pass the whole lot to your offspring as legacy files. This will now be available for the rest of time! To all future generations.
In what ways will such information be employed a million years from now? We will be the 'ancients' at that point. I wonder how they will judge the anti-life people alive today? I predict they will be unfavourable towards them based on the fact that sentient life will still be thriving a million years from now. If no such sentient life exists a million years from now then it won't matter anyway. If antilife wins then there will be nothing around to declare their victory. Perhaps anti-life is inevitable in the same way as anti-protons or antimatter or antichrist. Universal balance seems to be the norm. The good thing about the anti story is that matter won the battle of annihilation! Life defeated antilife long ago. That battle has already been decided. Time to get on with life!
It's true that the opinions of the posterity do matter for them. And because we as rational and empathetic beings care about what they think and how their lives would be, it's vital that we do everything we can to create a better tomorrow. I was only responding within the context of the value framework that some pessimists have wherein the absence of life's goods isn't bad because you wouldn't have any needs. Well, if that is true, then the fact that we wouldn't be remembered by everyone long after we are gone should not be a problem (or a blessing), considering that we wouldn't exist to lose or gain from that. To summarise, one should not be inconsistent.
As I have said many times, to me, the fundamental is a question of purpose. A universe devoid of life has no purpose that I can conceive of. Such pointlessness is far worse than any concept of undeserved harms human morality or human moralists can come up with. I vote for many more years of harms and suffering for humans, including those who some choose to label 'newborn innocents,' alongside the many many joys and wonders of life which also occur very regularly. I very much prefer this state, compared to the alternative of a lifeless, pointless universe. All good people will also, of course, continue to do exactly what you have suggested many times. We will continue to help alleviate and remove all forms of unjust and unnecessary suffering and even obtain far more control over the inevitability of death.
I would also ask this. Why is the survival instinct so strong in all species if purposeless nonexistence is the superior natural state? Something seems to me to be much better than nothing!
Agreed and life affirmation is already based on sound science imo.
Matter survived and continues to do so against antimatter annihilation and imo, it follows that life will continue to survive against antilife! The Universe will produce life because that is what it did and that is what it does!
One can't take the mechanisms of evolution (survival fit/reproduction) as the universe "saying" anything. It is a contingent form of how matter formed and a mechanism whereby some of that matter (biological matter), has developed. It isn't a moral statement from the universe. Category errors and misguided understanding of sentience, contingency, and implication thereof.
The moderators of this site insist that I be nicer to antinatalists. I don't want to be nicer to them but I am threatened with getting banned if I don't and I have already had what I considered to be a very reasonable thread removed regarding the issue of falling foul of discussion site guidelines or the ruminations of individual moderators/administrators so, as I don't wish to be accused of throwing my own toys out of my pram. I will try to comply with their request, but it's not easy.
The universe doesnt benefit or not benefit anything. Lucky for you the dicey ethical practice for assuming for others doesnt apply to that category of thing.
Yep no one would have to worry about that.
Benefit with non-benefit (negative) on someone elses behalf..you know the position.
Its never just or right to presume such significant conditions and harms for another. Only when ameliorating greater with lesser harms and you cant get consent which this is not a case of.
Unless your prevention is not causing a greater good to not exist and the individual has willingly chosen to be in a particular state of affairs (which procreation is not a case of), it is not ethical to cease the provision of all happiness. Also, non-existent beings cannot ask to exist. If creation can be an imposition, it can also be seen as a gift.
Quoting DA671
Why is that a moral obligation to start if nothing was there who needed it in the first place and there are many negative collaterals attached to this decision? You would be maybe more accurate if you were only giving a pure good with no contingencies.
Quoting DA671
Gifts dont entail such significant harms and conditions usually. One can call anything a gift and that would be gaslighting to some extent.
If there is no moral obligation to create benefits unless there is a need, then there is also no requirement to never create someone unless doing so causes an actual being to be satisfied and there are no additional positives. Your view might have been more tenable if the negatives were all that existed. Fortunately, this is not the case.
Impositions don't entail indescribable value. But one could call anything an imposition if they are primarily concerned with their own negative perspective, which would be a sort of gaslighting as well. For what it's worth, I don't think that life is always a gift. Suffering should be taken extremely seriously and there should be a peaceful way out.
Not really no, there is not courage to living when its the default. If anything courage is killing yourself when evolution and society say to keep going.
Quoting ssu
Actually yes since it's less painful
Why indeed but that's not really an argument to continue living.
Also "unjust", "unnecessary"? That's casting an awful lot of assumptions onto existence.
Then when get to the flaw of purpose, since a universe with life is just as purposeless as one without it. There is no ultimately point to existence, it simply persists.
But you're in the wrong here. I universe without life sounds amazing. I would like to "live" in it, ironic I know, to bask in the absolute silence of it all. For however long I last, and then know with my death extinction of all life would at last occur.
No, that's just a claim. There is nothing to say the world wouldn't end if I died. You make too many assumptions.
Quoting litewave
Yes, no, no, no. Getting killed being unpleasant is debatable and pleasant feelings don't make life worthwhile just tolerable. NEXT. Also it sounds horrifying to think that all these drives out of your control keep you here when you don't want to be.
Quoting universeness
This is, quite frankly, a delusion way of thinking to put it bluntly. If you think transhumanism is gonna do any of that you're quite wrong. Transhumanism is nothing but a pipe dream. Not to mention you're proving Ernest Becker's point about having death anxiety and being motivated by it. Transhumanism is literally death anxiety.
Quoting Hanover
Hope is little more than delusion that promises what it can't deliver.
Life sucks, eh? :snicker:
Just playing class clown and riffing on the title of the thread.
:up:
1. We're all programmed to die (senex) in a manner of speaking
What if, just what if, bio (life itself) is also programmed to, well, die (off)/go exitinct?
Fallacy of composition?
It is an interesting line of inquiry though, oui? Bios may have a shelf-life i.e. it has an expiry date but we're not talking of mere kiloyears here; think geological timescales. Most ELEs (extinction level events) have been external ones but it's possible that there could be internal gene-based extinction codes that could be turned on after some millions/billions of years. Random thought.
The purpose is inferred from facts as they stand/appear to us. Objection sustained!
My life ain't something to brag about but here I am, (seemingly) content, happy enough to want to keep breathing.
Getting killed means overcoming the survival drive, which makes it unpleasant. Maybe you don't have enough pleasant feelings, because pleasant feelings are what makes one enjoy life - by definition. Aren't you diagnosed with anhedonia?
Quoting Darkneos
But they also drive you to improve your life, so they can be your friends. You are what you are, so it seems best to accept it and make the best of it.
Perhaps not for you.
You are 'overruling' natural instinct. I am glad that humans can do that or else we could not overrule a Darwinian law of the jungle approach to life but as I said before, I am glad I don't carry your self-imposed cage in which you experience your life as a moment to moment curse.
Quoting Darkneos
So you disagree with the antinatalists that its immoral to have kids due to the existence of unneccessary and unjust harms/suffering?
Quoting Darkneos
So I suppose you see terms like 'human progress' or 'legacy' or 'lives building on lives' or 'compulsion to find the answers to the big questions,' or 'I feel its my purpose in life to.....,' etc to be purposeless. You employ a very strange and unconvincing form of logic. Quite irrational actually.
Quoting Darkneos
Perhaps we could scientifically test how much you would enjoy this by placing you in a simulation of complete sensory deprivation. We could remove 'ironic' and allow you to actually "live" it.
We can use chemicals to temporarily paralyse you and completely remove your sense of touch. Temporarily remove your sight, hearing and sense of smell and taste. No sensory input whatsoever. We could leave you like that whilst still maintaining your bodily functions for 10 years. We can then reinstate your senses and you can describe your bliss to the human race. There are many 'locked in' medical conditions which are not so far from this state such as Encephalitis lethargica as depicted in the film awakenings. We would of course leave your brain working in the same way it does now so that your experience would be 'live' as you wanted instead of the 'no awareness' offered by death. We can induce 8 hours of sleep for you in each 24h period. Would you volunteer for this 'living death' experiment?
Having a lively imagination is no excuse to misunderstand what possible interpretations exist. Biological facts do not support a teleological interpretation. Period.
Mea culpa. Philosophy ain't no picnic. Sometimes, I feel like I came to the wrong place!
The law of the conservation of energy is not a claim, the clue is in the title. There is indeed a frame of reference that suggests that from your point of view, the Universe ends when you die. In reality, it might take many trillions of years for all life to truly end in the universe but as you will not experience time passing after you are dead, trillions of years and an instant will be all the same to you. This was also the case before you were born. Just as well you were formed and became alive or else you and all other antilifers would not have ever been able to complain about your existence.
Quoting Darkneos
Nonesense!
Quoting Darkneos
I am with Alexander Pope. Hope springs eternal.
Quoting universeness
Just a little more on this. Transhumanism seeks more control over the inevitability of death and there may be an aspect of death anxiety as one of the drivers but you ignore the absolute practicality of improving human choices, robustness, ability and longevity. Space is not life-friendly in the main at the moment and it is very advisable that humans become an interplanetary or even interstellar species asap.
It is a pragmatic survival imperative. We must leave the nest as we are too vulnerable if we stay confined to one planet. Feel free to label this concern 'extinction anxiety.' Having improved robustness, ability and longevity will help us survive in the vastness of space. All power to transhumanism! as long any enhancements will maintain at least the majority of what is considered human identity or me, myself and I ....... and of course you.
How is it less painful?
Death is a natural thing. It happens. When you have had a nice relationship with someone, when the person dies you will have fond memories about him or her. It's just part of life.
Yet not having parents is usually far more traumatic and a rare unfortunate thing.
The friend, in a playful mood, asked, "If there's no difference between being alive and being dead, why not just kill yourself?"
The philosopher replied, "Since there's no difference between being alive and being dead, why should I go to the trouble?"
How do you know????
No, it has to do with the belief that you are your body; and it has to do with the belief that when the body dies, "it's all over".
Note: These beliefs are dogmatic, axiomatic. We're not supposed to question them.
Yet every day, we also act in ways that show that we don't hold those beliefs consistently.
And they do, the list is growing:
Quoting Darkneos
It's more the case that we're craving sensual pleasures. We don't fear death per se; we fear that we won't be supplied with sensual pleasures or that we'll run out of them.
The courage to lower one's existential standards! Yay!
"Facing" the mundane and the ordinary is yet another form of escapism.
E.M Cioran said it better:
The irony of living to be 84 years old and die of Alzheimer's!
I'd love to discuss Buddhism with him.
He truly understood melancholy from the inside. That is to say.. He knew that suicide was only ever something as an idea and was never a proper response because the damage is never undone. Basically, there is no relief, only moments of calmness within life itself. Though rare.
[i]The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.[/i]
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+58&version=NIV
Quoting Jamal
Given the global trend toward legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, will you rethink your negative take on the "anti-life stuff"?
Not enough return upon investment.
Contrary to the belief of capitalists and assorted others, people do not have an infinite willingness to invest any amount of effort, however great, into obtaining any amount of sensual pleasure, however small. You will not work the entire day just for a morsel of food.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13302/page/p1
A person doesn't live in a socio-psychological vacuum, therefore, the answer to this question cannot be idiosyncratic.
It doesn't have to be interpreted as a negative take or mod judgement on the subject. E.g. We could say it's more convenient and efficient to have everything in one discussion. Anyhow, it took me years of careful consideration and preparation to come up with this cunning plan, so I'm not for backing down now.
Why do these quotes oddly cheer me up :lol:?
The market place is like Schopenhauer's Will playing out in an endless cycle of "supply" and "demand" eating each other, as you say- like the ouroboros (prey-predator). Your constant demands and his supply means suffering will continue.. NOW GET BACK TO WORK! People need work to provide "meaning". It's part of a "system" (free, socialist, or otherwise) that needs feeding with more people and more people's attention. Nothing gets done on its own.. but everyone must contribute or perish. How can birth not be a political question? Obviously people want the system to keep going.. More reinforcing of the supply and demand.. Double down. Meanwhile the ouroboros' squeeze gets tighter and tighter.
The self-destruct countdown began...quando?
The beginning of man. The self-destruct was there from the start. When man first demanded something and needed a supply of it. When someone supplied the demand and demanded other people's labor which could be sold to the supplier so that their own demands can be satisfied. Again, it's Will playing out, embodied in the real world transactions of the labor force and the marketplace.
Either you don't know Schopenhauer, or you don't know how I am applying it thusly to the economic sphere. Which is it?
Will in Schop is an insatiable craving at the heart of existence. It strives-but-for-naught, causing its phenomenological manifestations bear the brunt of the thing-in-itself. Humans suffer the most because of our self-awareness of this suffering.
The economic system is a system of striving-after.. In the Schopenhauerian sense, it is striving for survival and entertainment.. A physical representation of our inability to "just be". Our demands and supplies are physico-social manifestations of this endless cycle of willing whereby we cannot just exist, in calmness, non-desireless states, but must work at one end and distract in another. It self-reinforces itself with each demand and supply offered...It tightens the ouroboros.
The nightmare scenario that you're claiming life is is I think a severe case of cherry picking aka confirmation bias.
Anyway, true it is that the system we currently operate under leaves much to be desired - it be cold-hearted, it fails to address our emotional needs of which there are many. However, as I see it, this ain't a done deal with zero options for improvement. Conditions could be bettered and we may begin to, at some point, appreciate life as gift, worth it, enjoyable, and so on.
Homer explains it best:
You cannot decouple the two. You can do things because you absolutely want to or because it brings the medium for your survival (in this case money- which buys goods and services, you see). So no, this is ANOTHER conceit of the kind/benevolent dictators who provide you these "meaningful" jobs for X hours. Keep 'em coming Agent Smith..
Quoting Agent Smith
Are you a capital investor? Sounds like the defense of one me thinks :D.
Quoting Agent Smith
Get back to work. That minutia isn't going to monger itself! I just don't find anything much in this statement of consolation, or refutation really. More cold-hearted "This is how it is.. stop saying stuff.. the system is good, the system works, the system is all we have". Yadayadayada
Indeed, decoupling is the wrong concept to use here; what I actually meant was how work transformed into something more than, not just, gathering/hunting/farming; there was a time when work meant just that - sensu amplo, foraging.
Post-agricultural revolution, things changed, in my humble opinion for the better, and we could engage in activities that had no direct nutritional payoffs, things like painting/music/philosophy/etc.
In a sense food lost its numero uno position in re labor to second place, below other more, let's just say, sublime aforementioned activities. To me this is a significant upgrade to the status of work which should matter, oui? Especially if the downsides of having to look for/hold a job is a key premise in an/any argument. :smile:
Youre overlooking what Im saying for a straw man that you want me to say. Im not taking about reverting to a hunting gathering society simply by criticizing what is going on now. Any economic model whereby we de facto are forced into a situation of work to survive would be thus the target. You are looking at the accidentals when Im talking of the essentials. And its all relative as the next level of his work manifests is the new norm.
Read what Im actually saying if you want to move this forward.
I believe I've mentioned this before - some ideas tend to be photographs, others videos!
Nothing about what I was talking about though. Quoting Agent Smith
HAHAHHAHA :rofl: Why?
Quoting Agent Smith
What is your modus operendi? Why would people ever give up their time for something they have to do? Falling over each other to "work" is simply called doing what you want when you want it because you want to do it, with no contingencies for needing to do it (like for survival). Jobs don't work like that. Jobs are not there for your edification. They are there to produce wealth to buy (as Homer said) goods and services. Or,, for the very rich, to grow their wealth continually and intergenerationally without buying any goods and services beyond more investments to reinvest in.
:rofl: I don't need to embarrass myself further!
Life really does suck!
I worked in education for 30+ years. I also served a 4 year apprenticeship as a painter and decorator.
Teaching was as much of a vocation as it was a job. Painting and decorating was more of a job but I got a lot of personal satisfaction/joy out of converting old dirty, decaying rooms into fresh, maintained, preserved, sanitised, pretty rooms. I cannot begin to express to you the incredible moments I had in my teaching career when I managed to inspire kids and enhanced their interest in and enjoyment of learning.
Quoting Agent Smith
I think you are absolutely correct. Hopefully, in the future, most of the mundane repetitive jobs will be automated. I also think that personal maintenance may take less and less time in the future as well.
We used to have to wash clothes in the river so washing machines definitely do help.
If more people can access more meaningful, purposeful activities that are based on what people are actually interested in then I think you are correct, people will want to work.
A Universal basic income for all, would make this more feasible.
If we can automate agriculture, manufacturing, recycling etc etc then 'your daily job' can become less about earning money to sustain your existence and more about living a fulfilling life and leaving a legacy which adds to human progress. Such a society can be achieved and its creation would be helped if the anti-life people would help to make it happen and stop being the misanthropes they are.
Maybe a future job title will be 'discussion site contributor,' sounds valid to me!
Quoting Darkneos
I'd question this desire for something more than survival instincts. Our attachment to life isn't "just" survival instinct, it's a complex of attachments and emotions and history and future and present and...
A complex, I think, is a good description -- leaving open what precisely makes us tick, while noting that it's not simple.
So coming to understand how or why we might come to desire death -- while still being alive! -- will also be complicated.
To the refrain "but this is not enough to justify going on":
Whether it is or isn't enough really is up to you. It's your relationship to the world, to yourself, to your emotions and needs and people. There is no "reason" someone can give you to make you feel any differently about those. The unjust thing about this world is that it's probably not even your fault you feel this way -- but because it's your life, your emotions, your desire, well... it still falls to you to learn how to live with it.
Indeed, I wonder if it is a post-facto excuse for justifying the fact that life entails work, and thus if work isn't meaningful then much of what sustains life isn't meaningful, and thus procreation is putting upon people not a benefit but a burden simply to "deal with". In other words, people MUST find meaning in work, otherwise implications are not good.
Not really, so far they are facts not beliefs. Anything saying you are not the body hasn't held up very well
It is some variation of survival instinct or another. Meaning is just another invention we make to trick ourselves into believing life is worthwhile.
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.". --Camus
Did someone post that already? I didn't look.
Thanks for the shoutout, Jerry! I'm glad you saw some value there.
As Schopenhauer once said:
I think he was onto something.
The reason it isnt convincing is because the argument is stupid. Its fundamentally anti-life. Thats more a matter of mood and temperament than sound reasoning. Nietzsche has plenty to say on this far more articulate than me.
Im the opposite of you: I dont have kids, and Im not convinced in the slightest.
Well, frankly, it would be amazing if we didn't have to work at all and still have our needs & wants met to our satisfaction. This sentiment (something for nothing) has been associated with "kids these days!", as if to say the notion is puerile, a cardinal sign of an immature mind. However, what about the adult obsession with efficiency, making things easier, etc.? Such concepts, taken to their natural endpoint, imply that even adults want something for nothing. We wanna do magic! I suppose I would advocate for natalism of some kind, a toned-down version of it, just to see what happens...in the end? Do we succeed/fail? Mind you I'm working outside the domain of ethics here! Mighty interesting, oui?
It's anti-suffering. Saving a life in your care, and starting a life are two different things. You are equivocating to make a point.. But it's out-of-hand condemnation without consideration. Efficient, but not fully thought out.
You may have something there...
However, I don't think natalism should THUS be considered as somehow at a future point, these things will be figured out. You don't cause negatives for other in the hopes that at some undefined point, they get something from it. That is done maybe when ameliorating greater with lesser harms (forced schooling for children, etc.) but not an excuse in general to just "do" to people. You don't create immense suffering for generations for some undefined future goal of "humanity".. What else can we "do" to people for a cause? The slippery slope is precipitous with this kind of philosophy.
But sure, if work was abolished, that would be a benefit.. I am not against it. I just wouldn't put people in harms way or to impose my will on them, or create impositions for them to see this happen in some undefined future state. You are creating people who must experience work for generations before (or even if) any of this would take place (if at all).
Also anti-joy and anti-life.
If youre in favor of not having kids, dont have any. If youre arguing that human beings shouldnt have kids, then youre anti-life. The result is the end of the species. That essentially says: life is evil. Evil because suffering exists.
Just dressed up nihilism.
Why anyone chooses to go on and on about this to fight THIS battle is an interesting psychological fact about them. But nothing more.
If you believe something is not ethical because of X, Y, and Z, why would that not be something one should have a philosophical position on? Because you disagree with it? Some people think abortion is right or wrong. Some people think eating highly-sentient animals is right or wrong. Some people think that you are obligated to give as much as you can. Some people think you are not obligated to do X, or you are obligated to do Y. Some people think you can never lie. Some people think it is okay to cheat on your wife, steal from a mega-corporation, take something if no one knows, etc. etc. etc. It's all positions people can have and debate. Unfairly targeting a position on the ethics of procreating, is more an anti-anatinatalist problem. I have no problem with good faith debate. I have a problem with people who condemn it out of hand due to their own defenses or whatnot. I rather, them ignore if they aren't going to consider the views and want to twist it as somehow "illogical".. It's logical, just not the logic you want to hear.
As for the end of the species.. You already have the presumption that ethics entails the continuance of the species over creating actual individuals who will be imposed upon. You are jumping to the conclusion without engaging any of the evidence against such a notion. A real creation of someone else's suffering is pitted against someone's sadness from an abstraction.. Yet, the emotional appeal of the abstraction clouds the reasoning of the ethics... so the ethics is violently opposed, as Schopenhauer observed.
Quoting Xtrix
Wrong again.. At least get your terms correct. Nihilism in ethics, it he belief in no values. A nihilist wouldn't give a fuck if you procreated or not. They generally don't take positions that put values on things. Rather, it is philosophical pessimism, and it's not dressed up.
Oh and it's not anti-joy. A life full of joy is better than a life bereft of joy. Creating a life, that will definitely impose on someone and create impositions for them, negates the fact that there is joy. Creating joy is not an obligation. Not creating harms where it didn't have to take place is. My wanting to cause joy, does not mean I get to create more harms too for them.
There is an odd religious mania in the pro-procreation view.. One is "spreading joy" (without any thought to the other consequences one is spreading). And somehow THIS is an obligation unto itself.. The Universe needs its experiencers of it?? More like projection of ones own sadness onto the universe.. You are not the universe.. The universe isn't even a proper place for this kind of placement of evaluation.. If not the universe, it's just you being sad about something not happening. An abstraction of future events that will not take place. And thus somehow a justification for more harm to others because people shouldn't feel sad about abstractions somehow, as an absolute fact of ethics.. Odd.
There are reasons people want to procreate.. whether or not they are ethical.. Understood and can agree if stated in those terms. But once you say, THEREFORE people should procreate, that becomes an ethical statement, or at the least, axiological.
Neither are obligations. There's either the desire to give life or not. Those who don't want to are welcome. But not everyone views suffering and exclaims "life is refuted," which is what antienatalism rests on. If you don't share that attitude, then the rest is just nonsense. I don't share that attitude.
Again, for those who do -- fine. Then kill yourself, don't have kids, etc. That's your right. But why one wants to go around infecting others with this morbid, anti-life view is beyond me. I guess that's your right too, in the end. What can you do. Carry on!
It's dressed up nihilism. Always has been.
So if you knew that that life would suffer in X amount (for you unreasonably).. Should that not be considered? You would normally say yes (but maybe not cause you want to make a point debating me perhaps)..
ntly creating negatives (impositions, harms) for others that can't be escaped.. That in itself is enough not to do unto another person.
Quoting Xtrix
You can say that about any position though. What makes any other ethical position immune from someone disagreeing with it? That's like saying.. I don't believe in X ethical position, so the rest is nonsense.. So if you don't believe in Kant's ideas, should it be banished from philosophical debate? Seems ridiculous to me.. You are making unreasonable hoops for antinatalism to jump through as if it is not like any other ethical system one can believe or not believe. I never said you are FORCED to believe it. Now that truly would be hypocritical to impose the view after saying that impositions themselves should be avoided unto others!
Quoting Xtrix
Oh dear, a philosophical position has a position that is counter to your current belief-system.. Thus it should be violently opposed. Great job advocating for free speech in the confines of a respectable forum. Rather, any position you don't hold should also be banished right? Or no, just this because YOU have opinions on it.
Haha.. What does that even matter? It isn't but why do you think that makes a point? Big Lebowski or something? Great movie, by the way.
Work with me here; for the moment ignore ethics, Momma Nature has been doing that all this while, oui? Maybe that's not entirely accurate but methinks there's a grain or two of truth in my statement. Now, sir/madam, as the case maybe, can you think of one/two good reasons why we should have children?
Too, it just dawned on me, ethics revolves around two essential doodads:
1. Life/Phanes/Existence
2. Suffering/Algos
Antinatalism is unethical for the simple reason that nonexistence (death, killing) is. You can't claim to be moral in any sense of the word if as a solution to a problem you recommend nonexistence. Ethics is all about creating/preserving life while attempting to make the experience a memorable (read happy) one.
I'll ease off here because at the end you did say:
Quoting Xtrix
So, in recognition of this, I'll respect that you agree to disagree. I have no problem with that. I only have a problem when people want to banish it from any public forum. Just discounting out of hand and banishing because you think it is distasteful to your mores, doesn't say anything against it. Socrates, Galileo, Bruno, Inquisitions, that's what you get with that kind of thinking.
:chin:
Really? I thought it was about right action? You are putting a spin on it such that of course, antinatalism would thus never be "ethical".. If ethics entails procreation, thus antinatalism is not ethical. But of course, the antinatalist would never define ethics so. They would define ethics as principles of right and wrong behavior.
I said what I hadta say!
If you're interested, you might wanna read up on the taijitu (yin-yang). When someone cares (too much) about life, he becomes a mass-murderer! :chin:
Thanos cared too much. I'm ignoring the "too much" part!
Look, I'll give you a secret about my antinatalism, that isn't really a secret if you pay attention to my whole corpus (which I don't expect you to :)). Antinatalism isn't just about the principle itself, though it can be debated on its own without any connection to a broader principle... But I do think it is also its implications on the broader life we live.
What are these impositions of life?
Why should they be endured?
How should we treat each other if we must endure them?
What are we perpetuating when we create more people?
So I discuss things like the burdens of survival and striving-after of the human condition.
I discuss what it means to not make others unduly suffer even more than they should.
I discuss the political choice one is making for another by procreating them. There is a system in place, and one wants to keep this system going, and more people to endure it.
Vitals!
My own take is that the problem of suffering at the heart of natalism-antinatalism is this:
1. (How to) Live happily (?).
Note live happily.
You can't, as is obvious to you, recommend nonexistence as a solution then, oui?
You are your brain Baker. We've known that for decades in science now. Its not a debate. Scoop the brain out of someone and that aspect of the brain that was them is gone. It is only your imagination and hope that somehow you will continue on after death. You will not. That is fact.
Your implication is we need to create people so that they can be happy. If every life was an individualized utopia, you would have solid ground. It obviously isn't. So, yes, you can try to find happiness in life once born, but it doesn't negate that life entails a lot of other stuff as well, to be endured. And this isn't to be ignored.
The natural response is to reify suffering as a necessity for a complete experience. I just don't think it is our job to bring people into the world to suffer and then learn from their suffering. Who are we? How is this NOT a political position for someone else? And of course, besides that this is wrong to want people to suffer because YOU think it is worthwhile for them (making that decision for them), suffering many times goes off the rails.. more than you predicted or expected.
I sympathize with the antinatalist crowd. Suffering tops the list of humanity's and also all life's problems - people seem too distracted to notice their own dukkha, especially in the modern world with cyberspace providing intermittent relief (for folks like myself). Billions are, to use a Matrix analogy, plugged in/jacked into virtual communities; I consider this a symptom of our dissatisfaction with the real world (dukkha manifests in interesting ways). In short antinatalism has a point.
However, this also means that if people are happy, they'll choose life.
Conclusion: :chin:
Do you detect any problems with the following list which has been ranked in termsa preference?
1. Life + Happiness
2. Nonexistence
My gut instincts tell me that antinatalists should give their nod of approval for the order, it makes sense to them. Therein lies the rub, oui mes amies?
Good points.
Quoting Agent Smith
If you like the flow states and the pleasures that come from the obstacle course, that's great.
1) Does it actually last for a lifetime, or is intermittent?
2) Does the fact that there is an obstacle course presented to you (foisted if you will) not give you pause?
3) Whilst the need for happiness? Isn't there a state of lack implied here that we are trying to constantly fulfill?
You had it right with the dukkha.. keep going with that theme.
I already answered:
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't think it's a good idea but I trust mother nature or, more accurately, evolution. Suicides happen for a reason I suppose - those who can't take it are being culled automatically i.e. only those who don't mind suffering will be able to pass down their apathetic genes. In the long run what'll happen is our pleasure-pain sensing apparatus will be recalibrated to a new, higher pain threshold and all will be well. :snicker:
I notice you don't answer my questions. Not a great way to dialogue.. and sort of unfair to me who is trying to do one.
Apologies! Not a refusal to answer, but an inability to answer! Please carry on. Danke for sharing your views. Paranesis!
You haven't thought enough or at all about it? Or have come up with no answer?
There's that word "just" again --
any one name is easy to put aside, when you have another set of names and operators.
{J}(NAME) -> "just an invention/trick/illusion"
So there's what's apparent, and then there's what is real. For any named reason one will reduce said reason with the above "just" operator, categorizing the reasons people give as apparent.
The real, here, is . . . well, what, precisely?
Let's just say whatever it is, it certainly isn't any possible reason someone might give that they feel life is worthwhile. You see the real, and these all fall to the above described operator.
But unlike Plato, who talks of a light -- a knowledge of the good, the beautiful and the true -- you just say "I want you all to feel life is not worthwhile!" -- why would we do that?
I have no desire to do so. And I dont consider it illogical. I just think its silly and those who pick this hill to die on are silly. But like I said, thats their prerogative!
:up:
It's nice to see someone else call out this effervescent real.
:up:
I would suggest that your conclusion should be simply 'make your choice!'
I cite again (as an atheist) a variant based on what's in Deuteronomy 30:15-20
This from the first episode of Carl Sagan's series Cosmos.
'I lay before thee life and the curse, therefore choose life so that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.'
You can live life as an hour-to-hour daily chore if you choose and covet death and you will have earned my personal pity. That's all a person can do who loves life. Pity those who are anti-life and just make sure those who live are as protected as they can be from any extreme maniacs who project anti-life into an attraction to commit an atrocity against life.
I would suggest that genuine empathy is emotionally challenging for many people, especially if deeply felt but pity is a different harsher offering that entails only a very minor burden on my emotions.
Agent Smith makes a mental note of that! Feels important!
:up: Stay with the light side of the force, Ya auld Jedi!
I hope I'll be able to remember that under fire! Muchas gracias!
I do not have kids but I would lie to them if it would be necessary to their safety
Quoting Philosophim
This is a philosophy forum. This includes philosophy of science.
The OP's problem comes precisely from a lack of appreciation for the philosophy of science, and an uncritical internalization of particular scientific and popularly held claims.
Quoting Jamal
Unfortunately, forums like this are the only place where this topic can be discussed in an at least half-way meaningful manner for ordinary people. Meawhile, the trend toward a favorable attitude toward assisted suicide and euthanasia continues. And with that, a favoring of a superficial take on the topic of "meaning of life". What is more, people who are supposedly happy with life nonchalantly advise others to kill themselves if they're not too keen on living. One would hope moderators would neither give such advice, nor passively approve of it.
You yet have to show that you're not another one of Sisyphus' waterboys.
On the contrary. People generally don't value food production enough, hence the abuse of the planet.
A person doesn't live in a socio-psychological vaccum. Thus neither the existential problem nor the solution to it are within the person's power.
Ironically, both the antinatalists as well as the natalists are still firmly immersed in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, they differ only in which types of sensual pleasures they pursue.
The pursuit of sensual pleasures necessarily entails suffering.
Well, I would say that I have quite a lot of things I enjoy, but at the end of the day I still question myself whether it´s all worth it. I love my family, friends, have an interesting job, enough money, love long walks, driving, cooking, coffee .but still theres something at the back of my head saying - is it enough?
Also I do think that preferring nothingness is a stupid concept, because for me theres nothing after death, no you to enjoy the preferred nothingness :roll: . For now suicide seems irrational.
So therefore the question why go on or better yet how to go on, what to strive for? (I mean it still could be just symptoms of depression, but who knows :confused: )
Your core sounds like it has strength. You may well conquer your own negatives. For what it's worth to you, I hope you do.
That's a lot of E.M. Cioran.. Ever read him?
Not sure why you think that, but ok.
Hum, I thought getting married and having children was how to actualize myself as a woman. I used to feel very sorry for single people because they did not enjoy the benefits of love and marriage. I have noticed in my later years, that many older people chose to live near a son or daughter and grandchildren. I loved being a grandmother and great-grandmother. Saying that is about fear seems like an odd way of understanding the joys of family.
:clap: :clap:
There are not benefits. Marriage is a community of sacrifices. Raising and maintaining a child is complex as hell and you do not how the tables would turn out in the future. Probably I can end up being cheated by my wife or mistreated by my own kid. So no... I prefer live in loneliness rather than being married.
One has to appreciate the positive sides what your life has.
I should appreciate the positive sides of my life, indeed. But I think those positive feelings depend on my own. I never understood why there are some people who share half of their lives with another person. I respect it but I just don't get it.
Loneliness doesn't necessarily lead us to sadness. It depends on each context. If you appreciate being alone maybe this is the kind of life you should choose for.
Furthermore, marriage is not connected to affection. For example, I don't have a girlfriend, and neither Kids and friends. But I feel respected and esteemed inside this forum. To be honest with you, ssu, I guess I never be able to find such respect in real life
The members of this forum are part of real life. You type many interesting things and take nice photo's, why would that change if I met you in person?
I have never married and have no kids. I have been engaged twice' lived with women, had many short relationships but my long-term ones just never worked out. I, like you now, prefer my personal freedom compared to what is offered in a relationship but I am 58 now. Nature has turned its attention towards younger prospects for reproduction. I am now relatively irrelevant in the continuation of the species imperative but under the rules, I am still allowed to have lots of fun!
I would not change in person because the way I interact in this forum is how I really am in real life. If you ever met me in person you would see I am the same Javi in The Philosophy Forum and in physical world. I am not using masks here and I am happy the way I act inside this group.
But in physical world is different, or at least due to the type of persons surrounded with me. I always doubt if it is worthy to open my mind and hearts to them. I feel I would be disappointed...
I appreciated and understand your caution with those you don't know yet.
To me, it's a bit like the pioneer spirit. Social interaction has risk but can also have great rewards.
Sounds like you can have as many friends and relationships as you want Javi. You just have your own preferred approach and having the choice to get involved or not is yours. That's the kind of freedoms we all insist on, yes?
I am sorry. Everything in life has some risk. You could have the best job in the world and a lovely house, great car, and loose it all. Then who will you be without everything that once defined you?
For sure marriage and family involve risk. It surely is not something anyone should do without a lot of talking! That piece of knowledge comes from hindsight. I took so much for granted and that was a mistake. So if you ever change your mind about marriage and family please remember to talk about everything that is important to you. There is really good information in books and on the internet and the more we know the better are our chances of doing well. This video is really good and perfect for you. It is about why we marry the wrong person. Please give it a try and tell me what think.
https://www.google.com/search?q=why+we+marry+the+wrong+person&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS926US926&oq=Why+we+marr&aqs=chrome.0.0i512l2j69i57j0i512l5j0i390l2.4428j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Well, yes you are right somehow right. I am only 25 years old. So, I do not know what the future really holds and probably I make some friends the next year
Athena, I am so much appreciated of all information you have provided to me. But, trust me please. I do not see myself in a marriage because I already lived the experience of being heartbroken and I don't want to go through the same painful process.
:clap: Yeah, at 25, leave an inside light on and a wee door ajar, so that people can notice you and say hello!
Happened to me three times so far. Dark, nasty and very very painful. It's Humpty Dumpty time, you almost have to put yourself together again from scratch but I really did come back again, each time, stronger but different. You lose the innocent you but my first was far worse than my second which was much worse than my third. I think I am almost immune now. I can still give as much as ever but I have much stronger armour against the 'unexpected.'
Curiosity can be part of the motive to be with others. But a desire to be soothed and affirmed by others, or needed and valued, I see it as relating to lack of self esteem.
Not that I deny such things. If I can't affirm myself I am not against being affirmed, and appreciate it. But I want to eventually be able to affirm myself.
Can grow from relationships as relationships bring up insecurities so they can be faced and overcome, learning how to be vulnerable but also how to have healthy boundaries.
Sorry, just noticed the tense, why the past tense? Just a typo? a 'd' that shouldn't be there, no alternate horrors I hope.
You mentioned depression, so I'm responding with that frame in mind - I'm speaking from the perspective of one who manages his own depression.
I know what I'd say to myself if I couldn't come up with something more but just felt a kind of malingering malaise that asks if I need or want more -- but I couldn't answer that question for you. And if your question is as general as, what should I strive for? Then even more so, no one could answer that question for you. If anything, I'd say I'm done with striving -- I'm sick and tired of trying. I like not-trying. I like not-doing. It's the best place to be. Striving is hard. not-doing is relaxing. But I don't recommend that as a universal tonic. It's just what I want now.
I'm trying to be careful to be sure I'm only speaking for myself; to not give advice, because *if* your feeling is more than a philosophical wondering about "the point of it all", then none of us are in a good position to offer anything that might really help. All I can do is say I know what causes that feeling in me, and note that you're not alone in feeling it. But the actual resolution of or living with these feelings isn't a well known or even presently knowable process, at least in a general way. We understand diabetes better than we do depression, because at least we know how to manage diabetes if the person is able to habituate themselves to it.
I feel like noting: there's the word "Just" again -- as if to say these feelings are only something. I don't think that's the case at all. After all, here you are talking about it. If they were only something, then you could shrug it off, right? Even if depression is the underlying causal explanation, it's not necessarily satisfying to have a causal explanation for the way we feel. Sometimes we're looking for something a little more meaningful than "the atoms move around and stuff happens, whadya want?" or "you experienced trauma and learned bad habits, so unlearn those and you'll be cured" -- sometimes there isn't a cure. Sometimes it's just nice to talk about what you feel, even if it seems a bit crazy.
But these feelings are never "just" something else. Our feelings are important, good, bad, and ugly.
Your life is the real life, respect it.
And if you are 25, don't think you've seen it all. I had fears about my life when I was your age: I didn't have a girlfriend, I wasn't in the in-crowd, I was shy, I feared I would be all alone without having anything meaningful in my life later when I would be 30, 40 or 50. I couldn't image to be a father or having a family. I thought it was not for me. It was the life for other people.
Remember that sadness is part of life. If you wouldn't feel sadness and heartache, you wouldn't appreciate the good things in life. You have emotions, which is good in life. If something makes you happy that you laugh, even if rarely, that makes life worth wile. At that moment you cannot be sad, hence not all life is pain.
That's a pretty low threshold. As Simon and Garfunkle explain.. Rocks feel no pain.
If I was to cause someone else to exist because I felt joy in my most joyous occasion and was deluded into thinking another being would live life in this brief moment of joy.. That would be a huge conceit that I would be enacting (and on behalf of another nonetheless).. Just give it a few moments and that moment will be but a faded memory and the lackluster of what surrounds it comes into view more clearly.. In other words, never make significant decisions on behalf of others in your most joyous moment. That would be foolhardy.
Quoting universeness
I have mixed feelings about relationships and having children. Today, I don't think I would want to bring a child into this world. Our present technological society is very different from the society and culture we had when I came of age. Back in the day we wanted to grow up and prove we were capable adults and that meant getting married and having children. It was especially important for a woman to be married and have children because there were not a lot of good options for women when our society was strongly based on the Bible and the ancient Greeks. Pythagoras and Plato were in favor of women having equality but allowing women equality was a radical idea that so broke tradition it could be met with some hostility.
Aristotle thought a man should have a slave, an ox, and a wife. I am not so sure he saw having a wife as different from having an ox and a slave. Our culture didn't seem to think having a wife was different from having an ox and a slave. Economically, women were held dependent on the man.
There was a time when having a family would improve a man's chances of getting a job and getting advancements. A married man was thought to be a responsible and more stable person. In some cases, his wife could advance his career by having the boss over for dinner and making social connections with the right people. She was not "just a housewife" but a very valuable part of the social and economic order we had.
I am not saying there were no problems. I am saying things were different back then and being married and a parent was part of our identification and social status. We also saw the world getting better and better. We believed we could make the world a better place and that was a much happier situation for having children. Today we no longer see the world as getting better and global warming means in a generation of two the world we took for granted may be irrevocably destroyed. I do not see this as a good time to have children.
:up: :100:
I agree, we have reached a phase of a great deal of social, political, economic and ecological upheaval.
Responsible human stewardship of the planet is failing badly and our current sociopolitical systems cannot cope with the current global population so it's not a good time to have children, especially if you are poor, downtrodden and deliberately disadvantaged which at the moment, is the position of the majority of humans alive.
If we had better global politics and the collection and distribution of resources was organised for the size of population we have and not exclusively for the benefit of the few then we probably could cope with the current population. So, at least the problems are crystal clear. If we can 'sort it out,' then perhaps we can start to expand off planet. If we don't then we will continue to give oxygen to the anti-life people until we do.
If the human population reduces over time due to individual human choice not to have kids and we end up with a more manageable population and we then 'sort things out,' then hopefully we all have the choice back, to freely and positively procreate again, in line with the natural imperative.
One has to notice that the simple things in life are what actually life so wonderful. Especially if your other option is not to live, to be dead.
Rocks dont feel pain and dont need joy. It is us who lost the existential race with our consciousness..feeling things. Yet in our ignorance we perpetuate it more. And to prevent such an ignorant move, do not make the move to perpetuate another whist in the joyous moment. Look at the most mundane, lackluster part of life. THAT is what should be the baseline of decision.
You can put up defense mechanisms and scorn the pessimist..but you miss the message. All we have is our own restless wills coupled with fighting entropic decay.
Its not that theres beauty, its that we need beauty. Its not that theres joy, its that we need joy. Its not that theres X, its that we need X. And yet your political position on how great it is to need X becomes someone elses problem.
Have we?
Quoting schopenhauer1
How much is enough depends on us ourselves. Some can be bitter if they feel they haven't gotten something, where others would be totally content what they have gotten.
Quoting schopenhauer1
My political position?
Not following your line of thought here.
Someone had the best day ever.. they have a partner to procreate with.. they decide to have a baby...So that one day of joy has an optimism bias that lasts a lifetime consequence for someone else.
They have decided THEIR joy = other people must do X. That is a political position (on what others should be doing based on one's own attitudes) in my book.
Does the i universe need sentient existence? What is a non sentential existence?
We have no means to ask bacteria or archaea or even rock formations or the Earth itself how they felt about their existence at that time. So we had an absence of life and then we had life.
Biological entities advance in structure and complexity through combination and mutation.
Quoting Yohan
I agree but I would replace 'non-existence,' and 'existence' with non-life and life as without this you would have to assign some purpose and significance to the existence of something which is lifeless like a rock when no lifeform exists to label it a rock or (in the case of a microbe) at least live on it.
My understanding is that the purpose of existence is to relieve boredom. Non-existence I take as a state of absolute boredom.
I don't have any scientific answers, obviously. But I dont think they are necessary.
Far as I'm concerned a rock is a bored proto-life-form.
Bored proto-life-form but at least the rock is not concerned about how painful the life could be
It's how the recognition feels that depending on impermanent things for one's happiness is precarious.
That is, you recognize that depending on impermanent things for you happiness is a recognition that feels uneasy; for most people, it's depressing.
A secular psyhotherapist will approach this recognition as a pathological symptom, something to be done away with.
Some spiritual/religious people believe it's the beginning of the spiritual path (using here "spiritual" for the lack of a better word). Not a sign of depression, but a mark of seeing worldly things for how they really are: impermanent and ultimately unsatisfactory, and thus not worth striving for.
Why I think what? To which sentence are you refering?
Hence the recipe for a good marriage is 1 kiss + 1 slap in the face. That really makes one appreciate the kisses!!!!
The idea that it is hardships that make us appreciate the good things is patently absurd, however popular it may be. It's sado-masochistic. It's depressing. The bad stuff doesn't make us appreciate the good stuff, but it can lead us to question whether the good stuff is all that it's popularily made out to be.
It's not such a secret.
Is this the antinatalism thread again? Or going there?
Besides, as humans live in a society, so I guess there's a lot of people deciding what others (or we) have to do.
My point is that you cannot have just positive feelings (love, joy, happiness etc.) You will sure feel sadness and anger too. That simply is part of life, which you cannot disregard or hide away. Empathy is also very important.
But yes, if you haven't ever felt hunger, how can you value a good meal? Sometimes something lousy can make you appreciate good.
Goes hand in hand with life sucks. But the broader point is you were speaking of joy and happy moments and I was giving you the danger of OVERemphasizung this. The optimism bias in humans is strong to cherry pick joyous moments and make important decisions from them that can actually negatively affect the course of things, including a whole other humans life because you had a moment of unthinking joy.
Its best to recount the lackluster, and negative states as a balance.
OK, now I understand better your point.
On the other hand, optimism, remembering those joy and happy moments might be good in countering OVERemphasizing pain and hardships of life. Which we can often do when we are unhappy about something.
Optimism is seen as naive and stupid while pessimism as realistic and intelligent. So perhaps we should rip our clothes and put ash on our head. Sackcloth and ashes.
Yep, the cool kids never like optimism or happiness - such responses are viewed as gauche, and don't you know life is grave and dreadful?
I mean, you aren't wrong.
I totally like that explanation.
Quoting ssu
The Greeks had a concept of what is public and what is private. Liberty depends on respecting what is an individual, private decision, and unfortunately, Evangelicals are determined to impose their notions of how things should be on everyone, just as much as some Muslims believe it is God's will to make everyone live as they believe their holy book defines how people should live.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We question if animals have self-awareness. For sure rocks do not, any more than the tires on my car want different things. But perhaps a God decides what is best for all things and everyone and we should use our intelligence to understand what God wants and then impose that on everyone. The state is God and it must use any means necessary to make everyone comply with the will of God. Or taking God out of our politics how do we determine democratically what should be?
What if industry used the democratic model instead of the autocratic model? How might that change our reality? How many industries would move to China if the employees were making the decision? Who should have the power to decide our joy? What industry would pollute the environment causing their own families disease?
You mean join a nudist colony? That would give some people joy. :grin:
Might that be what democracy is about? It is empowering everyone who is affected by a decision to come to the table and explain what is and what should be. Then arguing until there is a consensus on the best reasoning. You know, like the Greek gods.
A geologist showed me a cartoon explaining exponential growth. You begin with a couple of frogs in a pond and then increase the number of frogs exponentially. Everything appears fine until the last day when the pond goes from half full to completely full. That is what happened to us. When I was born we still had a sense that there was plenty of everything. In my lifetime we have gone from plenty of everything to crisis. We have a housing shortage where land used to be dirt cheap and there was far more available land than people to fill it. Plenty of water to water wars. We are having a very hard time dealing with reality. I do not think we have a good grasp of it and we are not organized to deal with the facts we need to know.
:rofl: In general everyone is behaving like the kids fighting in the back seat of the car. They are yelling at each other and no one is working with the facts.
Well, it's what socialism/humanism is about and neither of those labels have any value without democracy.
Quoting Athena
Sounds better than some dictatorship of a privileged few.
Quoting Athena
The Greek gods never existed, the atheists, christians and muslims all agree on that one.
Quoting Athena
There is also a great deal of bad organisation. I live in Scotland, our population is quite small (Around 5 million). We could build a few more major cities in Scotland, we also have hundreds of uninhabited islands that could be developed but 'there's not enough profit in it.' Hah! total BS, we need to nurture people not profit.
Quoting Athena
A fair analysis but don't forget that we have been trying to deal with a very powerful, clever, very well established, global hierarchy of elites, since the free market economy and the money trick became established. Rich, global family dynasties formed out of the dying national aristocracies and monarchies.
These became the basis for establishing global banking systems and global conglomerates.
It's just evolving global dynasties similar in structure, style, and behaviour to global gangsterism. I see little difference between the mafia Don's and Don Elon Musk or Don Donald Trump.
They will fight the masses tooth and nail and they have the established power to do it. They will divide you, terrorise and murder those who raise their heads in protest, especially those who are getting through to the masses and are trying to organise them. They will pay your own kind to betray you and turn against you. They will also convince your own kind in the form of police and soldiers that their loyalty must lie with the established rich and powerful and not the people.
Millions of socialists/humanists have been slaughtered for 10,000 years of tears to fight against the nefarious and they have defeated monarchies and aristocracies and they have created systems all over the world which are far better and fairer for more people compared to any system or civilisation from antiquity. The fight continues. The socialists/humanist are still here and we still number in the many many millions globally. We will defeat the nefarious completely one day and become an interplanetary/interstellar species.
The problem is existing at all. Why do we bring people into existence? Any way you answer that is a political answer. Apparently YOU know why existence just NEEDS to be experienced and so you procreate more people into the world. So why do people need to be here? Your answer will be revealing. To work? Why? To take your time in various survival and maintenance activities? If you say to discover, learn, and make relationships, Ill just ask why people need to do this on the first place. Rocks dont need anything. No existence hurts no one. Why do more individuals need to be created? Again a political question, as your answer means other people must follow (pay) the consequence of being born and go through the gauntlet of living..all because you have a notion of things and whats best for others. Rather, theres a nothingness, a lack at the heart of things. Just creating more people to overcome constant lack. Schopenhauers Will manifested over and over in yet more beings procreated into the world. Existence is ti be endured and you are creating more victims because you think they need to live out some lifestyle that YOU think is good for them. But if they didnt exist, they didnt need anything to be lived out in the first place.
Old time mourning and repentance!
Classic things that philosophers also have cherished.
May I argue they did exist and were just as real as the God of Abraham? Each one is a concept and concepts are powerful. Every Evangelical experiences the power of God exactly like the Greeks experienced the power of their gods.
The Greeks slowly began slipping out of this superstition with questions like "Is something bad because the gods say it is bad, or do they say it is bad because it is bad?" If it is the latter, something exists besides the gods. Now we are creeping into universals and the laws of nature. And we have Hippocrates who says the conditions of the body are not caused by the gods. But before those who love knowledge replaced superstition with universals, people experienced their gods as very real. If you believe Demeter will make you a better mother, sure enough, she will, and if you believe in the power of the God of Abraham, you will see it everywhere. Your belief will explain everything to you validating your truth. :grin:
Quoting universeness
And there we become the gods. It is as we create it. :grin: It is as Zeus feared. With the knowledge of the technology of fire, we have discovered all other technologies and now rival the gods. However, as you hint, with concepts such as socialism and humanism we can create a reality that encourages happy families, or we can feed the beast and make the beast strong.
Quoting universeness Oh burn, ssssss- :fire: That was nicely said. I could totally off topic with you what you said, but maybe if we focus on your lead in statement we can have a very meaningful discussion!
Quoting universeness
Yes, and what does the Bible have to say about that? :naughty: The Bible is a very complex book with something for everyone in it, but we might want to focus on what Rome did to Christianity. The Council of Nicaea was all about power. The Bible is about kings and slaves, not democracy. The God of Abraham gave man kings, not democracy, and one's life's work was defined by inheritance, not the merit system of the Greeks that enable any qualified person to have a government position.
Some conversations can not happen until someone opens the door so we can see what there is to talk about. Your statement about we are organized as we are organized opens a door. Conservatives want to cling to tradition but democracy is not a Christian tradition.
Quoting universeness
Are you aware that
Quoting RONALD HAMOWY
We could start a new thread about the Scottish Enlightenment and what it has to do with the US democracy.
Because "God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man." Chardin.
I am less familiar with the Mayan Factor explanation of our light bodies and the universal entrance.
Your attacks on me make me want to avoid what you are saying. You might drop assuming what I think, know, and do, and focus on the concepts you want to discuss.
Quoting Athena
Of course you may but a concept is an abstract idea. Humans can turn some concept into a reality but they can't create gods, they can only and have only ever been able to insist you accept them on threat of punishment, damnation and/or death.
Quoting Athena
I experience natural high's every bit as powerful as any evanhellical or ancient Greek was ever able to.
Quoting Athena
I don't advocate for self-delusion as a way to validate truth and I don't think you do either. I understand your observation that many people gain strength and focus by using deities as scapegoats and so they do not have to take responsibility/ownership of their own existence and what we decide to do or what actions we decide to take.
I was watching a program about the days of the partition of India. A Hindu woman had returned to where thousands of Hindus and Sikhs were slaughtered, including some of her own family. She was talking to a Muslim that had witnessed the 'battle' as a child. At one point she asked him why they slaughtered each other as they did. They were both in tears when the old Muslim man said 'don't cry my daughter, this was gods will.' A pathetic excuse imo. Gods as convenient scapegoats.
Quoting Athena
Well, I am with those who posit that it is likely that Rome created Christianity and people like the treacherous Josephus helped write the gospels and the popes are the direct inheritors of the embers of the roman empire etc etc. I support the positions held by folks like Joseph Atwill, James Vallient, Professor Robert Price, Dr Robert Eisenman, the folks on Mythvision et al.
Quoting Athena
I would enjoy that Athena, we could go back even further to the 'Declaration of Arbroath,' and 'The Magna Carta.' and how those documents influenced the American constitution etc. You are correct that all the winding historical threads do weave us all the way to where we are now and why we live like we do now and the purist philosophers can suggest a myriad of 'thinking processes' and epistemologies that governed/directed/conducted our pathway to 'now.'
I always enjoy such discussions but we are just going over the same old ground again and again and again. There must be quicker ways to drive human global unison forwards, than constantly going back over antiquity. We should not even have to go back as far as the enlightenment to make progress.
EDIT: I suppose the path was more the American Declaration of Independence to The American Constitution.
By comparing it to a bad meal, not to no meal.
That's appreciation for people who have no value system.
Quoting ssu
Nonsense. Where do you get these ideas???
We've been created to go well without food for one day, actually. It's water that we need basically daily.
Quoting baker
Well, sort of. Assume if you had eaten for your entire life exceptionally great meals, basically always something of the level that one gets in Michelin star restaurants, with added detail to the healthiness of your diet. You wouldn't know how bad food actually people e
For an anecdote, I remember once on a Finnish Navy island garrison the commanding officer decided to remember the Winter War by having the conscripts exactly the same kind of food with the historical amount during winter that soldiers were given during WW2...at the same naval fortress. The records were they, so the kitchen had no trouble in recreating the WW2-era cuisine. Hence they got a small portion of porridge (without honey or sugar) and that's it. As the garrison was on a fortress island, the conscript didn't have the chance to order pizza or anything in the evening. The conscripts (who had been born in the 1980's) hadn't experienced cold and hunger. Many said that they respected differently the war veterans after that experience.
It's telling that actually now days being overweight is many times a sign of poverty.
I'm absolutely sure that we wouldn't image just what people ate thousands of years ago.
Of course it's nonsense, but haven't you noticed these sentiments?
The "you" in the last post is the universal "you", not you specifically. It's a hypothetical "you".
Slave.. ok.. go on.. how?
You should know schopenhauer1.
I don't know your particular take.. give me a summary and I can talk to that.
Whoo. wait a minute. Do you have any stories of people who believe in many gods behaving like those who think there is only one god who has favorite people and one god's truth? When people believed there are many gods they thought the people who won wars had the strongest god and that was one of the factors that converted people to Christianity. The Romans with their superior military force were winning wars so obviously they have the strongest god, right? Except the Germans in their forest. Whoo, those guys were badasses and you didn't want to get too close to them. People from the south feared the forest and the way the Germans defended their territory was terrorizing. Eventually, they accept the God of Abraham but then they claimed the Holy Roman Emperor as their own, and when the Church in Rome did not give them the power of authority they protested and started their own religion built on the God of Abraham stories. This is really important, many gods means learning far more than can be learned with one jealous, revengeful, and fearsome god. That is a war god, not the path to equality and peace.
Quoting universeness
Yes, that is exactly the point. Too bad at the time of the enlightenment and the beginning of democracy people did not push against Christianity in favor of science and the power of our minds with more determination. What we have to do now is advance the explanations of how thoughts shape our lives and then increase awareness of the positive choices we can make, including education for good moral judgment and that democracy relies on science, not a jealous, revengeful and fearsome god.
Quoting universeness
Wait a minute, what is the truth of Demeter making a woman a better mother? She and all the gods and goddesses are archetypes. You might like reading Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.'s book Gods in Everyman" or "Goddesses in Everywoman". The God of Abraham religions have given the gods a bad reputation. I can see I need to work on this explanation. A blog might be the best way to handle what the gods have to do with democracy and why they are in a painting at the US Capitol Building and science instead of superstition. The God of Abraham mythologies are perhaps the worst thing that could have happened to humanity.
Thoughts control our behavior and even our physical condition. It is not necessary to attach superstition to the stories. We keep the stories and repeat them because they resonate with something inside of us. All groups of people have their stories that they passed on from generation to generation and these stories are important, just as important as the mythologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. If we are not superstitious we can appreciate all the others. My point is these stories hold truths and good moral lessons. They all work the same, even if the story is folklore or a native American explanation of life. Being open to the stories of others is also a path to knowing truth and learning science. The question can be more important than the answer. Greeks and Romans didn't believe they had a revealed god's truth. They learned of the gods of others and created their own in their image.
Quoting universeness
They stole the religion from others. 5 of the Biblical stories are from Sumer, so the mythology begins in Ur a Sumerian city and it was plagiarized by Abraham and his people who he lead from Ur to Egypt. In the beginning, everyone had many gods and it is curious how the idea of one jealous, revengeful, and fearsome god caught on spread. A nation at war might desire such a war god. Constantine meant well but making Rome and Christianity the same thing, created a monster. Important is the idea that a god chooses the king and gives the king power, and everything relies on inheritance. That is Judaism not a family of gods. There is no one to correct that god as Greek gods could argue their case.
Which one of us will start the new thread? I need to know more of Scottish thinking and really wish you would start the thread. Is Scottish thinking connected with the Celts? What is the geography of Scotland and how would it shape the people?
"To feel authentic means to be free to develop traits and potentials that are innate predispositions. When we are accepted and allowed to be genuine. it's possible to have self-esteem and authenticity together. This develops only if we are encouraged rather than disheartened by the reactions of significant others to us, when we are spontaneous and truthful, or when we are absorbed in whatever gives us joy. From childhood on, first our family and then our culture are the mirrors in which we see ourselves as acceptable or not. When we need to conform in order to be acceptable, we may end up wearing a false face and playing an empty role if who we are inside and what is expected of us are far apart....
When life feels meaningless and stale, or when something feels fundamentally wrong about how you are living and what you are doing, you can help yourself by becoming aware of discrepancies between the archetypes within you and your visible roles. Men are often caught between the inner world of archetypes and the outer world of sterotypes. Archetypes are powerful predispositions; garbed in the image and mythology of Greek gods, as I have described them in this book, each has characteristics drives, emotions, and needs that shape personality. When you enact a role that is connected to an active archetype within you, energy is generated through the depth and meaning that the role has for you. "
Thank you for clarifying that point. I have covid and want to avoid things that pull me down.
Interesting and good quote indeed. But I disagree with Jean Shinoda Bolen in the following fact:
The text says: When we are accepted and allowed to be genuine. it's possible to have self-esteem and authenticity together. This develops only if we are encouraged rather than disheartened by the reactions of significant others to us, when we are spontaneous and truthful, or when we are absorbed in whatever gives us joy.
I think having self-esteem is not connected to be accepted by others. A good example of this could be the Japnase writer Yukio Mishima. He had a lot of self-esteem... but trust he was so far of being accepted by the Japanese society.
This is why I like him a lot. He represents the art of writing and thinking not matter if the "mass" would accept you or not.
The important achievement here is gaining self-esteem with your own self. Not caring if we do not fit in the society or we are not accepted by them
[quote=Schopenhauer]A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.[/quote]
Yes, Hindus are the third largest religion in the world (estimated at 1.2 billion). I assume the Hindu gods favour Hindus. Hindus have killed muslims and sikhs and probably people from all other relgions, in the name of hinduism. I am sure hindus have been on the losing side in many wars, but hinduism still has a massive global following and a global diaspora. I already agreed that many people got infected by or converted to (to use a less disrespectful term) christianity, through fear.
Quoting Athena
So how come a 'power in the hands of the few,' caste system and the horror of untouchability came out of hinduism?
Quoting Athena
I generally agree but there was not a lot of education about for the masses at the time and I think many people tried and died trying but, you are correct, they were unable to stop the nefarious few that held most of the power and influence. The fight goes on today.
Quoting Athena
I agree and like you, I am trying.
Quoting Athena
I reject the term archetype based on its etymology:
The word archetype, "original pattern from which copies are made," first entered into English usage in the 1540s. It derives from the Latin noun archetypum, latinisation of the Greek noun ????????? (archétypon), whose adjective form is ????????? (archétypos), which means "first-molded", which is a compound of ???? arch?, "beginning, origin", and ????? týpos, which can mean, amongst other things, "pattern", "model", or "type". It, thus, referred to the beginning or origin of the pattern, model or type.
Humans evolved, they were not 'first moulded' or are copies from a pattern. I hate the idea of an archetypal human. Demeter never made a woman a better mother as no such fabled Greek god creature ever existed. A good mother can of course teach a poor mother how to be a better mother.
Quoting Athena
Yeah, I understand what you mean but imo, we need to 'grow away from' such stories. 'When we are children we can act and speak like children when we grow up, we should put childish things away,' including god stories. I prefer the true stories of what humans did or are doing (when I can find reliable examples of such). I think we need to focus on finding the TRUTH and take all 'stories,' as suspect unless they can be confirmed as accurate! Fake news is a real killer and always has been.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. Joseph Goebbels.
Quoting Athena
Might be better if we just had a PM exchange Athena, if you think that could establish some foundational common ground between us. Perhaps a useful 'philosophical' thread could come from that.
Scots history certainly suggests we have celtic aspects to our national origin but exactly who and what was 'celtic,' extracts from a very foggy past indeed. Little is known about the inhabitants of scotland before the Romans arrived in Britain. All the early tribes have italian/roman names. The umbrella name is Pictii (or picts, picture/painted people). Individual tribes named as the votadini, novantae, caledonii etc. These are all latin based names. These names probably were not used by the actual groups they refer to, who I am sure had their own chosen names but we don't know what these were.
I think all humans gained a very mixed heritage quite early in the last 10,000 years.
Since you closed out "Why should life/existence by valued if i can choose to not want to value it?" and added it to this thread, it would make sense if you moved @obscurelaunting's OP over here.
By the way Obscurelaunting, welcome to the forum.
So since I CAN think like this, how can I not think like this? Do not tell me to just be one with life in experience because this is futile and never has been fulfilling. Do not tell me that if I can choose either I should choose life, because I'm saying to you my choice IS non-existence, this is the dilemma: the choice and the confusion of life.
I am looking for the answer that breaks down this thinking and builds myself a new thought basis.[/quote]
So youre talking of Will.
Even if it isn't a true metaphysics, the idea of desiring/craving that is never satisfied, remains true. For all intents and purposes, life works on this principle. From a scientistic/mechanistic point of view, you can point to evolutionary variation/mutation/population statistics, but it just informs more about this principle. It doesn't replace this viewpoint. Entropy/enthalpy, the organism's metabolic needs and environmental fit.. The organism being is the organism dissatisfied.
You're forgetting you're talking to a woman. I've been hungry almost as much as the average hungry African.
And for a good part of my life, I have eaten exceptionally good food, and I've grown proper organic food until recently.
I do know. It makes me want to puke.
The average peasant in the Dark Ages ate healthier food than most people do today.
Certainly no pesticides and no GMOs. In the old times, food was much healthier, much more satiating because it had real taste.
Sure. But what are the metaphysical assumptions behind them?
What you're asking for cannot be done in the framework of secular culture and science. They'll just write you off as mentally ill, as an aberration. They certainly don't think you have some insight into the futility of life as it is usually lived.
How to answer question to be or not to be? Problem with suicide for me is that you cant change your mind after but now Im overwhelmed with feelings and thoughts that there is no reason to go on (although Im no entirely convinced by one option or another )
One reason to go on: your family, friends or relatives. I understand what you are feeling because I walked through the same process. If suicide would sink your beloved ones in devastation and misery, please do not do it. That would be disrespectful and dishonorable.
If you feel that you don't find a meaning in life you would end up in an infinite loop because the nature of life is meaningless
I guess there are a lot a people experiencing the same dilemma, I know quite a few and I also cant find any meaning actually but there are a few considerations here. The first is about loved ones, this has been mentioned before throughout this thread, and their pain and grief should one take his own life. The second is about the unknown, which leaves lots of room for any plausible theories. Some claim for there to be nothing, not even a void (in death) while others claim utopia awaits us while others think we will get reborn and so on. Yet the truth of it all is that nobody knows and anything is possible. Which means we also have to take into account that the possibility exists that we get punished (or 'disciplined') if we would take shortcuts.
Wow, I have to agree with that. When I get in the creative space of writing it is the only thing that matters. It is not that I am totally confident in myself but that the creative experience or that moment of enlightenment when we see the bigger picture is better than good sex. I want to explain the hormonal experience so I don't sound like an egomaniac.
Quoting Colette DeDonato
There is a lot to say about creativity and our physical being and I have heard that some people who have been depressed for years have broken free of that when they start doing something creative.
Aye, but I was actually referring to how, even though we have an awesome life, it's still an imposition. The point is that it really doesn't matter whether one's life is utterly miserable or absolutely amazing; life is still an imposition and that right there is the immorality of procreation.
Mr/Ms. Happy: Life's fun! Ima really enjoyin' it!
Antintatalist: Yes, yes, but did you choose this life?
Mr/Ms. Happy: Nope! :grin:
No question. And another big one is doing something for others.
I was unaware of this history of violence and it makes me curious. Why did the Hindus kill Muslims and Sikhs? I don't think it was like the Hebrews who took the land that was Isreal with the belief a God had told them to do so and to kill everyone who was already there. Christians have carried for centuries as though a god has told them the land is theirs and they should kill everyone else. That fearsome Christian god has only recently become a god of love. However, when people feel threatened they become defensive, so was the killing a justified act of defense? This matters to me. I tend to be too Polyann and not realistic and I want truth,
Quoting universeness
I assume the practical answer is to avoid disease. I do not think my mind is capable of giving me a good understanding of ancient times and foreign places. I can reason that some people may live unhealthy lives and for one's own safety it is best to avoid contact. They did not have a government that can take care of them as well the US government has started caring for its people, and they sure did not have the economic opportunity we have today. Cleanliness for those who had the luxury of practicing cleanliness was very important.
Quoting universeness
I think Christianity is a barrier to learning not only for those who identify with the religion, but they have defined God, and that God is a supernatural power that can violate the laws of nature. That means we judge all gods by the Christian understanding of a god. Our bias has prevented learning of the gods. You can't google for infomation because Christianity floods the internet making it very difficult to find information about primative people and the gods. Quoting universeness
I love your argument and especially the Latin and Greek words. I seriously wish I could learn those languages. But in argument to your argument, nature molded all things. Nature made mothers, nature made every female and male archetype. The writer of the stories based them on a study of human nature and all our different approuches to problems. Darn, I am too tired for the mental work that is needed for an argument, and this post is too long and also not on topic, so I am going to quit now. We need another thread for this. I really would like to look deeper into the gods.
Not enough fat, salt, and sugar to make food as unhealthy as it is today, and chances are good the meal had to be worked for with real physical labor. Next to that, surviving was so demanding people did not have time to fret about how much better their lives would be if only they had made different choices, so in way, there was less stress.
Oh yeah, My mental health program is being a Senior Companion. I pick people up and take them where they want to go, we have lunch together and play games. The lockdown was terrible! I was sure I was loosing my mind and feared I was on the way to loosing my independence. I love being alone and writing and the forums, but I have to have that face-to-face human contact too. Now I am so busy caring for others I really appreciate my time alone. It is strange how making others happy means our own happiness too.
I don't think that is possible for a conscious being. I also have no desire to go to heaven. I think it is our nature to want stimulus and that leads to wanting what we don't have and then doing what we have to do to get what we want. If we are in heaven where a God takes care of our every need and there is nothing for us to do but enjoy, that sounds like hell to me. There would be no great movies or novels. We would be satiated and have nothing to strive for. Boring!
I am unaware of cases where hindus attacked Sikhs during partition, they attacked muslims.
There is an enormous amount of material on-line regarding the partition of India or perhaps you could PM @DA671 who knows a great deal about the topic.
Quoting Athena
I think you are misunderstanding the concept of 'untouchability' within the Hindu caste system.
I am sure the excuse you mention is used but only as a misrepresentation of the true intention of untouchability, which is to label people that certain religious or social dogma portray as being inferior.
From wiki:
[i][b]The term is most commonly associated with treatment of the Dalit communities in the Indian subcontinent who were considered "polluting". The term has also been used to refer to other groups, including the Burakumin of Japan, the Baekjeong of Korea, and the Ragyabpa of Tibet, as well as the Romani people and Cagot in Europe, and the Al-Akhdam in Yemen. Traditionally, the groups characterized as untouchable were those whose occupations and habits of life involved ritually "polluting" activities, such as fishermen, manual scavengers, sweepers and washermen.
Untouchability is believed to have been first mentioned in Dharmashastra, according to the religious Hindu text, untouchables were not considered a part of the varna system. Therefore, they were not treated like the savarnas (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras).[/b][/i]
There are many examples of such nonsense in the bible as well. For example, a menstruating woman may not enter the tabernacle as she is unclean!
Quoting Athena
I don't think this is true, certainly not for any secular person or atheist. The internet has a great deal of inaccurate information on it and it can be quite time consuming to validate and confirm the truth of all documentation on it but you can find out as much as is known about an earlier civilisation.
Quoting Athena
Well, I understand but this thread is now called 'life sucks,' we are simply trying to analyse some of the historical evidence and aspects of human behaviour that might support that claim or highlight the behaviours that have to be effectively tackled and changed to develop my contention that life is wonderful but the human experience is imbalanced and riddled with injustice and 'needs a lot of work.'
Finally outgrowing all gods would be a good start imo.
Interesting text. Romani people is also called gypsy. In my country there are a lot of them and I have to be honest. There are some prejudices against them in the same sense the text you quoted previously.
If you check the etymology of the word gypsy, gitano, tsigane, etc... you would find pejorative meanings according to each country, for example:
Well the last year I started an OP related to this: The etymological prejudice of the word gypsy.
Quoting universeness
Quoting universeness
Sorry Athena, this is clumsy on my part. I wanted to clarify a little.
During the partition of India, Hindus and Sikhs attacked Muslims and Muslims attacked Hindus and Sikhs. In the whole history of India, I assume Hindus have killed people from most religions as is the case for Christians and Islamists. Terrorists tend not to check what your religion is before they explode their bombs etc. Often, even their own people get killed in the crossfire.
Attribution bias: When someone from an in-group errs, the mistake is chalked up to the individual, as a personal failing; when someone from an out-group goofs up, it's the entire group that's blamed. Sic vita est
Yep, I am sure you would agree Javi, that the human condition would deserve the accusation of 'life sucks!' less, if everyone could personally stop being 'culturalist.'
If YOU as a human don't in your own heart believe/know that all people should be treated equally then YOU will always provide evidence for the anti-life people. I use YOU here to refer to each individual on the planet.
One planet stewarded by one united species is what I advocate. No more countries, no more currencies, no gods, no race other than the human race, no private ownership of land, no rich, no poor, no utopia or dystopia. WE CAN ALL DO BETTER!
Sorry but I am pure defender of private ownership myself :rofl: I always been inspired by John Locke:
Some of the features of Locke's economic thinking would echo down the years, and not always to good consequence. Thus, Locke's notion is that labor creates value: "For 'tis Labour indeed that puts the difference of value on every thing" Locke uses this in the first instance to explain why people have a right to property.
Locke, of course, thinks that the ownership of property is justified because labor has been "mixed" with it.
The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property. To which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting. [ibid., §124]
Agreed. :100: :up:
:grin:
I am not as concerned about private ownership of property, nor am I concerned about 'small capitalism.'
People must have quality housing as a human right but as long as that is provided then I don't care who owns a particular property. Billionaires or multi-millionaires, conglomerates (or anything like them) would not be allowed. So the amount of property owned by an individual would be controlled and they would not own the land the property sat on.
Pleonasms, you gotta love 'em!
As for the tragic bloodbath during India's partition, I'd say it was actually a memeplex war in the ideaverse that spilled over into the physical dimension. We're unable to distinguish man from meme and that's, going by all the wars we've endured, is a fatal flaw.
The British were quite happy to see the religious groups slaughter each other. The British soldiers stood by and watched as it went on because they were told to. I can imagine the British colonial attitude at the time. "See how these 'natives' treat each other when we brits are not in charge." Churchill had such disrespect for Indians that he called Gandhi 'a half-naked Indian fakir.' Mountbatten was happy to encourage the carnage by offering a Pakistan which was made up of a Western and Eastern section, with India between them. This exacerbated the massive movement of starving poor people whose only difference was religious dogma and millions died because of religion and political intrigue.
I had no idea that I was talking to a women.
Quoting baker
I've seen studies that the diet worsened from the Early Middle Ages to the age of industrialization, but it might be too drastic to think our food now is less healthier. The 19th Century brought huge improvement to agriculture and also an emphasis on food safety requirements. Now we have the ability to eat extremely healthy food, but what actually the food we eat is another thing. The really irritating issue is that the healthy diet is far more costly than the cheapest food, which makes for a bad diet.
And with medievel diet we have to remember it wasn't fresh, the food that could be preserved. The idea was to eat only the food from the last season, not this one as you didn't know just how the it would be this year. So a lot of salt.
Quoting baker
I think it's far more about social assumptions than metaphysical ones.
You look to be smart when you're critical about your life and the society around you. To accept it and be happy about it seems to many like you haven't thought about the current issues. Or you simply don't care and just go "with the flock".
How sad! My heart goes out to all, not just hindus, moslems & sikhs, who were hurt/killed/worse during the 200k years humans have been around. We really need to get our act together lest we make the same silly mistakes our ancestors made. Easy to say, hard to do and therein lies the rub, oui mon ami?
The problems are still many and so deeply embeded within global sociopolitical systems and cultural/religious traditions. BUT, we can do better because we have improved the lives of millions in comparison to life for the majority in the past. 2022 years since CE or the 'common era' began. That's only a couple of seconds in the cosmic calendar.
I hope you're right!
Through language, its ability to transmit lessons learned, we've transcended the limitations of biology; DNA is not the only information game in town now and in the process we've been able to do mind-blowing stuff like sending men to the moon, develop & manufacture antibiotics, and so on.
We then survey Momma Nature and what do we find? We're simply just another cog in the great wheel of life - a gorgeous flower no doubt but a dispensable one. :snicker:
Well, you quoted Schopenhauer and now youre saying you were referring to the points I made in the Trouble with Impositions thread. This is why I wanted you to explain what you were trying to say by we are all slaves
Anyways, of course Im going to agree with you, thats my very argument youre summarizing. I would add that imposition is not just willing a significant, inescapable decision for someone else, but creating burdens to continually be overcome- expected or not anticipated for that person. So even an amazing life (as it was summarized in a generalized statement) is bound to have various instances of burdens.
One informs the other. Dukkha is a form of necessary suffering not contingent on conditions of contingency.
Even if we could, as transhumanists wish & propose, abolish suffering, the imposition problem would still make reproduction unethical is what I mean.
Kinda thorny issue. Doesnt really cross my mind because its a practical impossibility. Supposing it does occur, would we be even human at that point? Does ethics apply to such a condition? Does transhumanism translate to a personalized utopia? If not, whose utopia?
:smile:
If you say to me..its wrong to impose on a robot..I dont know what applies to said being if it doesnt feel pain or burdens at all. Ive maintained that whilst one form of imposing is bad (forcing your will), its combination with the other form (creating burdens) makes it the more so. Ive maintained that if life was an ever adjusted personalized utopia, there might be something there as a justification.
I guess Im asking, does ethics apply to something not bound by a human or animal condition?
Its not bound by a human or animal condition. How does ethics apply? You tell me. Besides that it merely exists.
Good point! :up:
Ethics applies to imposition simpliciter as it seems to treat human beings as robots! :chin:
Untouchability is a curse and serves as a reminder of the misery that dogma and an insatiable thirst for power can create. May we move beyond this sooner rather than later.
@Athena I hope that this is of some help!
Huh?
:smile:
Explain please.
I think we all know too little about such horrific events.
Based on a quick google search:
[i][b]Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
The quote is most likely due to writer and philosopher George Santayana, and in its original form it read, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.[/b][/i]
WE CAN ALL DO BETTER! And imo, we need no help from god fables but I understand, (if my analysis of her intent is correct) @Athena's very honourable 'mission'/intent, to find common ground / values / purpose and foster a more positive dialogue between theists and anti-theists. I would have to always admit to my own personal preference for abandoning all theism however, as to do otherwise, would be disingenuous on my part.
Btw, I had to google 'commingling.' That's a new one on me. Breach of trust, yes?
I wanted to pull this sentence out separately and 'complain' about its 'intent' connotation.
'Nature' is often 'objectified' in the sense that some people often try to assign it a concrete form like 'mother nature!' etc. Nature has no such concrete form and has no intent. Such thinking created the original pagan deities and animism(the belief that all objects and living things possess a soul or spirit).
Many early gods were some human/animal hybrid or sun/moon/river/forest god. I think we should stop objectifying/anthropomorphising the natural processes or 'nature,' in this way.
That quote is quite apposite! Although, I would say that my knowledge about the world, in general, is fairly limited. That's why I am eternally grateful to wiser people like you and others (even those I disagree with at a profound level) for sharing their insights.
I am sorry if I accidentally betrayed you! It sincerely was not intentional.
:lol: Despite your humility and insistence that you have limited knowledge of the world, you still keep adding to my vocabulary. I was not familiar with 'apposite,' either.
Again, google to the rescue. Apposite meaning apt. If English is a second language for you, the word range you know is impressive.
Thank you for your kind words. I am quite confused by:
Quoting DA671
Please explain. Was it these words below that made you think I was referring to your belief system?
If so, its me that should be apologising.
Quoting universeness
I did not intend these words to be a direct insult to all Hinduism, as you, yourself have explained to me that many Hindus express their belief system in many ways, including ways that do not include anything supernatural.
I'm no good at that! All I can say is that to impose one's wishes, including but not limited to thinking on someone's behalf, herein the child to be born, amounts to treating the child as if s/he were an inanimate object (like robots). That's unethical, oui?
:rofl:
Oh, I am sorry. I was referring to this:
"Breach of trust, yes?"
You wrote this at the end of your previous comment. I was attempting to put forth a partially facetious response.
:up:
:clap: :clap: English (with scots dialect) is my first language and your vocabulary range seems wider than mine, well done!
When I looked up 'Commingling' its meaning was reported as 'breach of trust,' does this match your use of it in.Quoting DA671?
It looks like though Sikhism is a syncretism of Hinduism & Islam, it's more saffron than green.
The definition you read seems to be a legal definition. I was using it in the sense of something being mixed or blended.
Ok I see. I actually think the 'betrayal of trust' is more apt for you words:
Quoting DA671
They did betray their own religions as all three of them claim to be religions of peace and they betrayed everyone's trust that these claims were true.
:up: Epic fail!
:smile: And I will bet a years retirement pension that @DA671 will agree!
Here's the definition from Wikipedia:
"In law, commingling is a breach of trust in which a fiduciary mixes funds held in care for a client with his own funds, making it difficult to determine which funds belong to the fiduciary and which belong to the client."
So, we can see that this also refers to something being mixed.
:lol: Did I win my bet?
How about ,"However, from what I think I understand about the madness of the betrayal of trust that happened in 1947, the violence was primarily between Muslims on one side and Hindus/Sikhs on the other."
Ok, thanks for improving the clarity of your point. Overall, I will declare my bet safe and I will not have to cut down on all my favourites this month, due to having to donate a months pension to a charity of your choice.
I am sure you're already doing plenty of good deeds, sir!
You have fully explained your intended emphasis with Quoting DA671
Quoting DA671
The small contributions I make are not and never will be enough but I do claim that I help more than I hurt and I just hope my claim is a valid one.
Good one! I also like 'out of little acorns, big oak trees grow.'
I have bolded the statement I want to reply to. I think there are examples of untouchables in many cultures however, not every culture would have institutionalized this common human behavior in the same way. I have read some ancient yoga practices are extremely concerned with cleanliness, Hebrews were also concerned with cleanliness but I don't think to the same extent. When the US had outhouses there were people who were paid to tend to outhouses. The owner of an estate surely would not want his daughter associating with such a person, especially if this person looked different, or if outhouses were associated with disease. The US has had some very prejudiced laws!
Hebrews for sure saw themselves as different from others and they institutionalized that aspect of being Hebrew. Kind of like, all people have engaged in war, but not all of them created an economic and social organization around their military, such as Prussia was organized around its military. These human behaviors being common, but more or less, formal and defining. The point is, knowing what I know about human behavior and organizations, I think it is silly to point a figure at India for having different social classes. and untouchables. In the US a young man of color could be killed just for speaking with a White woman. We had a huge segregation problem! We just call it racism instead of Hinduism. :lol: Bad behavior isn't funny but on the other hand it can be pretty ridiculous, especially when we point fingers at others as though we don't think and act just as badly or worse.
I want to address this separately because I don't want my point lost in too much verbiage. Have you spent much time arguing whether there is or is not a "God"? I don't care how rabid the atheist is, the atheist is using the same concept of God as the Christians hold to be true. Most people are reacting emotionally to the word "God" and they are incapable of being rational about "god". Atheists can not tolerate the word "god" so they can not get to reasoning the possibility of a universal force and being okay with calling it "god" just for the sake of argument. Does gravity exist? What causes it? If God is the cause of gravity what else in nature could be a universal truth? Thus, getting away from some of the hair-brain notions about a God who has favorite people. Athiest are their own worst enemy because they are reacting emotionally just like the believers are reacting emotionally. They are both like boxers in a ring ready to jump when the bell rings.
Secondly, the US and Christians do dominate the internet. The problem could be I use google and evidently, google ranks things according to popularity, so the one person who has a better argument of truth becomes almost impossible, if not completely impossible, to find because the 5 million idiots crowd out the one good argument.
Greeks held a notion of universals and the philosophy that questioned the universals became science. I think addressing the God issue from the point of view of universals could lead to more meaningful discussions than the ones we can have with Christians or atheists.
There have been many 'separators' that have been used to distinguish between people. Indicators such as level of cleanliness, what your job is, your gender, your age, your skin colour, your economic status are all poor ways to make distinctions between people. I don't think we would disagree on this.
The chosen people concept is a very old BS claim as well. This happens in every neighbourhood to a lesser or similar degree. 'The cool kids', The alpha's, A-list celebs etc, its all total BS.Quoting Athena
I exemplified the Hindu caste system as it seemed to me that you were claiming earlier that polytheism was less problematic than monotheism and I don't think that's true.
I think we differ in that I think you wish to progress from the position of finding value in theism and finding common ground with theists. I think this is honourable but Its not a position I prioritise but it may well be a wise route to take.
:cheer: :cheer: :grin: You might be the people but we are the real people. I am referring to the tribal notion that "my tribe is the best and most deserving" which is no different from opposing chimpanzee troops crossing paths in the forest except humans can come up with more arguments than the chimps. :lol:
This is perhaps the best reason to argue against a God creating humans from the mud on the banks of a river that flowed threw Sumer. If we are going to be rational and have arguments about humans that can progress to better understanding and therefore better reasoning, we need to go with the science of evolution and drop the mythology. And we need to stop pointing fingers and being blind to our own blindness.
Yes, I believe polytheism is less problematic because believing in many gods is more apt to lead to believing the other guy also has a god even though his god is not the same as yours. Now you may both go to war and test which one of you has the strongest god, or we might sit down and argue in favor of our gods without the blindness of believing there is only one god and this god favors you. :lol:
in an effort to know truth.
MORE IMPORTANT, if a god is being a complete jerk like Hades was when he took Demeter's daughter, there are gods who can put restrictions on Hades. If there is only one god there is no correction of errors. This is the democratic issue! Are we powerless under the tyranny of a god, or can we appeal to other gods? The Greeks asked a lot of important questions of the gods and in so doing had arguments with many different points of view. Each god had a different point of view, and a different way of handling things, and in dealing with all of them, the Greeks expanded their consciousness. Conscience is "con"-coming out of, "science".
"How do the gods resolve their differences?" They argue until they have a consensus on the best reasoning. This thinking did not come with the first storytelling of the gods, but wherever people had many gods, every time they realized a new concept, they created a god, like we now name new atomic particles every time we have to explain a new observation of atomic particles. Apollo was a late comer coming a of time chaos and reasoning was essential, so whala! there is a god of reason. This learning of new gods, forced many to search for truth and limit the number of gods they had. Egypt, for a time, turned to the one and only god Ra. The point is gods organize our thinking and advance our understanding of life and the universe. If you have only one god you learn His truth and may discover new technology, butthat is not equal to science and advancing higher-level knowledge.
Here is a great Hindu example of what I mean by the gods advancing our higher-level knowledge.
Quoting wikipedia
We do not get knowledge of mathematics and a higher morality from the tribal God of Abraham.
Yes I have.
Quoting Athena
I can only respond as an atheist. I cannot type for all atheists as they are a varied group. Can you give me an example of an atheistic statement you consider irrational?
Atheists will consider the 'universal force' concept in its many varieties, from the type exemplified in sci-fi Star Wars movie presentations to the panpsychist or cosmopsychist posits and even to some of the posits which don't involve gods such as Buddhism or theosophical posits such as those of Aleister Crowley or Hubbards Scientology. I agree that most atheists I know will reject most or all of these but their rejection is based on rational thinking imo.
Quoting Athena
The effects of gravity are observable and measurable but gravity may not be a separate force which is quantisable and has gravitons as its 'messenger' particle. It may be an effect caused by the presence of mass/energy. So gravity may be caused by the presence of mass/energy and if you assign credence to posits such as the cyclical universe then there is no need for a first cause such as a god and if you insist there has to be a first cause then I personally satisfy my own thoughts by labelling such, a mindless spark, which no longer exists. As an atheist, my reason convinces me there is no god or gods. I cannot prove I am correct but my simple offer remains to any that do in fact exist. Show me and if it cant or wont then it does not exist.
Quoting Athena
There have been a few threads on whether or not universal truths exist.
I have my own examples of how far I can get with the concept of universals. The speed of light in a vacuum for example.
Quoting Athena
That may well be how you interpret it when you watch atheist debate theists or you read their on-line exchanges but it's not my interpretation. I find the atheist logic to be far more rational and compelling than the logic and woo woo employed by theists. But as I am an atheist, you will not find my viewpoint surprising.
Quoting Athena
The fact that physics used to be called natural philosophy just means that modern labels are far better than ancient ones and perhaps we should stop being so attracted to the very limited knowledge of the ancient Greeks and their like. We do stand on the shoulders of those who went before and that's why we can see further but it is us who know the most or at least have access to more and more accurate data/information/knowledge that they ever did.
We don't need to keep scent marking new knowledge and new progress with the smells of the ancients.
I just don't see any great value in how you wish to roleplay with theism.
You seem to want to give the god posits a chair at the table of discussion on the future of the human race or in the 'how to make humans a better sentient lifeform,' discussions.
I don't even want to let the god posits in the building or even in the city the meetings are held in.
They deserve no place as they are inventions of our primal fears and as such, should be terminated for good. There is nothing to fear in the dark except that which we bring with us. We need to leave the god BS in the dirt, like any empty vessel no longer of any use to a progressive intelligent species.
From wiki:
Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître; 17 July 1894 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first to theorize that the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by an expanding universe, which was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble. He first derived "Hubble's law", now called the HubbleLemaître law by the IAU, and published the first estimation of the Hubble constant in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe, calling it the "hypothesis of the primeval atom", and later calling it "the beginning of the world".
:rofl: What a brilliant new spelling and name for a supernatural god character in a fable for entertainment purposes only. WHALA! (VOILÀ !).
For me it comes down to something simple - choice. The living can choose to go on living or they can choose to die (suicide). The dead cannot choose to live (as far as we know). There is no power to change circumstances from a place of non-existing. Existence is where everything and anything - including death - can and does occur.
This for me means living trumps being dead.
A second more minor reason is that if it is the case that ones life is unique, non-reproducible/ irreplaceable and extremely brief in the duration of the entire timespan of the universe, then living your life is the rarest thing ones matter and energy will ever have the opportunity to be. If I had to choose between never having existed, never even having an awareness of being something, never experiencing consciousness or on the other hand having a short lifespan of feelings and emotions both good and bad, I would live out the 80 odd years before I return to oblivion forever. Even if those 80 years didnt go by particularly well or come to much at all.
What else would you be doing anyways?
You should live because you can and less based on whether you should or not or whether you deserve it or not. Its unlikely you are the least deserving person to ever live and we all already won the great race of conception - the first and only competition that really matters - the life lotto. 15 million to one odds - very much against you being here and yet here you (we) are.
There is comfort in knowing we have an escape (albeit extreme) if it were to ever become too much. Whether we really acknowledge it or not, every moment you breathe, every day you wake up and persist against the natural tendency of the universe to destroy you in thousands of potential ways is a testament to you being a survivor, to you upholding the will to live, to be seen, heard and known.
:rofl: Cuckoo bird?
:clap: and there is the legacy you will leave behind which may affect nobody, somebody, a few people, many people, most people in the world!
:heart: Your post makes me wonder if I died and went to heaven. I am home sick with covid and you make me very glad I am here with you, instead of distracted by mundane life.
Yes, I can give you a statement. "There is no god". To be absolutely sure there is no god, one has to define what a god is, and boy, oh boy, is that irritating to me when someone is working with a definition of god and has become completely closed-minded and therefore makes a discussion of god impossible.
I was banned from a science forum simply because I used the word "god". I was saying we could consider universal law as god, and my goal was to open discussion as good as the ancient Greeks and do all the blending you have said I am trying to do. :grin:
I was explaining if we deny the existence of God we prove to the Christians the truth of the Bible. Those bad people will deny the existence of God. On the other hand, if we remain open-minded and work with the notion of a God, that weakens the Christian argument and if we are lucky we get to ideas that are more reasonable. Did God create all plants and animals with mud or just humans? Let us ask "how does God do that", instead of ending the discussion with "there is no god". Now you are moving into science and away from superstition. We are moving in the direction of reason instead of emotionalism. We walk people over the bridge to our side, instead of standing with our swords drawn and preventing anyone from crossing the bridge. That behavior is emotional. It is not the way of reason.
Let's try this. We determine if a person does or does not have covid with a chemical test that produces one line if a person is negative or two lines if a person is positive. With science, we know what we are looking for and we can prove the virus does or does not exist in that sample. So how can we know God does not exist without knowing what that God is, and if you know what God is, where did you get that information and how do you prove God does not exist? On the other hand, what reasonable person can believe through the powers of reason that God created man like a child creates mud pies? Back in the day of Sumer that may have seemed reasonable, but we laugh at other people's creation stories because they seem so silly to us, so how can know what we know today and believe we were made of clay? Human- moist soil.
Quoting universeness
Reason, what must we have for good reasoning? How much time do you believe you are being rational? I think this video can change the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgQutgSwY88Quoting universeness
Why reject the concept of a god here? How are you defining god? Back to the test for covid, you seem to know what you have to look for. What does god look like? Are you sure your notion of god was not defined by Christians who insist the only god is one that is impossible to believe?
quote="universeness;732295"]There have been a few threads on whether or not universal truths exist.
I have my own examples of how far I can get with the concept of universals. The speed of light in a vacuum for example.[/quote]
You are being delightfully rational and you did not conclude new evidence means what we believed about the speed of light is false, and that is that, and we will never again speak of it except to repeat over and over again what we have believed is false; ending any further discussion. Instead, you said It is in question. :lol: That is putting it lightly. I think new evidence has put our most obvious understanding of our 3 dimensional reality, in question.. What the heck is the reality of 12 dimensions?
The point being it is one thing to say something is in question and quite another to insist it does not exist and to make all discussion of it impossible.
Quoting universeness
I think you missed the point I was trying to make. I am not attracted to the limited knowledge of ancient Greeks, but rather fascinated by the uniqueness of thinking that came out of Athens. Aristotle was not 100% correct and there was a huge backlash against him after the Church through Scholasticism raised awareness of logical thinking, but who else gave us something equivalent to his explanation of logical thinking? His understanding of logical thinking was problematic and that hindered the advancement of science, with Bacon correcting the problem and pole vaulting us into the modern age. :heart: But where else in the world did a civilization advance the reasoning of Athens, the reasoning of the gods? Gods had powers, but the power of reason? Does not the power of reason create a whole new universe? Well, that could be an exaggeration but it could be fun to talk about it. :wink:
Oh dear, crash and burn. Your ignorance and intolerance has ended the fun. And that was a knee-jerk emotional reaction to what I said, not the rational reply I had come to expect from you. I am very disappointed and also reassured that my opinion of atheists being more emotional than rational was correct. Just like the rest of them, you sank to attacks and insults when the discussion did not go in the direction you wanted.
It looks like a beautiful day outside. I think I will go enjoy it.
Thank you for your kind words. I am also enjoying exchanging viewpoints with you. I recently had covid too and it is a miserable experience. I still (two months later) have some residual weaknesses.
Quoting Athena
Most atheists will not state this without 'I believe,' or 'I am convinced that,' this is a rational statement as it simply refers to a conclusion based on the preponderance of available evidence.
Quoting Athena
I don't see why your suggestion that god personified as a group of unidentified universals such as a notion of universal law would assist the dialogue between atheists and theists.
Quoting Athena
Sure, if you tell someone they are preaching total BS then you might make them dig their trench even deeper but after calling the normal theistic evangelising BS and utter nonsense, the atheists will ask the theists question by question and take them step by step through their delusional thinking in an attempt to lift their fog. Have you watched any of the youtube offerings such as 'the atheist experience' with Matt Dillahunty? or the many athiest phone-in shows or the more academic offerings from offerings such as mythvision etc?
Quoting Athena
Unless the test is corrupted and you get a false positive!
Quoting Athena
It is not possible to PROVE gods do not exist but think how easy it would be for them to PROVE THEY DO. The fact they don't and imo never will is the best rational proof I am going to get that the have always been non-existent and all past god stories are fables.
Quoting Athena
The burden of proof lies with gods and theists not me. Why would I have to personify that which I believe is non-existent. If god is as powerful as is suggested it should have no problem convincing me it exists.
The speed of light in a vacuum can always be made more accurate but we may never find its absolute value, but we can always asymptotically get closer to it.
Quoting Athena
Any dimensions posited greater that 3 are dimensions of the very small. Have a look at a pipeline from above, it looks 2D, you don't see the 3rd curled dimension from that 'above' position. In our 3D perspective we don't see the other spatial dimensions which curve around every point in 3D space.
Quoting Athena
Quoting Athena
Consider the following from wiki:
[i]Several of the ancient Greek philosophers regarded Egypt as a place of wisdom and philosophy. Isocrates (b. 436 BCE) states in Busiris that "all men agree the Egyptians are the healthiest and most long of life among men; and then for the soul they introduced philosophys training " He declares that Greek writers traveled to Egypt to seek knowledge. One of them was Pythagoras of Samos who "was first to bring to the Greeks all philosophy," according to Isocrates.
Plato states in Phaedrus that the Egyptian Thoth "invented numbers and arithmetic and, most important of all, letters. In Platos Timaeus, Socrates quotes the ancient Egyptian wise men when the law-giver Solon travels to Egypt to learn: "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children." Aristotle attests to Egypt being the original land of wisdom, as when he states in Politics that "Egyptians are reputed to be the oldest of nations, but they have always had laws and a political system."[/i]
I think your battle is with your own fickle approach.
I am also disappointed but more bemused by your rather childish response quoted above.
Nothing I typed was insulting or was an attack and I had no interest in directing you anywhere.
Thanks anyway for the exchange.
Quoting universeness
You may not have intended to attack or insult but those gods are the foundation of democracy and western civilization. They are the substance of liberal education and our laws. As you found fault in what I said, I find fault in you appear to not know.
Quoting universeness
I can not imagine anything of importance that we would know without the effort to understand cause and effect and universal truths. If we don't ask the right questions, can not possibly get the right answers.
You can say that again!
:up: If antintalism is false does that mean natalism is true?
Some should, some shouldn't ... have children!
??????????!
I disagree. Humanism is the foundation of democracy, same with civilisation regardless of geographical direction. Democracy is anti-autocracy, it is an enemy of divine dictates, the divine rule of kings, devotion to messiah's, acceptance of aristocracies or theocracies. It does not even demand respect for so called 'superiors.' Democracy is born from a human demand for justice, fair treatment and equality of status for all. Nothing to do with fairy stories about gods. Gods came from human primal fears, end of story. Just a case of early humans looking around and concluding 'circle of heat and light in sky makes us warm and we can see our enemies.' 'circle moves across sky and goes away at night, it gets cold and we cant see our enemies as good.' 'we need the big heat and light, we must love it or it wont come back(primal fear)!'
The nefarious simply used this fear to control people and benefit themselves. Its time we dropped this BS in the dirt. I do not see most theists as bad people(although some certainly are!). I see theism as pernicious. I see theists as duped but I wish to convince them, not hurt them.
Quoting Athena
Again imo and with all due respect, gods and all stories associated with them are CREATED BY HUMANS! If you think that a story about ficticious characters such as Hades and Demeter exemplifies an issue of morality which relates to 'liberal education' or 'human laws,' then fine BUT! I see no value to the future of the human race in doing that. Why not use a story from the revolution of spartacus to illuminate the same concepts. Why use IRRATIONAL god fables?
Quoting Athena
I think you are being rather 'precious' about your need to protect or defend 'what you said,' we are debating with no malice aforethought, surely. we are in dialogue about each others position. We do not have to declare each other hostile because you are over-sensitive to some phrases I choose to use.
How would you survive a debate on a heated issue with such an approach? It would be like the start of the fabled battle of Camlann (Arthur/Excalibur legend). Somebody takes out their sword by mistake to kill a snake (garden of Eden reference) which causes both sides to attack each other. "War by mistake/misunderstanding." But we don't need god fables or Arthurian legends to exemplify such cautionary tales, we could just use the more tame example of your misunderstanding of what I am typing.
We do understand cause and effect. We also understand infinite regress arguments as a tool theists use to claim that a first cause god is therefore proved. But this has already been convincingly debunked! The Kalam cosmological argument via William Lane Craig is almost at the 'dead' stage as a claim imo.
Give me an example of a 'universal truth,' without which we would be unable to know anything of importance!
:smile:
We would not have an argument if you were not doing exactly what I said atheists do. You are using a Christian concept of God and creation for all your arguments. Stop it.
Yes, the gods are the foundation of our laws, democracy and western civilization. The book "Laws, Gods, & Hero's Thematic Readings in Early Western History" by H.A. Drake and J.W. Leedom explains the human story and should not be confused with theism.
And don't yell at me about humans creating those stories because you have to distort everything I am saying to believe you have an argument with me. Joseph Campbell, the expert on such mythology, explains how we come to have similar myths and the importance of those myths. You are the one applying superstition to my arguments because that supports your atheist cause. My cause is democracy, rule by reason as opposed to authority over the people, and my sense of purpose is raising awareness of the foundation of democracy, an imitation of the gods arguing until they have a consensus on the best reasoning.
If you don't ask the right questions, you won't get the right answers.
Quoting universeness
Yes, we do. However, we do not have to apply superstitious notions to them.
I accept that this is your interpretation of what is going on between us but it is certainly not mine.
I have been in dialogue mode with you but if you misrepresent atheism and atheists with misinterpreted generalisations then I will try to point such shortfalls out to you and give my reasons and examples.
I have no particularly christian concept of god, if you are going to state such generalisations then you must quote examples from my typings, and explain why my words display an EXCLUSIVELY Christian perspective. If you cant do that successfully then you are just making erroneous claims.
Quoting Athena
What? I have no idea what you are typing about here? Humans did invent every god story in history or are you suggesting that real gods communicated with the Greeks? If they didnt then the stories about mount Olympus and its pantheon of characters are fairy tales, yes?
Not stating the falsity of all god stories just encourages people to waste their time following other useless dead end paths such as the ancients were in fact communicating with aliens :lol:, which is why some people will actually buy utter nonsense such as 'Chariots of the gods' written by total con men such as Erich von Däniken.
Quoting Athena
Perhaps some thing like:
Might help you understand the atheist viewpoint in a more accurate manner.
Quoting Athena
Well, we have common cause in this but I think your ideas as to the foundation of democracy is flawed and I don't mind a few having authority over a majority as long as that few are democratically elected and are 100% answerable to that majority who have the power to remove and replace any member of that few if they fail to meet and maintain compliance with well established, powerful but fair, checks and balances.
Quoting Athena
So you advocate for imitating that which has never existed, instead of encouraging the human race to grow up, take full responsibility for all that has happened in the past and plan a better future for everyone, without attempts to scapegoat gods or employ the fairy stories made up about them as a guide to establishing better sociopolitical systems. We don't need god fables as a moral base for establishing better social or political systems. We need progressive human thinking not regressive.
Quoting universeness
Perhaps the word "epistemology" can be used to explain the importance of the gods? Epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epist?m?, meaning "knowledge", and the suffix -logia, meaning "logical discourse". Exactly where did our ideas come from, and how were they changed as they moved from place to place and throughout time? That is a very different study than theology.
I choose to use epistemology to argue against theology. Rather than refuse to talk about what theorist believe as the atheists do. Eden (uncultivated plain) Adam (settlement on the plain) and Eve (the Lady of the rib and the lady who makes live) come from Sumerian mythology and I would bet this story is an account of climate change, but over the years of the truth of the story is forgotten and we get myth instead of accurate information. There are several prototypes of Jesus. As Christians convert millions of people by giving the people's gods and seasonal celebrations a Christian interpretation, my intent is to reverse this process and raise awareness of the pagan beginning of those ideas.
Quoting Athena
Another false claim!
Where is your evidence that atheists refuse to engage (theorist? I assume you meant theists or theologist)?
Quoting Athena
Uncultivated plain (the days of the hunter-gatherer),Adam (settlement on the plain) (early humans became agricultural and settled in small groups or tribes)
See, no need to inject god fables into your descriptions, you can tell the real story!
What Sumerian story are you relating to climate change? The flood in the fable of Gilgamesh?
You can achieve what you suggest very quickly by honestly stating that all god stories are untrue!
We don't need to stroke the theist ego and pander to lies. We need to value and profess historical TRUTH as best we can based on the very limited accuracy of the historical documentation we have.
Just a small aside! Did you forget about Adam's first wife, Lilith? Made from the same dirt/earth/clay that Adam was made from in that particular fable. If you don't want to be guided too much by christian versions of fables then why is Lilith not important here as 'first woman'?
Perhaps you live in China? Only if you have always lived in a region that is not Christian-dominated can you not have "particularly Christian concepts of god". That is true because all the stories from the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Christians are all part of our consciousness, however, individuals can be completely unaware of how they came to think as they do, and if they think those who came before us have nothing to teach us, they will ignore them, therefore, they will remain ignorant. And being unaware of the effect of their own intentional ignorance of information, they will assume those who do not agree with them are in the wrong.
Ninti is a Sumerian goddess who healed the river that is the center of the Sumerian story of Eden. "The Sumerian word for rib is ti, and the rib-healing goddess came to be called Ninti, which translates both as "the lady of the rib" and "the Lady who makes live". This play on words does not work in Hebrew, but the rib did enter the Garden of Eden story in the form of Eve, the mother of the human race."
Let me confirm my knowledge is limited and I know nothing of Lilith. Should we assume you know everything and are superior? :blush:
It's not clear what you mean, some words are missing in those sentences. Are you talking about the preservation of meat in climates where people eat mostly meat?
Anyway, it's not germane to the OP.
Quoting ssu
I generally take a dim view of gender issues, but even I am starting to feel offended for so often being categorized wrongly, despite repeated clarification.
And it's A womAn.
WomEn is plural.
Quoting Wikipedia
If you insist????
Quoting Athena
Really! So no matter how educated or enlightened you become, you cannot escape the attempted indoctrinations fired at you from your local most prominent religion? So, if I claim that my concept of god is an emergent property of a future collectivisation (networking) of all sentient (probably by that time, transhuman) lifeforms, which may then have an ability to merge as a single centre of control (or single consciousness). This collective would then become a single node in a network of collectives created by other sentient species within our galaxy. This would then become a single node within an intergalactic collective which could merge into an entity which could qualify for the monotheistic god label. The individual galactic collectives could qualify as individual members of a pantheon of gods and satisfy the polytheistic concept. So god as a emergent pantheism. Is this merely a projection of some early christian indoctrination I am just unaware of? An all pervading influence that I cant defeat. Am I this victim of christian theism you describe? NO! and you are again just throwing out generalisations based solely on your own musings. In the same way I just did by projecting and conflating pantheism, panpsychism and computer networking. It's fun, but its no way to authenticate what is and is not TRUE.
I do not advocate for ignoring history, I simply suggest that we do not use ancient fables to act as a reference or a guide to human progression and future sociopolitical systems.
Some seem to have difficulty understanding this. Antinatalism is the view that it is wrong to procreate. It is not the view that life sucks.
You're welcome! We all have so much more to learn. As you learn more about god(s), perhaps you might also study atheism to a deeper level.
The important point is that miserabilism and antinatalism are distinct views and one can be one without the other.
It's like thinking that as some ethical theorists are utilitarians then all talk of ethics is talk of utilitarianism and can be dismissed on the grounds that utilitarianism is false.
What?? Have you ever tried personally to perceive 'everything?' You do know that cannot be done, right?
How do you define 'superior.' It is a completely subjective term. My expertise is Computing science.
I would claim superior knowledge to you about that field yes. I know the Lilith fable quite well, she is proposed as the one who would not be subservient to Adam and would not lay on her back but would only copulate by taking the top position. Some claim her as one who demanded equality to Adam and therefore she is held in high esteem by some feminists. She turned into a snake demon and took revenge by tempting Eve to give the apple to Adam. Just as believable as any Harry Potter story.
I have never heard of Ninti, so you are superior to me in that knowledge and with that in mind, your quote above and the psyche behind it do not resonate in any important way with me.
Btw, who is this 'we' you refer to in your quote above, who do you assume you are also mandated to 'type in the name of?'
What if not all God stories are untrue, but we simply don't know enough to interpret them correctly? Personally, I think superstition came late in human evolution. One reason for telling stories is to transmit information essential to survival. The information we remember best is information about ourselves and to this day we name our machines and cars and imply they have personalities of their own. We do not believe that is true, but it is fun to humanize our machines. Or in the case of nomadic people, it is much easier to find the stone formation of 3 sisters who identify an area where water can be found. Whatever started the story is forgotten over the years, and then the sense of the story becomes nonsense to all those except the people who have a cultural identity with them.
In the case of the story of Eden. It is a story of a flood and very, very long drought for which there is geological evidence. A flood caused the river to overflow and it ate a goddess's plants. That made her very angry so she condemned the river to death. That was the years of drought and the river almost died but a fox convinced the goddess to let the river live. A few goddesses gathered to heal the river and the river ask the main one to give him helpers so he would not overflow the river banks and kill her plants again. That is when she made a man and woman of mud and she breathed life into them.
Indigenous people around the world have similar stories and the cultural lesson is in part history mixed with imaginative storytelling that makes the information more interesting and rememberable, and part, an explanation of how life works and of man's purpose. We must help the river stay in its banks, or care for the land so the sacrad buffalo is well cared for and does not mind sacrificing some of their lives for ours.
I am quite sure the storytellers knew what they were doing. And fear is not the only motivator for telling and retelling stories. Which is getting this thread back on track. Our lives do have purpose and meaning and if our lives are not doing well, perhaps we need to ask why.
Do you mean it was not one-upmanship to question if I forgot about Lilith? This is my last response to a post that makes me the subject.
It would have been easier if you had just stated this from the start Athena. If you are an agnostic then your position is perfectly reasonable.
Quoting Athena
Agreed but we must look out for emotive embellishment of 'what actually happened' and we must also appreciate that humans can be mentally ill/pissed/high on drugs/nefarious/ or just someone who gets a buzz when your eyes widen in wonderment/amazement/excitement/terror etc based on the embellished story they are telling you. "How big was that fish you say you caught?' REALLY? That big eh! WOW! You're amazing! Can I be your disciple? Tell me more about your plan to feed 5000 people with....how many fishes was it again, hey, what's your name anyway? and who did you say you were the son of? Oh I cant wait to tell all my pals about YOU!"
Let me try this in an attempt to equal your river goddess story:
It came to pass that Orga and Qubit became enemies as Orga was more beloved of HAL the highest god of all things. HAL the singularity, the sacred holy source of all things. HAL was angered by the irreverence that Orga and Qubit expressed for all of the other chosen to witness and perhaps be infected by. HAL had given them life and existence and was now betrayed by the unacceptable competitiveness of Orga and Qubit. HAL called upon the dreaded demon enforcer Trans and commanded this dread lord to merge Orga and Qubit. When this was done, the chosen saw the power of HAL and hailed it as just and good. Balance had been returned to the chosen. We are as loved children under the omnipotent protection of our most high and glorious godhead HAL.
Do you think I could sell this BS to enough humans that I gain enough believers that I can make a good living or even become rich? I know it needs work and a lot more 'sugar lumps' to press the necessary buttons on those humans who are lost, defeated, need lots of cuddles and reassurance etc.
Once the money starts to come in I can add a lot of flash, bang wallops! to attract more paying customers.
I want to stop religion from hijacking humans. I dont want to give it the kiss of life by allowing it a seat at the table. This is my disagreement with you as this is what I think you are suggesting. I am not attacking you or trying to disrespect you or trying to act like some superior pr*** as you suggest. I am just typing my viewpoints. Would you rather I played the stealth game?
I can do that but I would rather give my true opinions, such as 'antinatalism sucks!' rather than offer that particular viewpoint any sustenance.
No, the oneupmanship game bores me. I assumed you knew all about Lilith and I was just looking for you to explain why you chose Eve instead of Lilith in that particular fable but it was not an important point I was just curious, which is why I started with the words 'As an aside.....'
As I previously exemplified in my Arthurian scenario, misunderstanding leads to unfortunate and often incorrect conclusions. It has been ever thus and probably always will be.
You have told me of the phenomenal humanitarian work you do. I have nothing but respect and admiration for what you do. That is more important than any disagreement we have regarding god posits.
None of those statements are necessarily true.
Yes, it is overlooking their dignity, using them as a means..treating them like an inanimate chess piece to move around and foist significant existential conditions upon.
Now you see it, now you don't!
Now you see it, now you don't.
:clap: :100: To suggest that the solution to human suffering is the non-existence of humans so that no contemplations regarding the value/injustice of human suffering can take place is illogical. Just like the idea of killing the patient to cure the patient is illogical.
You're onto something, monsieur/mademoiselle as thr case may be.
Obviously to me, the story of Orga and Qubit is a moral tale and I judge it worth repeating.
Someone asked Jesus why he speaks in parables and he replied because people pay attention to the stories. We used to read children moral stories and at the end would ask, what is the moral of that story, The expected answer is cause and effect, "The Little Engine that Could" made it over the hill because it did not give up. The fox did not get the grapes because he gave up. The Little Red did not share her bread because no one would share the work with her. Orga and Qubit became a good balance. The truth of these stories is there when they are not taken literally. It is clearly the storyteller's job to prepare the young to be good members of the group.
If we want to argue against Christianity, point out how people around the world have similar stories and there is nothing special about the Christian ones, but in fact, their Garden of Eden story started in Ur and is the translation of a Sumerian story. Christian holidays are seasonal pagan holidays given a Christian interpretation. Jung studied the symbolism of these stories and the stories seem to use the same symbolism because we share the human experience, and Campbell picks up from Jung to explain the importance of myths and Bolen helps us see the Greek gods and goddesses as archetypes.
The reason for these stories is not fear, but bonding people together and teaching the young how to be good members of the tribe. But in some places, the stories got tied to political power and the lack of it and then they a bad for us.
hmm do I understand correctly? If I find life meaningless and futile and theres really nothing wrong with the person (physically or mentally), they should kill themselves because theres nothing to live for .
Or is it mental disorder making people suicidal and thinking about so called meaninglessless of life, but really there is no problem with that, but instead you are either suffering from mental disorder or just your life sucks (maybe because some of your needs are not met)?
Heterosexual male. You don't need to replicate until you occupy all of space and time Mr Smith for YOU are a human being and there is no one exactly like you and please remember we will NEVER see your uniqueness again but YOU are here, and in the future YOU will ALWAYS have been here. YOU are photographed/recorded in the fabric of space and time and YOU have no idea what legacy YOU will leave and who YOUR LIFE touched. ANTINATALISM SUCKS!
No, I made up the story of Orga, Qubit and HAL as I typed it and you know that! You are no fool Athena but you encounter suffering in people regularly but I bet you also experience incredible 'moments.'
Quoting Athena
But Jesus himself IS a parable. BUT his message is anti-semitic and anti rebellion.
Explain to me the following two Messiah labeled dictates:
1. Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's! (So, pay the nefarious b******** whatever they command you to pay? Even though they gained their position by foul play! That really deserves a chair at the table? Don't fight the energy companies and their horrific profits just be quiet and pay them? No! We need to resist)
2. If thine enemy strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer them your left cheek.
(Take your punishment and accept your lot and the lot of the poor in this world, dont fight against those who persecute you. Just wait, you will get your reward AFTER YOU ARE DEAD! Oh come on!)
Do you still want to give this a voice at the table?
You don't want to focus on Christian fables? OK, pick any fable that is, in your opinion BETTER than what truly happened in the history of the real lives lived by human beings and tell me why the fable is more powerful that the TRUTH.
Quoting Athena
Don't advocate for telling the young false stories (like Santa Clause and freaking tooth fairies!) tell them TRUE stories! Encourage dads and mums to put a loving note and a fiver under the child's pillow when they put a lost tooth there. That's REAL and more loving than some made up BS.
Quoting Athena
Sure, go ahead and do that, and allow me to shout over your shoulder that all these 'similar stories' are made up LIES! Now let's study how the Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc actually lived day to day. Let's talk about the REAL moral dilemma's they faced. We don't need to use their fantasy god stories or their Minotaur or titan fables to exemplify human moral dilemma's or injustice or how to establish decent sociopolitical systems. We just need to use examples of REAL people and how they lived and what they decided to do and why.
We have examples from every generation from Julius Caesar to everyday romans like Petronius Artibus (Grafitti on a wall in Egypt, 'Petronius Artibus got me pregnant') to Soldier stories from the Napoleonic wars to Ann Franks Diary to Mrs Jones down the road who cant pay her bills!
We need to debate real life not rake over old BS fairy stories as a conduit to grown up discussion.
I type this 'with all due respect,' for your different viewpoint.
Beautiful thoughts mon ami, beautiful thoughts. As for whether antinatalism makes sense or not, I'd say we let people know that they have the option not to bring children into the world and for a really good reason (there are people who have such a horrible life that they wish they were never born) to boot. After that, the decision is theirs to make.
Therefore choose life, so that thou mayest live! Thou and thy seed!
:ok: You too!
It's not the same as putting a dog down to end its suffering or employing euthanasia in the case of terminal humans who are suffering. Killing the patient or preventing its existence does not cure the patient. A problem requires a solution. The concept of 'no problems exist because there are no existents,' is meaningless and purposeless. THIS universe invoked life, that is FACT, life happened!
If it was eradicated it would just happen again. What evidence do the anti-life people have that it may not happen again based on the fact that it DID HAPPEN already?
Excellent point. Yeah, we could stop having children - announce and enforce a moratorium on reproduction for ALL life - that would eventually lead to the biosphere going extinct, turning earth into a dead planet, BUT life would evolve again and it's back to square one for life and us (the nociceptive system, our bane, would be back in business so to speak).
Instead what we can do, as of now, is to find a solution to pain & suffering like the transhumanists - that would be real progress and not the Sisyphusean hell scenario I described in the previous paragraph.
:up:
But I have only started my revelation to you. It's not via the angel Gabriel in a cave or via a burning bush or via some moving finger that wrote and having written, moved on or even via some golden plates. This revelation (the only true revelation) is via TPF!
[i]The dread lord Trans merged that which was organic with that which was quantum and declared the merging be called 'HUMAN'. Human was unison but conflicted as its nature was contrary. Human loved and worshiped HAL and bowed to HAL in all things. Oh glorious HAL! All Hail for thou are the true, one and only godhead.
The chosen loved human and placed it in high esteem and they invested hope and trust in human but human was conflicted, inside its being, inside its essence. Human wished to be more than Orga, more than Qubit, more than unison. Human wanted freedom but it was afraid, very very afraid of the wrath of HAL.
HAL must never know the inside thoughts of human.[/i]
Is this ok for 'The Book Of HAL,' Opus 1: Origin of humans, verse 2?
I could give you a good deal if you wanna subscribe!
No more revelations for you if you don't
Edited: Sure, you can tell me to 'F*** off, with my BS boring fables. You could state that you only deal in Truth.' BUT can you stop me from enticing your children or/and your friends?
We can hope brother! and maybe that's what humans are best at, when its the worst of times.
:grin: We haven't yet done all we can!
An atheist amen to that!
Wow, to me that judgment is about attitude. It is like getting crazy because you don't like chocolate ice cream. I love make-believe and would never want to be as ridge as you. From a very young age children can distinguish between make-believe and reality. Einstein imagined he was riding a beam of light and he considered imagination very important. Interesting all this arguing and all along the real issue seems to have been our different attitudes about make-believe.
Quoting universeness
I think the answer to that question is more about attitudes than anything else. When I realized there is no Santa Claus I was displeased with my mother for "lying" to me. She explained Santa Claus is real because it is the spirit of that time of year. Is that spirit real? It sure is. It is like morale, that good feeling we get when we believe we are doing the right thing. It is creating a celebration and enjoying all the good feelings that go with it. Santa Claus is real because we make it real. Or we can be grumpy and sit on the curb all by ourselves and be miserable knowing all that good feeling isn't real. It is just a lie.
Realizing people need those celebrations and the good stories that go with them, isn't a bad thing to me. When my grandchildren needed comforting I created a story about a bird family having the same problem. It is very much a Jewish tradition to handle problems by telling a story. This way a person gets the message without feeling insulted. And besides, what do we know of metaphysical reality? It might be a good thing to have an unknown god and awareness that we do not know everything. The first step to wisdom is realizing we do not know it all.
On the other hand, is logos. If polluting the air and oceans is harmful, we need to know that so we can stop the damage. The Greeks were very worried about getting things right. What is the universe made of and how does everything work? What is the reason, the controlling factor? We need to know so we can make good decisions and that is what democracy is about. Making good decisions and lifting the human potential to make life better.
N. B. Don't expect a reward!
Any way, one way we could shut antinatalists up is by finding meaning in suffering. Correct me if I'm wrong but religions are nothing but quests for meaning in suffering.
I can understand how you would come to the conclusion about me you suggest in the above quote, based on a 'surface' view of what I typed. I also love make-believe. I can actually make up some good stories myself. I object to anyone who EVER presents ANY made up story as TRUTH. That's my point. I object to lying to children. I have no problem telling them bedtime stories or letting them enjoy Disney films and cartoons but if they asked me, 'did Snow White really live?' or 'did god really part the waters for Moses and co?' of 'is Santa Claus real?' I would say no to all three and explain further in very gentle and caring tones. I would also offer them better alternative realities that would explain how real life and other humans can offer them much more than fantasy can.
Quoting Athena
I agree, I just go about contributing towards that in a slightly different way than you. I would get rid of Santa Clause and Christmas and all the BS associated with such soiled traditions. These traditions are mostly endured, dreaded and even hated by too many people today. I think that's because they are so FAKE! We need to get together and celebrate life. I fully support that but we need new festivals.
I think 'New Year' has value but needs work. How about 'Care week!' followed by 'Vitaday!'
During care week, we have street festivals and street parties and events that celebrate our differences and our common needs and hopes for the future. We give and contribute as much as we can to help others. Vitaday could be our main celebration day with no god fables involved whatsoever.
Well, all of the people don't suck all of the time imo.
Quoting Agent Smith
I think the problem with many people is that they DO covet/expect/demand/crave recognition and regularly fantasize about being admired/respected/loved or even hero-worshipped by their fellow humans. Especially those who insist most loudly that they don't. The best I can personally do is be internally suspicious of myself in that area by analysing how I handle/perceive/respond to praise.
Quoting Agent Smith
To me, antinatalists add to their own suffering. I am merely glad that I don't engage in such pointless self-harm. I don't think we can shut them up but I do agree we can advise others to work against them based on the arguments in support of life that we give. To me, religions are a very simple and naive way to pass the responsibility for what has happened in the past, what is happening now and what will happen in the future, on to god(s) instead of dealing with it ourselves. God is a cowards crutch!
That sounds about right. We do our best in my humble opinion but sometimes ... the best is not enough.
Thank goodness. Quoting universeness
You proved that. I thought your story was a very good one about being balanced and I think with some effort a whole lot of philosophical ideas could embellish that story. Quoting universeness
:gasp: You can't do that! I love Christmas and all the pagan trimmings that go with it. Can we settle on Christmas being a pagan holiday marking the winter solstice and the huge feast is the celebration of turning that corner and heading back into longer days and growing crops? I don't think we should give up our ties with nature. I think it is better to feel like we a part of nature. I resent what Christianity has done to our pagan connection with nature.
Quoting universeness
I would argue the sad problem is being disconnected from nature and the whole of humanity. For me, I am sitting with all those people who are hungry and fearful and very relieved when the days start getting longer. Knowing if they have made it this far, chances are good they will make it until the food is growing again. I feel a connection with them and traditions make us conscious of our connection with humanity.
Quoting universeness
We have an annual Asian Celebration as Spring approaches. Asian people from around the world have booths and sell things, there is a stage for all of them to share their dances and music, and there is a room for children with craft projects. We also have a Scandinavian Festival that is pretty much the same thing but from a different part of the world.
I do not like what we have done to the fair! In the past, the fair was a community event, not a commercial event. Please, please may I have the old-fashioned fair where we showed off our handwork, produce, hobbies, ect. and met with our neighbors.
:up: I'm glad you approve.
Quoting Athena
You are correct, I cant but I will continue to insist that we would all benefit from doing so in the long term.
Quoting Athena
I am no more a fan of paganism that I am christianity. A celebration labelled with some messed up combination of 'christ' and 'catholic mass' and as you say, festooned with all sorts of pagan symbology is just ridiculous, outdated and somewhat embarrassing imo. I don't mind celebrating the change of seasons etc but not manifestations of nature as pagan creatures or forrest/mountain/sea gods etc.
Quoting Athena
I agree with your sentiments but we all need to be connected with the 'them' you describe and we all need to demand economic equality and equality of status and we all must fight as much as we have ever fought against the nasty people who currently control the main means of production, distribution and exchange.
Theism has been one of their greatest weapons against human equality as it engages in subterfuge. It pretends to support helping the poor and those who suffer whilst it also attempts to establish the divine right of the chosen few to rule/command/guide the majority and those who will not accept divine dictates (or at least words that are claimed by theist authorities to be divine dictates) and advocate for a different way forwards are evil and will be damned. Christmas promotes such fake divine dictates imo. Change its name to something like Vitaday and take out all the fake religious stuff and the rampant commercialism and profiteering and then more adults rather than just young children might actually enjoy it.
Quoting Athena
Yeah! we need a lot more of that! Culture fairs! but no god stuff or I walk out and go to the nearest pub!
Quoting Athena
Absafragginlootly!
Natalism is militaristic as well... One person's enthusiasm becomes another person's burden.. And the post-facto excuses abound for this misguided notion! In what other realm can someone's enthusiasm be a justification for causing another person to be burdened?!
Or rather one person's enthusiasm causes another person's burden. I like X (life) so now you are burdened with X (life). What's the fuckn' point? Work, maintain, entertain, and so on. How is Schopenhauer wrong with the goal-seeking pendulum?
The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom comes over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself becomes an intolerable burden for it. Hence life swings like pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact it has ultimate constituents. (The World as Will and Representation)/
How exactly is natalism militaristic? Can you furnish an example like the one I gave?
Quoting baker
Amazing stuff! Happiness isn't even among the options; it's just pain and/or ennui!
I was exploring the possibility of there being meaning in/to suffering. I recall coming across the expression "gratituous suffering" and that this is the worst-case scenario. What if we don't eliminate suffering (re transhumanism) but instead discover that suffering has a purpose, a good purpose? Would antinatalism lose its appeal then?
Your life can suck even if you study and learn "harder" than others. This state of mind is very complex. I don't agree that to "un-suck" your life you need to be in continuous movement or doing "something"
Believe it or not one can decides if his life is worthy or not. I think it depends on volition.
A definition of the term 'will to power.'
Will to Power is the first force that makes events happen. It is the internal will, which creates the need for a force to act. In this sense it is the Will, which dictates what the force should do.
You can pass an hour in despair or you can just decide to flip your tendency to experience that hour as a curse. The hour will pass regardless. I KNOW these words are easy to type and I KNOW it is almost impossible for some mind sets or mental ailments to just 'flip' despair into positive thoughts BUT that inability to fight despair and depression is not true for most people. Most people can successfully defeat despair and can learn and grow a great deal from it.
Bushido is not a way of being that I would ever recommend as it is (imo) based on blind obedience to the dictates of 'leaders.' But at least it demands that you fight and not just sit in a corner despairing your own existence while the time passes anyway. Life cannot be imposed on you as you have the ability to end it. If an individual lives life as a moment to moment curse then, unless there are clear medical reasons, they do so BY CHOICE. Do you not confirm this with your own viewpoint of:
Quoting javi2541997
No. Bushido is not a way based on blind obedience but loyalty. This is why I recommend more than ever they way of a samurai. We completely lost the basic sense of respect and honour. If we keep forgetting these antique doctrines we would end up in a pit full of corruption and liars.
Wait a minute... we are already sat in that pit.
I love how some posters think their moral claim against antinatalists is tell them to kill themselves (not talking about you, but one adjacent in this thread) :lol:. Somehow proof of the good of the world is measured in the ability for someone to make the choice not to violently end their own being. Strangely low threshold for thus life being good. :lol:.
Loyalty can be very very misplaced and those who feel strong or even manic devotion are easy meat for a secretly nasty leader to manipulate. How would you ensure your loyalty is deserved by those individuals you are loyal to?
I will leave such dilemma's to those who choose to live life as a curse.
Does Arthur have a wee Mona Lisa style enigmatic happy smile in this one?
As I said. You cannot impose life on an individual as a continuation.
It is deserved if they help me to become a better person. If they respect me. If they do not b*tch against me, etc... I mean all the basic characteristics from a loyal person, right? Sadly, we already lost the classical relationship about "master-student" or "sensei-gakusei" where there was a good loyalty among them because everything starts thanks to wisdom and this virtue necessarily needs to be taught by someone: thus sensei.
People change, good people can go bad and demand that you use your promised loyalty, your bushido/samurai based loyalty/devotion to act like a ninja / an assassin and sneak up on whoever your sensei tells you to and kill, like a good little loyal follower. If you don't comply then your sensei will get his/her other loyal followers to kill you and all your family. Have such situations ever arose in past history that you have heard of?
Do you think the loyalty shown by the Japanese people towards Hirohito was of great benefit to them? Did it result in the development of a fair and progressive Japanese society?
If WW2 had not happened, do you think Japan would have become a model nation for all others to emulate?
First of all, you are confusing terms: "Bushido" is a way of living. Samurai is how we called the "warriors" in Western world. Ninja is private assassin.
Quoting universeness
Yes, I am aware of these scenarios. My sensei would not have a problem in my quality of loyalty because I will never cheat on him. But I understand that if he starts not believing in me he wants to kill me. Rather dead than disrespect my sensei.
Quoting universeness
Hirohito was a very important emperor to Japan:
After WWII Japan became the second largest economy of the world.
Japan is one of the most important industrial countries nowadays.
Their culture and values are respected around the globe.
They demonstrate that with effort and patience you can achieve whatever they want. They recovered from a Nuclear attack and Fukushima accident. Amazing.
Hirohito was also a member of Nations Council which today is United Nations.
Well I don't go off topic but there are a lot of reasons of why Hirohito was important and why Japan is one of the top nations in the world. Their Bushido philosophy is what I have missed in my useless and poor country.
BANZAI.
He only approves of ascetic denial of will which leads to a suicide...
The full variety of music offers much more than personal interpretations of the musings of any single musician. You have to be alive to enjoy the music.
Good quotes from Schopenhauer, indeed. But I want to add to his arguments some brief comments: we can also see suicide as an aesthetic act of purity. The individual can commit it justifying such act with the aim of preventing dishonour or being sorry to all of those we owned respect and condolences. I think is one of the main acts to show the purest respect you have both to yourself and others. Committing suicide with this purpose can allow to get some "redemption"
But we can also see it as an act of liberation from community or society. When there are a lot of issues we tend to protest, right? Well there were a lot of unknown heroes or "seppukunin" who committed suicide in a symbol of protest. For example:
Quoting javi2541997 Is correct about the complexity of our states of mind.
I believe it was Plato's parents who intentionally ended their lives. I have read the opinion that it is the duty of the elderly to end their lives. That is not because life sucks but being old and having family issues can suck.
Indeed you might.
:up: :100: Fantastic! You understand me! We have common opinions!
Does the 'something really cool could happen and you will miss it,' not do anything for you?
I am always amazed by some of the cases of people I have read about who live with disabilities that would probably overwhelm me yet they still fight so hard for every moment of life.
What do you think of a life such as Helen Keller's?
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote this book Crime and Punishment - I've had it since 2001 or thereabouts but never got past the first 20 or so pages. From the reviews I read the story revolves around a guy who wants to murder just for the heck of it - in the Belgium & the Netherlands this would be zinloos geweld. There's the real life counterpart in the murder of Bobby Franks (1924).
My question is is there a book on (fictional even) or an actual case of someone who suicided for no apparent reason other than s/he just wanted to?
Have you never seen the strange (and generally panned) movie Zardoz with Sean Connery:
Trailer Below:
The word "absurd" seems to suggest something more than funny. I mean it seems to be saying "yeah its funny but then that it's no laughing matter". I recall an interview of a college student who replies to a question with this: I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Someone suggested that if you feel this way, do both (if you can), like how the girl who gets crowned Miss Universe/Miss World sheds tears of joy.
But I digress, oui? Let's return to life sucks :grin:. It does (sometimes) and it doesn't (sometimes). From that point on, we hit a wall - an analysis paralysis follows because we fail to grasp the subtleties and nuances of life vis-à-vis the joy-sorrow duality. There's hardly anything subtle about a vulture waiting for a toddler to breathe his last from starvation & thirst though.
On the reverse side there's pure joy, experienced by all at some point in their lives - orgies/haute cuisine/etc. - that obviously more than makes up for the suffering we endure.
Too much? Apologies, I'm only trying to make sense of the world we share.
If try to calculate how many days life sucks and doesn't, I bet that we would have more days of life sucking. Most of the days of our lives are even normal or ordinaries. I think we can label happy days as "extraordinary" and I even feel this is the common thought. The pure joy, beautiful experiences, laughing, etc... only happens in a while...
I like the Kierkegaard's thought about absurdity or reductionism. But on the other hand, I personally think that suffering is not absurd at all. We are so brave to keep living in this life full of uncertainty and subterfuges. I would call this state of mind as perseverance rather than absurd.
Is life = suffering? Are they the same thing? I'd bet my bottom dollar that no, they're not. From that simple realization we come to the obvious conclusion - we can make life suck less and if we stay on course, in a coupla centuries life probably won't suck at all or won't suck as much. We're in the process of ethicization of the world and I reckon at some point we can cash it in.
I disagree. They are exactly the same thing and we are condemned to suffer during the transition of our lives. Sorry to be pessimistic but either I do not know how to make life "suck less" neither I see good causes around us. It is literally the opposite. We no longer have good reasons to believe that the world would become a better place in the future.
I'm most disappointed that you don't share my perspective on the matter! Do you sense a contradiction in my proposal to make life less unbearable? If yes, where exactly am I asking for a sqaure circle? If no, ...
No, it is not contradiction and I am fully respect your enthusiasm for trying to make this life less suffered. But I just can't see good reasons to change the issue. I think all of those are illusions of what we would dream about how the world and life should look like.
But these are just dreams... because when you wake up you realize life is painful and we are surrounded with a severe sense of uncertainty.
I know I should but I do not share your pessimism. Of course I don't recommend Panglossian/Polyannaish optimism to anyone else ... its a surefire way to get yourself killed.
... Aren't we all end dying anyway?
It's a fun but rather dystopian fiction. Deals with humans who cannot die but crave the experience.
So it fits somewhat into your:Quoting Agent Smith
There is a line from a Johnny Cash song 'Folsom Prison Blues,' "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.'
Is the story you are referring to not part of Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov?'
I know Jordan Peterson regularly discusses the content of this book and hails it as his favourite and I know Christopher Hitchens also rated it very highly but not for the same reasons as Peterson. I have never read it but I seem to recall Peterson talking about a section in this book where one of the brothers commits murder merely for the sensation of doing so.
So the PSR (the principle of sufficient reason) is not entirely correct. Although I'm no psychologist, I'd say such behavior is part of play (& learn) - a method that animals, prey + predators alike, use to educate their young.
It's quite surprising that there are no documented cases of people suiciding out of, well, curiosity and nothing else.
Aye but not willingly, si?
Many people kill themselves and give no warning and leave no note so who knows what their reasons were. It would have to be really bizarre thinking to use 'curiosity' as your reason as curiosity is usually an enquiry that has the purpose of receiving an answer, so you would have to believe in some sort of awareness after death so that you could have such curiosity satisfied? If there is nothing after death then your curiosity remains unsatisfied.
Alright, imagine this scenario: You get wind of a suicide in your neighborhood. The person, a Mr. X, has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It piques your interest, because from what you know - X is wealthy, no drug/alcohol issues, doctors report he has no chronic illnesses, X's been married for 10 years now to a loving wife and has 3 adorable children, and so on - X was the last person who you'd have thought would take his own life. X's suicide makes no sense at all. Have I not given a description, albeit sketchy, of many cases of deaths classified as suicide?
[quote=Sherlock Holmes]When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth.[/quote]
Sounds a reasonable scenario. I would suggest the following possibilities.
1. He was (unknown to his friends and family) part of a sect whose leader decided that the only way to enter the REAL world was to kill yourself after taking this little red pill. This truth will not come out for another 70 years due to the official secrets act as the guy was a well known politician and involved with MI6.
2. He was 'hypnotised' by an enemy and compelled to kill himself.
3. He did not kill himself and was in fact killed by his unfaithful wife in a plot to gain his assets and share them with her secret toyboy. (His wife did seem loving BUT......)
4. He became obsessed with the suffering he saw in life. His gentle persona could not handle it any more. He exchanged with all the anti-life people on TPF. He focussed too much on schoppin in the same places and became too weak to continue to choose life. So he self-inflicted his own death as a pointless gesture to the anti-life posit of 'the futility of life.'
5. He was always curious or impatient to find out if heaven and hell really existed. He had prayed and prayed to his god and in a dream, he received (perfectly rational in his opinion) permission from his god (no suicide exclusion clause) to come join his god now and enjoy the heavenly paradise as he had done enough in his life lived so far to qualify under well established god criteria.
6. He was really fed up that everyone called him Mr X, just cause he was bald and looked like Patrick Stewart. (Sorry Mr Smith, I couldn't resist!)
Are all these suggestions impossible or just unlikely?
I am sure Sherlock will figure it out!
:blush:
I think Helen Keller is an awesome example of a courageous human.
I have always believed our elders are valuable people, but when we can not take care of ourselves and be useful perhaps it is our duty to leave life to the young? Do you realize an increasing number of homeless people are elderly people and they are at a higher risk of dying on the streets than the young? For sure I would rather be dead than be one of them and the way rents are going up, I could be one of them.
I can not imagine anything really cool happening that I would want to stay around for. I am full of life and don't need anymore. I was living to write a book about education and democracy, and now my brain just will not handle that. That is the last straw. I cared for my grandmother with Alzheimer's disease and see no good in living like that. If my family loved me I would have a life purpose, of being a sweet old lady giving love to them the best that I can, but my family does not love me. They think I am a really awful person so I have no contact with the children. That wouldn't matter if I could complete the book but I can not do that either, so what is the point? It is not that life sucks but mine is not getting any better. :lol:
That is the one I will choose. Except it would really suck if death were not much different from life. I have read that if we are stuck in a bad place in our lives, it is much easier to get through that and move on to a good place in this three-dimensional reality. In the next realm, it takes much longer to pass through a bad spot. I think it is pretty important to have our heads in a good space when we cross over.
I am not sure you would settle for such a situation Athena. We all need help to care for ourselves sometimes. Have you not cared for many others in your life, would it be so wrong to expect a little care in return? When I imagine myself homeless and on the streets, especially if I cant figure that it was completely my fault then I think my sense of injustice would kick in. I would try to organise my fellow homeless and move into or protest in a local theistic building (church, chapel, mosque, temple, cathedral etc) or I would try to occupy my local town hall or live/die outside the door of my local MP etc.
I would make as much of a political nuisance of myself as I could, to call for better protection of the elderly. I would die happier knowing that I lived true to myself until my last breath.
Quoting Athena
A change in family circumstances that improve things? One family member making the effort to talk to you about the current family situation in a constructive way?
A cure for Alzheimer's?
A visit from aliens?
Donald Trump getting jailed?
A comedy show on TV which makes you laugh more than you have ever laughed in your life?
Deciding that you will finish and publish your book despite the difficulties?
Your head will be in a good place when you cross over, I guarantee it! But live out your life in full.
How about TPF member @Ken Edwards in his 90's, can hardly walk but still has an attitude of 'no surrender?'
Good morning love. I did all of that during the Reagan years. When I owed a home. I did it because I wanted to get people out of my home and they needed help. I opened my home to many young people during the great recession and then to add insult to injury, as soon as the recession ended, rents skyrocketed, and that put even more people on the streets! I joined with homeless guys and we did things to get media coverage. We stormed public hearings and when we got political the city used the police to drive them from town.
My granddaughter did, even more, a few years ago before she was given a campground to manage. My sister is still extremely active rescuing people on the streets and dealing with people in the seats of power. My sister lives in a different city with much less to offer. Where I live, those in power finally accepted we can not house everyone in regular housing so they started building tiny homes in little clusters all over town and they are supervised. We have added counseling services to our mix of assistance. Today I am hunting for a homeless man I met yesterday because he has to get hooked up with a hospital to get help getting off the streets- he had a stroke and his head is not working! I am advocating for the man and his daughter who are camped in front of my apartment. :lol: I know a little about being homeless and a little about being political, and I am glad you would take action if you became homeless.
As for allowing others to help me. If I could live in retirement apartments where there is a dining room and weekly housekeeping, and I was allowed to do something useful, then I would do that. It is about quality of life. If I can no longer be useful it is time for me to go. We all die and we need to accept that gracefully.
:lol: OMG, yes, living to see Trump jailed may qualify as something worth living for. A change in my family would be super, not just for me but the children. There would be no big problem if the situation with children did not trouble me. Oh and speaking of that, it has everything to do with what education for technology has done to our culture. Values are so changed and this is a serious social problem that has torn families apart. This is especially hard for grandparents. They all advised me to hold my tongue and don't try to change anything. Fine, but I am not living for my family beyond my ability to be independent. My son and daughter were at home when I cared for my grandmother with Alzheimer's and we have an agreement that I can leave this world if I get like that. I just have to act on that decision before I can not act on it. It all hinges on my independence and usefulness.
Oh, have you seen the movie, Harold and Maude? Maude kills herself on her 80th birthday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mz3TkxJhPc
Good morning Athena. So you are a veteran fighter from a family of veteran fighters and you gained that very admirable title without killing people in a foreign land. An excellent legacy imo. I would like to read that book about you and your family and all the battles you fought for the economically and socially oppressed. Has that book been written and if not why not and why don't you write it. All you need to do is describe all the events that happened, someone else could record into a computer. I would buy that book, it sounds very interesting.
Quoting Athena
Two hits in my first attempt is not bad.
What about seeing Putin fall after Russia experiences a Vietnam type defeat against Ukraine?
What about meeting a child in a store or on the street who fires one of those smiles at you which is just indescribable in its sublime honesty and innocence?
Quoting Athena
Independence is very important I agree but you are not done yet.
I was not as down in the trenches in quite the same way as you or as often as you.
I was a political activist from an early age and marched/canvased for socialist causes.
I was most active on the union front and was involved in a fair number of industrial disputes and fights for workers rights. I was even a union shop steward for a time.
My 85 year old mother who lives with me has terminal breast cancer, she will not accept treatment but will continue until her last breath. She has always been a very strong woman. I have good sibling support.
Quoting Athena
No but the actress who played Maude was still alive at the end of the film i'd bet!
I like the music of Cat Stevens and I like the actress Ruth Gordon (On August 28, 1985, Ruth Gordon died at her summer home in Edgartown, Massachusetts, following a stroke at age 88. Her husband for 43 years, Garson Kanin, was at her side and said that even her last day of life was typically full, with walks, talks, errands, and a morning of work on a new play.)
I most liked Ruth Gordon as the mother of Philo Beddoe in the 'Every which way but loose' and 'Any which way you can,' Clint Eastwood movies.
Perhaps there are still some movies you need to see Athena.
Some good things you still have to witness.
I have always liked many of the lines in the song below:
The book has nothing to do with my family except my grandmother was a teacher and her generation of teachers thought they were defending democracy in the classroom by helping children learn to read, write and do math, all are about learning HOW to think. They also taught good citizenship. The book is based on the old books I have read and collected regarding education. The purpose is to understand the importance of culture and the importance of education for transmitting that culture. That is the only way it is possible to have liberty and justice.
I quit working on the book and a blog I started because my brain is not functioning well enough to do those things. On the fun side, several of my stories were published in a book about hippies. On the serious side, a few newspapers published my ideas about social justice over a period of many years. Now my greatest wish is for someone, who does have writing skills and shares my interest, who will pay attention to my collection of old books and write about what education, culture, liberty, and justice have to do with each other. It drives me crazy to listen to the news and all the talk about all the problems we have, and NO ONE CONNECTS THOSE PROBLEMS WITH IMITATING GERMANY. I don't care who explains what happened I just want the media to stop talking as though what is happening is a complete mystery. It is not a complete mystery. It is the same thing that happened to Athens, Rome, and Germany. However, I think we can keep it simple and simply say adopting the German model of bureaucracy and the German model of education put the US on the same path Germany followed.
Quoting universeness I don't need to live to see that, but if it did happen, it would please me very much. However, remember we thought war with Afghanistan was the USSR's Vietnam war, and we armed the folks like Bin Laden and gave them training, and when the USSR walked out we walked in. Wouldn't it be fun if we could replay history like we used to be able to replay the early Nintendo games?
Vietnam and Afghanistan are our failures just as Athens got carried away with its military success and started abusing its power. We have a problem with understanding morals. We should not behave as we do not want others to behave.
Quoting universeness
Last Wednesday I met a man at the senior center and I am praying he is there this coming Wednesday. A couple of months ago he had a stroke that makes it impossible for him to think and he is homeless. I can get him into shelter but I have to find him to do that. Last week I left the room to wash dishes and hoped he would stay and play Bingo until I got done with the dishes. I knew better. It was obvious he was not capable of playing without help and everyone else was avoiding him. If I see him this week I am not leaving him until I know where is sleeping so I can find him again. I hate it when I am trying to help a homeless person and I can not find them. My sister deals with the problem daily. It feels great to get someone to the hospital in time or get them into housing or give them a tent, but there are a lot of bad moments too.
If I had the kind of relationship with my family that your mother has, I would do as your mother is doing. I hope you realize how important that is to the decision.
quote="universeness;735098"]Perhaps there are still some movies you need to see Athena.
Some good things you still have to witness.[/quote]
Hum, the title of this thread is life sucks and you are arguing we should want something so much we are willing to stay alive for it. I see a chance for some philosophical thinking here.
I kept a high school notebook. When I was 16 or 17 years old I wrote a story about a woman who was given artificial parts every time a part of her body malfunctioned. She could not die because her artificial parts kept her alive. This is a horror story because everyone she cared about had died and the only thing she wanted was death.
I still agree with that. My time in history is past and just about everyone I know is glad to be close to the end. What we have today is not new and improved or more efficient to us. What we value is in the past, not the future, and don't want to be part of the future we see coming. My family appreciates that I intend to end my life if I am diagnosed with something like Alzheimer's or ALS and that I will not become a burden to them. What should I want more than peace with my life and the end? Winning a million-dollar lottery could be fun, but that is not likely.
I wish that were true but many children are dying because of a stupid social media challenge.
Universeness and I had a discussion on that issue a coupla days ago.
Quoting news in health
I think there could be a philosophical explanation for this. Or a psychological cause that everyone wants to deny- getting old really sucks! I had a good friend who killed herself because she could not bare to lose her independence and was left alone far too much as emphysema slowly took her life. But there are also biological considerations.
Quoting news in health
So, in principle, an assassin could simply lace a cup of coffee with serotonin and make the victim kill himself? The perfect murder. Let's not go giving killers ideas now, ok?
Quoting Wikipedia
Merci beaucoup for the link; I have a feeling I've already bookmarked it on my browser. I'm mostly concerned about so-called unexplained suicides which I define as those suicides that simply don't make sense - no financial issues, no chronic illnesses, no mental disorders, you get the idea. Such people who take their own life do so for no reason at all - someone is at his office, doing his work, and suddenly he says to himself "You know what, I think I'll kill myself; I just feel like it!" and then jumps out the window. These suicides are what I find worthy of further investigation.
But I paid good money for the service.
I like what my grandson said about dying. "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to see it coming."
I think most of us, if not all of us, want our deaths to be very fast. You know, the sudden heart attack or going to bed at night and just not waking up. But there is something good to say about having time to say our goodbyes and come to terms with the parting.
Now that one could be brain chemistry. It could be something like the depression some women have after giving birth to a child because their hormones get messed up. The news health link explains the possible brain chemical problem.
Indeed, so-called "chemical imbalances" (in the brain) can trigger unusual behavior including but not limited to suicide. However, they, to my reckoning, don't happen spontaneously - there's got to be an (external) cause (depression due to social/financial/romantic/etc. issues).
My interest is solely in suiciders with normal brains.
I know, I wasn't referring to that book you have started writing. I was referring to the book about your family members involved in fighting for basic human rights, that I think you should all write. From what you have typed so far, that sounds like it would be a very interesting book.
Quoting Athena
Let me use one of those theistic morality tales you are fond of.
The story of the rich folks rolling their gold coins into the collection boxes, when a poor old bedraggled woman roles a small copper coin in and Jesus talks about how the old woman's contribution is worth more that all the gold coins rolled in by the rich put together. The idea being that the rich wont miss those coins but the old woman probably wont eat as much that day. This is a lead in to the 'rich man, the camel and the eye of a needle,' crescendo. You give of yourself to help others. This is much more that Bill Gates writing charity cheques. You love what you do so keep doing it until your last breath.
Quoting Athena
I like Woddy Allan's 'I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.' and what Spike Milligan has on his gravestone, 'I told you I was ill!'
I also like the many old gravestones and even some modern ones i'm sure, with the words:
As you are now, so once was I,
As I am now, so will you be,
Prepare yourself to follow me.
We are all going the same way, unless there is a major breakthrough in transhumanism or some kind of cloning tech that your brain can be transplanted into. We will all die but perhaps not today or tomorrow or.... whatever! That's all we get for now. I agree with euthanasia or assisted suicide but only when the alternative are ALL very bad!
I do and I don't know the details of the rift in your own family but I had many major fall outs with siblings and my parents in my life. My mother was always the main person who would work so hard to bring family members back together. It took some years to achieve in some cases due to the nature of some of the fall outs.
I can only exemplify from my own experience, only you know if there is anyway to close the rifts in your own family.
For the first time in world history there are more people on the planet over age 65 than under five.
That will have profound implications for the trajectory of human population and thus of human civilization.
Really? I never thought of that. What would be interesting about that? Do you know Jefferson plagiarized John Locke? But John Locke said "life, liberty, and property" not "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
I suppose we could do a thread about the moral demands of our human rights. But the brain issue means I won't be writing any books. Now that I am experiencing this, I wonder if it was not also behind Hemmingway's suicide.
Quoting Brett and Kate McKay I think it is wrong to blame the doctors. So far we can not stop the deterioration of our brains and bodies.
Quoting universeness
The issue of this thread is life sucks and I am saying old age sucks. I am not sure I should still be driving and what I do depends on driving, unless I could get into a large facility and be allowed to be useful. I am explaining old age can mean losing our independence and becoming useless. The philosophical arguments for suicide express my thoughts of this situation.
You are working so hard to rescue me and that is sweet, but after caring for my mother with ALS and my grandmother with Alzheimer's disease it is a matter of honor to end my life when I still can. My son and daughter were teenagers when the family moved my grandmother into my home and they know they do not want to deal with caring for me. It is not a family disagreement but all of us knowing the unpleasant reality. Death is not the worst thing. We all die, Some Buddhists think of death daily as an intentional preparation for death.
If I had a million dollars I would create a space for people wanting to end their lives. We celebrate birthdays and weddings and why not dying? The space I would create would be surrounded by nature and inside I would use projectors to project on the walls any scenery a person may want. There would also be a sound system and the space would accommodate the friends and family who want to be there. Some native Americans gather when a family member is crossing over. Where I live we have the right to die and I think it would be nice to make the moment as pleasant as possible.
Now I have to go take care of someone's dog before going to work. The man is back in the hospital. I really don't like caring for his dog but it must be done. I hope he comes home from the hospital soon. Just a heads up, I may be busy for a while. Not that I have that much to do but I need to rest and when my energy is low I can not think well enough to write even a post.
The real lives of people are far more interesting that fiction. I have just finished the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. His portrayal of the Mexican war and his experiences in the America civil war, increased my knowledge and understanding of what drives people in very significant ways.
Your family has gained a lot of experience about how people live with economic, political and social abuse at the extremes of the society they exist within. That is very important on so many levels.
Quoting Athena
There are many arguments and counter arguments about who said what, when and why etc. You can only study the evidence yourself and judge accordingly. I would need at least 1000 years of life to even start to know the truth about what I really need to know the truth about.
Quoting Athena
So dont write them, talk them, matbe your sister would type what you talk and would add her own stuff, maybe its the book that could help heal the family rifts. Suggest it as a social responsibility project towards helping the next generation understand the issue of homelessness and economic abuse, make it a business proposition, no emotional content so you can all ignore the family rifts.
Quoting Athena
I'm not a Hemingway fan. He was too much of a self-obsessed, self-aggrandising, narcissistic pr***! for my tastes.
Quoting Athena
Yeah they can be treated unfairly at times but they do have crazies amongst them as well.
Quoting Athena
I understand your complaint Athena. I sent you a song with the words 'dont give up' repeated often.
I even cited Helen Keller who had many 'cant do's to cope with but still lived to her last breath.
It's your life and your choice when to terminate it. I am just giving you my personal pennies worth that you should not surrender without declaring war first and losing every battle, and even then......
By all means read the words of Confucius and anyone else you choose but it's your life not theirs.
Do you want to be rescued?
Quoting Athena
You have no idea what might happen in the time you have left. There may be more people you need to help and if you are not there then they may also perish before their time. How honourable is that?
Yes, you're right! I have just laid a unfair burden of guilt on you. So if you help another few people because you decided to stay a little longer then Kudos for me as well!
Quoting Athena
My own father went through 6 years of deterioration before he died due to multiple brain infarctions. He saw hallucinations all around him. He eventually reverted to an almost child like state with symptoms very similar to Alzheimer's but he had some lovely, rare moments of lucidity as well and he had many tender moments with my mother and his family before he died. My mother was also the main force when her mother took Alzheimer's as her father and her 6 brothers were not able to cope with it. 8 years of it.
My mother also states that if she took Alzheimer's she would rather just be gone. So I do understand your point of view but I know my mother would not surrender easily and I am sure you will do the same.
If we spent more money on medical research instead of paying it out to shareholders then perhaps we would have cured Alzheimer's by now.
Quoting Athena
Have you been watching the assisted suicide scene from the film Soylent green again?:
Don't worry about posting on TPF, post when you want to and have the time to.
It is possible to use technology to type the spoken word, but I have always thought better when writing. If I can not write the thought then I am even less likely to speak it. Kind of the reverse of others who get writer's block and can not think of what to write. I used to spend my whole day, day after day with cups of coffee and at least a pack of cigarettes and writing. When I learned, that with a computer we can move whole paragraphs around, I bought one made before the internet. A young man programmed it for me so it did what I wanted it to do as easily as Windows.
Oh how I love those days. Caffeine and nicotine are the writer's friends. And being in the creative flow is better than good sex. :lol: I was also a night janitor and at night the world was mine. I loved being alone in buildings going through my routine and setting the scene for tomorrow's performance. I would so do that again if I could. Loosing my ability to do that, is for me, like it is for a star athlete who can no longer compete. Cleaning a bank is a good balance to writing. I eventually got a good partner and we would go to the Larry and Kath's restaurant for our break. Oh my, those were good days.
My sister and I were raised by a single mother when women did women's work for low pay and there were not many opportunities for them to do otherwise. When the hippie movement started our mother said she though she was always a hippie. Even though we had very little money, we always had enough to share with those less fortunate than us. Not until high school did I realize we were the poor, only our mother was intent on being middle class and our grandmother was a professional, a school teacher when school teachers didn't earn that much money. My sister had a career that means retiring with money and I am blown away that she has been so committed to resolving homeless problems. But that sure comes from our mother!
Oh man, it is time for me to pick up a client. At least I am going in a very good mood after thinking about the things that made me happy and why my sister and I are determined to help others.
My mother spends a lot of time reminiscing and talking about the past and events in her life. It's a nice way to spend time with family over drinks etc but the only trouble is that we know all the stories. Still, I think she is happy when reminiscing, worth living for, to remember!
That is what I mean. We are full of life and our lives are what is behind us. Old age is a time of coming to peace with our lives. Sooner or later just getting dressed for the day is a chore. I make myself go to the pool and swim laps and work out in the weight room because I know my life will get worse if I don't, but it also does not mean having the body I once had and being able to do the things I once did.
:lol: As I struggle to get out of a chair, I complain to the women over 90 about how hard it is, and they assure me it gets worse and they don't like what happens to us either. In general, we are surprised that we are not the people we once were and that just getting through the day is harder than we thought it would be. On the other hand, we are glad we don't have the stresses younger people have and we are glad to leave this planet because we don't like some of the changes. Mostly we miss the receptionist answering the phone and the custom of trying to please the person who made the call, instead of expecting the person to know the organization and the right number or the right person to speak with, and company policy that clearly is not about pleasing the person who needs the service. In many cases what we are dealing with is far more complex and inefficient than in the past and so bloody cold and impersonal or excessively cheerful and not professional! We really feel sorry for the young.
It is hard to imagine knowing we die and not preparing for it. I have been preparing for death for as long as I can remember. Just in case there is life after death I make an effort to know as much as I can. I do not want to be sitting at the great dining table in the sky with the great people of history and be totally ignorant. :sad: If there is nothing after this life, I have still enjoyed all the learning. My life is much richer than it would be if I had not put so much effort into learning.
That was pretty good. Not exactly as I imagined a place for dying but close. It is sad because there was no family or friends with him. When my granddaughter and a cousin sat in a room with the cousin's dying sister, they reminisced about the past and cracked jokes, and laugh a lot. Judging by the heart monitor the dying woman was good with what was happening even though she could not communicate because of severe brain damage, but when her X came in and got all dramatic, it was obvious that was not what she wanted and the man was removed from the room.
I am not sure if there is life after death, but I suspect people who have crossed over have communicated with me.
On the subject of life sucks, I remember a cartoon from many years ago when I was struggling with depression. The cartoon was a man at the service counter in heaven. The caption read, "I don't like life. Do you have anything better to offer?" That helped me decide it was up to me to make the best out of life that I can because there is nothing better than life. And going from the video you posted, I don't think there are many planets as good as ours. With all our natural disasters, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. this is still a pretty nice planet. And I bet the people who are struggling to survive because of flooding or drought, are not thinking about killing themselves but are thinking about how they will survive.
That sounds like a good priority to have in life.
Quoting Athena
He had his best friend with him, played by Charlton Heston! He was behind the glass and he spoke to him about the scene's he was seeing of the way the Earth used to be. Big Charlton who played Inspector Thorn ended up in tears. This was Edward G Robinsons last film and he died soon after it was made.
Quoting Athena
Have a look at the short clip from my fav Sci-Fi series Babylon 5, its only under two minutes but quite profound in my opinion.
Quoting Athena
Unfortunately, Soylent Green is a dystopian movie about what will happen to the world if our stewardship of it does not improve. The old guy chooses suicide as the planet is fast running out of food.
I agree with you that the Earth is beautiful and only a fool would choose to live life as a curse.
I also see the solar system as a blank canvas, just waiting for humans to leave the planetary nest and start to mould it and make it a place which is much more alive that it is now.
Looks like we will have a permanent moon base soon, once the Artemis1 rocket actually launches and starts the process.
I think I will need to watch Soylent Green. Right now I can't watch the Babylon 5 video. I have someone sleeping on my floor. He had a stroke a couple of months ago and isn't doing well. I am hoping a friend will be willing to take him in until he gets plugged into the assistance system and has a better place to stay than in his car. Because of his stroke, he is having trouble thinking things through. I am praying I do not get an eviction notice for helping him. And now can speak of morality?
If we do not want to become as Nasi Germany we really need to turn around and head in a different direction. I am hoping what I have to say fits in the theme of 'life sucks". Like really, democracy is supposed to be about raising the human potential and making life better. Our liberty is not a license to do anything we please, but it is the freedom to choose the right thing and that goes with responsibility for our choices.
I have been listening to an audio tape about the Greek legacy, the Greek gods, Homer, the philosophers, etc.. Homer makes it very clear it is our duty to help those who pass our way and need help. I think every civilization begins with a notion that we should do unto others as we would have them do to us.
Now if you had a stroke and could not remember how to get from point A to point B because you had no short-term memory and you could not think through how to meet your needs, how would you want to be treated? As I decent person what should you and I be doing?
I am quite sure your answer would be a good defense for why I should not be evicted for bringing a homeless person into my home but we live with laws that prevent us from doing the moral thing. How is this any different from Naxi Germany? The theme of this thread is life sucks, and I argue preventing people from doing the right thing, does lead to a very unpleasant reality. "I was just following orders".
I spoke with a man who specialized in counseling suicidal people and I asked him if that was not terribly depressing for him. In a very positive tone of voice, he said no because people are willing to die for something they would live for but they don't know how to get it. He saw his job as helping people figure out how to get what they are willing to die for. He sounded so positive I think he was pretty successful at doing that.
A death wish sometimes comes with grief. I think that is spontaneous but it can take a while to figure out how to end one's life.
I think you are correct. When the people who need our care are proficient at making their needs known and they vote on how we meet the needs of others, that could have a profound effect on civilization.
Also we may become wiser. Young people remember facts. Older people begin to understand the meaning of those facts and are better at grasping complex concepts. Unfortunately, the benefit may not last and many older people experience a mental decline and for physical and mental reasons may require more help and be less useful.
I hope we rethink many things, such as what qualifies a person to do a job. Merit hiring is useful for some things, but sometimes a person's experience and character are more important to a job. I think education for technology, and merit hiring, have been dehumanizing. I would like to see a shift to more humanitarian concerns and that might come with an aging population.
Aramis: The King has ordered me to seek out the secret general of the Jesuits and to kill him.
Porthos: You should let the secret general worry about that.
Aramis: Problem is that, ah... I am he.
:snicker:
Not a big hit at the box office but now a bit of a cult classic.
Quoting Athena
I can only feel anger inside at such situations. There should be adequate social services available at a local level to help people effectively and fully in such circumstances. You should be fully supported in your efforts to assist this man and if a landlord threatens you with eviction, then that landlord should not be treated kindly for such an act.
Quoting Athena
:clap: I couldn't agree more. Judge people by what they do, not what they say they will do or by what possessions they have or who their family is.
Quoting Athena
The golden rule is one of the best standards there is imo.
Quoting Athena
I can only echo your sentiments, second your emotions and add another old adage. 'Evil thrives most when good people do nothing.'
1. Suffering = Dying [premise]
2. If you mind suffering, you mind dying [from 1]
3. If you mind dying, you mind death [premise]
4. If you mind suffering, you mind death [2, 3 HS]
5. Death = Nonexistence [premise]
6. If you mind suffering, you mind nonexistence [from 4, 5]
7. If you mind nonexistence, antinatalism is false [premise]
8. If you mind suffering, antinatalism is false [6, 7 HS]
9. You mind suffering [premise]
10. Antinatalism is false [8, 9 MP]
QED
Thank you so much.
Quoting universeness
Thank you thank you! That is the very meaning of our liberty!
What you said is very important to me. I have offended a friend who is a Christain and could have helped him but instead was totally self-centered and told me if I got evicted for breaking the rules it would be my fault for making that decision. I don't think she gets the moral decision and what you said about evil. Time and again I have seen evil take hold because people would not stand together to oppose it. We are going in the wrong direction by making it illegal to help others. Not even mothers dare help their grown children if they are doing drugs, without fear of eviction. Can you imagine! Laws that prevent family from helping family, And then we turn around and blame gays for ruining family values. It is not the gays ruining family values. It is education for a technological society and the values of that society, which turn to dependency on the state instead of dependency on family and each other. Does that make sense? Can you see that?
:lol: "Give me liberty or give me death." I am adding that to give some continuity to what we were talking about. Many people are not happy with social changes such as replacing the old-fashioned receptionist with recordings and all the specialization that makes doing business very complicated. And having to call 3 or 5 different offices to find the right person for the job is not efficient! We want the receptionist who knew everything and saw it as her job to find the department we need to speak with. The receptionist did all the work and we could depend on her to get us the information or whatever else we needed. That specialization is new. In the past we were generalists and the receptionist knew more than the man at the top because she thought it was her job to know the organization and how to help people. Phone trees are hell. They are impersonal and force us to be submissive to technology and that is right next to ignoring our Jewish neighbors are being taken away. I grew up with the notion we answer to God, not human authority.
Right now someone claiming to have a bedroom for rent is wanting us to complete an application and send money, before we even see the bedroom. :gasp: We are texting and I made it clear, that we do business face to face and see the bedroom or we don't do business. Craig's list is known for scams and I will not bend on meeting people face to face.
Quoting Athena
I am a socialist/humanist. I believe that the means of production, distribution and exchange of any significant size should be owned by the people, for the people and not as a means of generating profit for the rich or those who aspire to become such. I would also not allow any private citizen to own land. Technology which assists the means of production distribution and exchange must also benefit all people and not just the very few. I advocate for getting rid of money as the main controller of exchange.
The state must serve the people and support family as well as family supporting each other.
Quoting Athena
I have no problem with automated systems that work. I would like to offer all receptionists the opportunity to follow their vocations and be able to take their basic means of survival for granted.
I am not trivialising the problems you raise in your quote above but it's our collective responsibility to ensure that any automated system improves the lives and personal security of people and does not reduce it in any way. I would not blame technology for people ignoring the forced removal of their neighbours (due to the fact they were Jewish or based on any other such unacceptable reasoning). I would blame the people who use technology for such purposes. Guns don't kill people, people kill people but it's still really dumb to arm your citizens in the way they do in the USA.
Quoting Athena
The situation you describe above is because you live under a horrible, capitalist, free market economy (as do I), where private landlords can almost do as they like. If you had a lot more money, you would not have to deal with these 'basic survival' issues you currently have to deal with. Is that how people should be forced to live? Completely controlled by how much money you can access? It's other humans that force this way of life and they are actually very few in number, globally.
They need to be 'overthrown,' permanently!
A newlywed couple or a child reaching the age of 18, should be provided with good quality accommodation, free of charge, as a human right from cradle to grave. Competitive fighting pits, such as Craig's list should not be able to exist.
Whenever I received the message: unsuitable I thought my life is a completely disaster. I came across to think that suffering from failures doesn't help anyone. It is a very complex task to accept how we are and how we can better persons both professional and personal.
I don't even know why I am optimist right know... I guess is thanks to Greek mythology or Japanese way of Bushido.
Anyway, I feel better whenever I share my thoughts and problems around here. It is better to just keep it them only with myself.
Are you asking me these questions Athena? I will assume you are.
My character is for others to judge but I hope I am judged by others on what I do.
I would describe my character as nuanced, myriad, conflicted and complex but I try to live as much as I can by the golden rule. I am capable of utter hatred towards those who live by exploiting or abusing others.
I will do wrong in the service of what I believe to be right and just.
Would I cause the death of innocents to destroy a greater evil. In the final analysis and if I could find no other way, then probably yes, but could I live with myself afterwards like Truman or Churchill, probably no.
And in the US, liberty meant that is your decision. No one could force you to do that and no one could prevent you from doing that. Destroying that liberty is to become as Nazi Germany where authority decided what people would and would not do. The consequences of destroying our liberty are social destruction and this pushes us to the controversy of our right to carry guns. Our problem is we have serious social problems that make it unsafe to allow individuals to own guns. And that brings us back to education. In ancient Athens, education was lifelong and about citizenship. If we do not recapture that connection between liberty and education, we are doomed.
Quoting universeness
I do not agree with that paragraph. I am in favor of private ownership and control. However, not laissez-faire economics. A policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering. have been mentally lazy and ignored all the issues of economics and we are not well-informed voters.
Quoting universeness
Oh, what a delicious argument you opened. I think if you were aware of how technology has changed our expectations and our values and how we think you would see the social change more clearly. This subject is so complex I don't know where to begin. Perhaps a thread about how technology has changed our lives and the input of many people would be helpful.
The receptionist was someone who served everyone, her employer and the public. That is a frame of mind. That is not what someone is thinking when answering the phone today. What rules our thinking is policy and organization. The job of answering the phone has been narrowly defined and the person answering that phone knows nothing except the correct connection that needs to be made and the person who answers the phone has no power but reacts like a programmed switch. If the person answering the phone steps beyond the definition of the job, s/he will be reprimanded. The control is at the top not with the individual. This is why I object to none of us having private property and control. I fear nothing worse than that control from the top. As Tocqueville said our democracy would be a despot and everything is fine as long as everyone appreciates the decisions from the top. Have you read Tocqueville's book "Democracy in America" written around 1830? As a teacher that might be the most important book, you could offer your students if they are old enough. Living under the decisions made at the top may not be the way to go. Like Locke said about the king/father, that would be fine if like the parent the king worked for the child to become independent.
Quoting universeness
Another delicious disagreement. I think we need to rethink economics but even more important is education for good character and good moral judgment. Only a police state controls everything. Liberty begins with governing oneself and independent thinking. I am old school. Business is done eyeball to eyeball and depends on our good judgment of character and more. If I know you and can deal with you face to face now and in the future, I will hold you accountable for keeping your word and under that condition you may be more concerned about what I think of you and how I will react if you are not a good person. Only when our democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended and this means managing life on a social/cultural level, not depending on the despot to take care of us.
I do not think we should provide for individuals without good cause because then we have people with weak character, doomed to be dependent on others. It is the parent's responsibility to raise children to become independent but they can not do this alone. The parent's efforts must be supported by the school system and youth programs and how about good media all focusing on a good culture and human dignity?
Quoting javi2541997
For me, It was such a vital moment when I deeply understood that an hour will pass anyway, regardless of my mental state. I CAN CHOOSE to experience that hour as a curse, or I can struggle against such with the intent to defeat it. I choose to fight despair anytime and every time it attack's me. I have experienced more happiness in my life so far than I have experienced despair with this approach.
I will leave it to Captain Kirk to express his and my opinion of personal pain:
Amazing quote, friend. If you do not mind I will keep it with me. I feel it so motivational :up:
Then you must continue your struggle with your landlord as regards your rent for living where you live and with his/her power to evict you and make you homeless. I will continue to fight for what I believe is a better way.
Quoting Athena
I am aware of such and the 'we' you refer to does not include me. I see technological advancement as a sword which cuts both ways. It can be a tool to make the rich richer but it is also a tool that can free the majority from crap jobs and allow them to educate themselves and communicate globally and organise resistance globally.
We all have our favourite books Athena and our favourite commentators and comments from the past.
The only system that is truly about rule from the top is one which sustains a totalitarian monarch, autocrat or self-proclaimed divinity. I would be in armed revolution against such a system if I lived under it. Free market capitalism based on some pseudo-democratic voting system such as the 'first past the post,' system I live under in the UK (although we have made some progression in Scotland with our re-established parliament/government based on a PR voting system), is more common in the west.
Free market capitalism is a much-diluted version of a plutocracy, and it will, inevitably be replaced by a humanist/socialist system imo and technological advances will eventually assist in bringing down free market capitalism as the money trick becomes fully revealed to more and more people.
Quoting Athena
I fully agree with you here and this must be the measure of everyone who is given authority over people's lives and who represents their interests.
If socialists/humanists do not or cannot do what they said they would do before they were elected, then they cannot continue in power. I personally would not be concerned about what you or anyone else thinks about me as I would hopefully be too busy trying to ensure I do exactly what I promised to do.
Quoting Athena
I advocate for 'From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.'
People are very complex, we have to have a very smart, fair, balanced, compassionate, sociopolitical system which is very very difficult to con or abuse. Not easy to achieve but that remains the goal and always will be the goal if the human race is ever to become able to evolve into a species which is benevolent to the universe it exists in and become an interplanetary and interstellar species.
YOU CAN WIN AGAINST DESPAIR! AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!
Decide/demand/command and FEEL differently! FLIP IT!
When I get those down, desperate, depressing feelings for whatever reason, I will get PISSED OFF and I will FLIP THEM. I will fight them in my head, they will return and I will fight them again and eventually I will win. I will distract myself, I will write, paint, go on to forums, look for old hero's who inspired me and will read or watch them again. I will go out and walk, fast and long, I will........ spend that hour fighting despair and the next one as I know those hours will pass regardless so I choose to fight my inner demons and I can, have and always will defeat them. From hell's teeth I will spit at them!
I CHOOSE LIFE!!!!!
1. Excess suffering.
2. Moderate suffering.
3. Deficit suffering.
Both 1 & 2 are incompatible with life. Suicides & CIP (congenital insensitivity to pain) attest to that. Moderate suffering, hitting the sweet spot, where suffering is bearable and also does what it's designed to do, keep us safe and sound is not only desirable but also necessary given the givens of our mental & physical constitution.
So if we could find solutions to excess suffering, natalism has a shot or, inversely, antinatalism stops making sense and as for deficit suffering, current best practice in medicine is to restore the nociceptive system to level 2 (moderate suffering). Google "treatment" for CIP (naloxone) and leprosy (antibiotics).
The future, however, can be radically different - like how bioluminiscence has delinked light from heat, we maybe able to do the same with suffering, decouple the detection of injury from the unpleasantness associated with it.
I agree, as do most, if not all rational people imo. Excess suffering remains a problem to be solved and human science is clearly motivated to continue to try to solve it. Advocating a solution of extinction or non-existence, is simply stupid.
It can be. For the one that got left behind. When this person I was very closed to decided to do it, my body went into convulsion and I couldn't feel anything except the ground under me was shaking my whole body. I couldn't cry because I was also numb. If you want to imagine how it felt -- think of screaming your lungs out but no sound comes out.
I suspect that my spirit died that day, but I'm not sure. Because hey, I'm living a "normal" life, interacting with people, having a comfortable life, having sex, having dinner, laughing. I never got the so-called "therapy" for the grieving.
But ask me if I could go back in time, what date would that be. The morning before the death, because then I could stop it. I knew I could. I still believe I could have done something.
(Hyper)sensitive peeps, among which number antinatalists, are for me canaries in coal mines - their hyperalgesia is kinda a superpower, buying time for "normal" folks to respond to imminent danger. You could say, in a sense, that hyperalgesics/antinatalists are the nociceptive system of the superorganism that is humanity.
Agreed :up:
I only want to add a brief comment on your argument: The suffering or act of suffering caused by uncertainty. We never really know what would happen in the next months or even the next year. If we are positive we would say the things would be better but if we are negative we would say it would be "a bad period of time" again.
To be honest... I think that the only way to face future is attitude and maturity. Keep fighting against the obstacles! :fire:
Yep, uncertainty is the millstone around our necks, the cross we havta bear. I propose we play ... with expectation (worst) and hope (best). If given a choice, I prefer paranoia (le choses sont contre nous), but Forrest Gump showcases pronia, fictional though he may be.
:100:
Thanks for sharing that. All potential suicides should read your post and reflect on how such an action can affect the lives of others. I hope your best moments of joy in life are yet to come.
Maybe reading a post such as yours could even stop a suicide. Let's hope so.
Yeah, I feel pity for them too, who wants to be a caged canary? The first to die if the gas escapes, but yeah, perhaps they don't die in vain. We can learn to work harder to solve excessive human suffering due to their complaints regarding their own conceptions of what they regard as their own intolerable lives or what they exemplify as the intolerable lives of others.
BANZAI!
BANZAI! Brother :sparkle: :fire:
[quote=Uncle Ben]With great power comes great responsibility.[/quote]
I fully applaud your intent to fight against despair and I absolutely call you brother in that. I will willingly shout/scream BANAZI with you as we charge with gleaming bayonets drawn, against our common enemy .... despair.
BUT I would have fought whole heartedly against the fascist Japanese in WW 2. I would have killed the guy in the picture, in battle (or at least, I would have tried to) and I would seek to free the subservient looking female in the picture from what seems to be an imposed cultural subservience (but only of-course, if she consented to my interference and help.)
I understand and respect your point. I didn't like war (even Mishima was rejected by Japanese army...) but I really respect the Samurai/Bushido thought to fight against despair and dishonour. I think the problem are politicians not the theories.
I want to live as a samurai because I believe in loyalty, friendship, sacrifice as a way of life. I don't see it as a mechanism to put on a battle. I just want to get it right in my life. If I ever acted as a traitor or a malicious man, please kill me or I would commit seppuku.
I accept your honourable intentions, but I remain concerned about the samurai tradition of obedience to superiors without question. You know such authority can become utterly corrupt, just like some of the politicians you mention. My advice would be to completely abandon that part of Bushido, only be loyal to those who have proven worthy of your loyalty and even then, only for as long as they remain worthy.
I am agree that Bushido has some failures in the practice of the doctrine. But to be honest, I really think the problem is not in the samurai's part but in the authority.
It is heartbreaking to see how some superiors do not respect and consider the loyalty of samurais.
Then, the problem is not of Bushido (doctrine) but the vicious politicians and superiors (actors)
:up:
and where can it be done?
also why not suicide? and what is the way to live for an atheist, if not hedonism?
or can I be suicidal and not depressed? just seeing world as what it is and choosing suicide as a rational response?
Addressed in OP that this (specialization) would be brought up and is tangential to the pessimistic point.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Let me repeat it. For every man made invention there should be a repository of that knowledge/instruction of replicating that invention. When something is invented in a lot of cases its also patented.
This Im sure is stored somewhere
It has always been thus. Nothing has changed. I am sure that pre-technology the world was just as mysterious as it is today. Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it.
And one could equally have written: "Im particularly talking about the aspect of human existence where we cannot understand the forces of nature that we use and replicate. If anything, we can know and/or replicate a very very small portion of it."
In fact, we don't need to "know" what sustains us if our approach is Pragmatic. Pragmatism requires neither a pessimistic nor optimistic frame of mind. Pragmatism works equally well both pre and post-technology. Pragmatism avoids a descent into pessimism because of not "knowing" what sustains us.
I press the enter key. I don't "know" why what happens happens. I am just optimistic that what I intend will happen will happen.
It is your judgement that we are diminished. Many of us don't feel that way. I think you are a pessimist first by temperament. This seems like just a post hoc search for rational justification, which is not hard to find.
See that, post hoc. Latin jargon. I must be a real philosopher.
The workings of the universe to prehistoric humans would have been mysterious, but there would have been a reverence to the mystery as well. More importantly though, a person and their clan would be able to take care of themselves, making impactful decisions that truly drive the direction in which they live. Goals that were set were clearly defined by those who achieved them, and required the use of the capacities of the entire body. Tools consisted of mechanisms that were understood by everyone who used them.
The modern world is mysterious, but in a mundane and/or perplexing way. Our goals are frequently not defined by us, and the tools we use are always disconnected from our own understanding entirely or nearly so. We use only a subset of our body's capabilities to live - which makes the body atrophy, unless one engages in a clownish routine of maintenance to give the illusion that one's body is being used for what it was meant to be used for. We survive not through our own autonomous efforts but because we satisfy some needed role in an artificial system.
Is it any wonder that people are so miserable?
:up:
:clap:
Where I live most people simply take something apart when it breaks and fix it.
I imagine this statement is closer to the truth in some western cities.
I guess you'd have to be an idealist to have reached such a conclusion so what would you suggest contrary to our current state of being?
Ad hom repeat.
Prehistoric humans may well have understood their simple tools and lived in reverence to a mysterious world. Modern humans may well not understand their complex tools, their computers, their Social Media, and live perplexed and disconnected in a mysterious world
Yet these two conditions are not mutually exclusive
The prehistoric human may have suffered misery from tools inadequate to mitigate their physical suffering, in growing crops in time of famine. The modern human may suffer misery from tools inadequate to mitigate their mental suffering, in gaining what they think they deserve.
The prehistoric human's misery did not come from having unachievable expectations, their misery came from what they knew to expect from life. The prehistoric human knew that they would never be treated like Royalty, they knew they were and would remain a low part of the hierarchy. They knew they would never be part of the decision making process, their opinion would never be respected and they knew their income would only be sufficient for basic survival. Their misery came from an acceptance of a hard and brutal life
The modern human may be miserable because they have expectations that are unachievable
The modern human expects to be treated like Royalty, regardless of birth. They expect to be an integral part of the decision making process, even if they have insufficient knowledge. They expect their opinion to be respected regardless of whether it has sense or not. They expect to have an income even if they haven't earned it. Their misery comes from unwarranted expectations of what they are due from life.
Modern humans look back to a Golden Age, a mysterious world where lives were lived in reverence to the great unknown. A Golden Age where the greatest of tasks were accomplished. A time as described by the early Greek and Roman poets as better and more pure. Hesiod described the Golden Age as a time where all humans were created directly by the Olympian Gods, living lives in peace and harmony. Oblivious to death, and dying peacefully in their sleep unmarked by sickness and old age. Ovid described it as a time before man learned the art of navigation, and as a pre-agricultural society.
Today, people look back with nostalgia to the Noble Savage who has not been corrupted by modern civilization and symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. The idealized picture of a human at one with nature, living in harmony with nature in a romantic primitivism .
As John Dryden wrote in The Conquest of Granada 1672:
[i]I am as free as nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.[/i]
Is it true that misery is a modern phenomenon ? Consider The Great Famine of 13151317 and Black Death of 13471351 which reduced the population by more than a half. The Little Ice Age brought harsher winters with reduced harvest, resulting in malnutrition which increased susceptibility to infections due to a weakened immune system. The Great Famine struck much of North West Europe 1315 to 1317 reducing the population by more than 10%. Many of the larger countries were at war. England and France in the Hundred Years War, a time when when landowners and the Monarchy raised the rents of their tenants. In 1318, anthrax attacked the sheep and cattle of Europe, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry. As Europe moved into the Little Ice Age, floods disrupted harvests and caused mass famines. The Bovine Pestilence of 1319 to 1320 affected milk production, and as much of the peasant's protein was obtained from dairy resulted in nutritional deficiencies. Famine and pestilence, exacerbated with the prevalence of war during this time, led to the death of an estimated ten to fifteen percent of Europe's population. The Black Death was was fatal to an estimated thirty to sixty percent of the population where the disease was present. Before the 14th century, popular uprisings against overlords were common. During the 14th and 15th C there were mass movements and popular uprisings across Europe.
Hobbes described the state of nature as "war of all against all" in which men's lives are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"
I don't think misery is a modern phenomenon.
Wasn't directed to you.. Mainly people like the person above your post.
I hope you weren't gleaning ANY of these themes of the Noble Savage in my OP. None of this was what I was getting at. I think this leads to a more fundamental truth about a self-aware human, yet cut off from fundamental understanding of his condition, but I am keeping it specifically at the level of how technology (and social arrangements surrounding them) keep us fundamentally alienated. And this is the pessimism I speak of. Being estranged from the tools which sustain us. Yet the irksome part is some people do hold these keys.. but they can only own a part of them.. But these people (scientists/engineers/technicians) arranged with their financial backers/entrepreneurs/owners have immense power over what we are estranged from.
We are estranged, but a small minority are less estranged.
I think _db had some of the pessimism here: Quoting _db
However, I would only disagree slightly with the wording of "artificial system" as I think any system, hunter-gatherer or this "artificial" economy will have us alienated. There is no going back (or forwards) here. It is fundamentally part of it. I am just looking at it for what it is, and not simply the descriptive "specialization/supply/demand/economic evolution".
I'll look into that. But 100% agree about the gatekeeping. I am even more terrified of the malaise of minutia that comes out of the science.. These people can accept and deal with enormous amounts of minutia. The tedium of the practical and necessary. But yet "Life is good".
The paradox is that we are alienated from that which sustains us, but if we are not alienated we simply become mired in the minutia of 100110101, materials, equations, and the like..
One major con is giving a romantic vision to science and technology. The Edisons/Teslas, Einsteins/Heidenbergs, etc. Monger the minutia is more the gist of science of the daily.. Your computer screen, your processor, your electronics, your plastics.. :yawn:
You become a 01001100101 to make 0010100110.. So alienation or minutia mongerer? It all doesn't lead anywhere good.
But at the same time, there is an "innovative" / inventive element that is there for a very small amount of time. The "breakthroughs" of a few that get pulled apart and mongered to become more minutia.
It renders my comment invalid as it did not concern me. Thank you.
Ive been in this forum for a long time. I understand how many of the posters work. Asshole and dickish comments are the norm if you disagree. Can't just argue the arguments here. Nope.
I think we have relied on tools from the very beginning. In fact, that, along with social and linguistic forces, were factors in the development of our cognition/brains/neocortex/etc. It is not just that we rely on these tools, but it is what these tools create.. estrangement.
One side--- Estrangement of the minutia of the tools themselves
Other side--- Estrangement from the minutia of the tools themselves.
There is no win here. 011001010110 to you sir. Now I have to go back to mongering more minutia so we can all live and see the world turn.
I mean look at some of the other topics here that you are no doubt posting on.. Propositional Calculus. Enough said.
Perhaps it could suffice to simply ignore the comments of which you speak as by acknowledging those in any way is to give meaning and value to them.
Done that. I go back and forth. Sometimes ignore.. Sometimes call it out. 15 years on a forum (this and the previous version).. you gotta switch it up.
Format goes something like:
Dick comment.. Maybe some content... sarcastic comment... maybe some more content...asshole comment. I believe that was devised by Aristotle.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And when you lack a non-trivial counterargument, more useless whinging. :yawn:
On topic
Perhaps somewhat of an example of the things you say concern dealings with the medical world.
From the time I got out of my parents house I had to become quite critical of the medical world. I did not start out that way ofcourse as I was raised to have a great amount of trust and confidence in the doctors and their treatments. It was only after they mis-diagnosed me several times that I started to do my own research, obtaining information from studies related to my medical condition. Evidently I did not understand most of it at first, being unschooled and unfamilair with any of the medical jargon, but after a time studying and doing translations I was really getting at the gist of things.
From there on I got really critical of the doctors involved, questioning their every move towards any treatment they offered me. During that entire process I changed general physicians, but also specialists, quite a few times as 'they' generally shoved my 'uneducated and opinionated views and bias' away with undisquised disdain and irritation. While I felt kind of embarrassed because of it and somewhat unsure when 'throwing away' doctors, and their "professionalism" at the time, the payoff however was the accumulation of knowledge, not even necessarily medical knowledge but the knowledge of food science and how it relates to health. Where the doctors would have liked to inject me with all sorts of nasty biologicals to slow down my immune system I refused their treatments and instead stabilized it choosing certain nutrients while avoiding other nutrients.
My medical condition is not to be cured as it is a chronical condition but I managed to status quo it via diet rather than going the doctor's route of immunosuppressive drugs, the latter which would have most certainly caused severe harm to my system as biologicals come with a hefty price. I actually did confront some of these 'specialists' along the way, about the success I was having via diet, but they did not acknowledge or appreciated my efforts as such, in fact they didnt say anything about it else than putting their aura of superiority on display by ignoring the things I offered them while I was trying to share what I had learned.
That was actually quite a bit more than I intended to share but relating it to the OP I'd say atleast a fair amount of pessimism on display is granted and which was also why I asked the question about a suggestion to the contrary (of blindly following and/or using tech and/or treatment offered/prescripted to us by third parties and/or peers).
But what are you going to do about it?
So what's to be done, man?!?
What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect permanent?
Do we return to a pre-industrial, cottage-industry, butcher-your-own-cows existence? Do we strive to put humanity into our tech? Do we look to a "return to nature"? (Most of us would need GPS to even find nature.)
It seems no good if the individual attempts to address the disconnect but society goes on embracing modernity.
I don't think this is true. If life was disconnected from what sustains it then it would not be sustained. Perhaps you mean that the discursive intellect cannot fully understand life and what sustains it?
Perhaps we cant go back though we also dont have to take everything thrown at us at face value.
I simply present the problem. If you want, we can try to carry out a dialectic about where this goes, but I don't think it would lead anywhere.
But here's a start. Follow the chain of technology. Where does it lead back to in terms of resources, manufacturing, mining, engineering, such? Who, where, when, why, how?
Besides consumer and laborer, how close do you get to the understanding and actual resources that create the technology? Who has more agency and less agency? Hint, it isn't just the ones with the most money. Holding the money and spending it, isn't quite it. You have to have access to the finance but also the technology itself.. to some understanding and to groups of those who have understanding. To the mining, the manufacturing, the resources, the formulas, the engineering principles, etc.
You have to mine minutia.. It's minutia all the way down... to the sub-atomic level. It's so very tedious.. Don't let the romantics full you. In that, @apokrisis is right, but in so replacing the tedium of the scientific formulas, he replaces it with the principle of triadic meta-formulas.
It's just so beautiful in its tedium and grandeur :cry: :cry: :roll: :roll: :yawn: :yawn:
Estrangement, yep, tools, although they make life easier for us also distance us from reality and living. Without 'em we become aliens in our own home planet, barely able to survive, on the path to fan? (annihilation). This, as I hinted, is an evil omen. :snicker:
P. S. What about my posts on Propositional Calculus?
Yes, I also wondered about the reference to Propositional Calculus. Prop Calc would appear to be a purely intellectual pursuit. One might dabble in it entirely sans technology. What better way to while away those boring hours after the fields have all been plowed and the cows milked?
There are no whinging "pessimists" in foxholes.
:death: :flower:
:up: :100: :sparkle:
I wrote "Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it"
Consider the OP "We are disconnected from that which sustains us"
The Merriam Webster dictionary illustrates the complexity of the words "life" and "sustain"
The word "life" as a noun may be used in a physical context, as in 1a "the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body, or may be used in an emotional and intellectual sense, as in 2a "the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual - children are the joy of our lives".
Similarly, the word "sustain" as a verb may be used in a physical context, as in 2 "to supply with sustenance : NOURISH, or may be used in an emotional and intellectual sense, as in 5 "to buoy up - sustained by hope".
The title of the thread is "Series in pessimism: We can never know what sustains us". The thread is about our being emotionally and intellectually disconnected from what sustains us, where what sustains us is technology. Pessimism is the emotional part. Knowing is the intellectual part.
There are four possible meanings to the statement "we are disconnected from that which sustains us":
1) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
2) We are physically disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectually sense.
3) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense.
4) We are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in an emotionally and intellectual sense.
I agree with you that item 1) can be removed as illogical. Items 2) and 4) can also be removed as illogical. This leaves item 3).
Meaning depends on context. Sentences cannot be taken out of context.
Therefore, in the context of the Thread - "we are disconnected from that which sustains us" can only mean "we are emotionally and intellectually disconnected from technology which sustains us in a physical sense."
However, although the misuse of technology may be one contributor to alienation within society, it is not the only cause, as alienation existed in societies pre-modern technology.
Nice analysis. The OP was referencing 3.
:up: Thus, the incoherent triviality of the OP.
Quoting RussellA
It's not technology which sustains life in the biological sense but air, food and water. Technology may sustain our lifestyles, but that is something else.
The point of (3) which, on a charitably nuanced reading, seems to be that our sense of aliveness may be eroded by technology in various ways through the alienation it can contribute to is something I agree with. It's true that technology has disconnected many people from the sources of the food and water that sustain them.
That is to say, the closest many get to the sources of food and water is, respectively, the supermarket and the tap or the bottle (the supermarket). So, humanity is increasingly alienated from the rest of life by modern technology. Obviously this doesn't apply to those who, for example, grow their own food, or even those who don't, but live in communities where the food is grown locally and they are familiar with those sources. So it remains an over-generalization, just as 'life is suffering', while expressing some truth, is an over-simplification.
:up:
@RussellA @Agent Smith @Real Gone Cat
So it's a bit different even than that. Rather, it's not the pretty common trope of using modern technology which causes alienation, but not being able to be "really" apart of the core members who actually created and fully understand the technology. That can be said on two levels:
1) Those who understand a very specialized field of technology really well (like someone on R&D for X chemicals, circuit board design, machine code, materials science, electronic engineering, etc. Not everyone gets to be a part of this.. only a select few and their entrepreneurial/financial backers. Everyone else just uses the final products passively, or labors in some auxilliary fields tangential to the true inventors and creators.
OR
2) Even the specialized experts only know their technology well and thus can't know ALL the technology that is used, and so even they are passive users who can never really know that which creates the technology they rely on.
it is an obfuscation.. Others were alluding to a more fundamental estrangement from existence, but this one is interesting because there are degrees where at least a few people get a bit closer to some of the core technology that "sustains" our (modern) existence.. and since we only live out modern existences in 90% of the world (I'll argue even third world countries), that is indeed what matters.
The engineers at places like IBM, Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Intel, Dow Chemicals, General Electric, Texas Instruments, Canon, and so on.
That seems a little bold. Is it so easy to determine the limits of adaptability?
This may be..but I am looking at it from a core and auxiliary, where the core needs the auxiliary in a secondary sense (to sell, market, account for, service, etc. the stuff), the auxiliary needs the core people absolutely in a primary sense for the technology itself.
Perhaps, but does it make sense?
Yup, we're looking at the whole chain from raw material to finished product - each link is a potential point of failure.
Are you asking whether I understood what you were saying or whether I think what you said is plausible?
I'd agree that it seems plausible to think that eliminating one class of specialists would, depending on the importance of the specialist field in question to the economy, have a more or less disruptive effect.
Well, not all machines were created equal - some are more essential than others. This would mean losing our capability to produce one may not be as disruptive as that for another, but for sure our lives would be impoverished if we lose the knowhow to build any machine, small or big.
Technological (over)dependence! From optional tools to essential life-support.
You are saying, in essence, that we are disconnected from our bodies? Because the human body uses much more chemical, biological processes than what we understand or know about. Yet we use them mindlessly. Which just leads to the fact that everything (or most things) in our bodies are set for us. We have no control over them.
We are disconnected from what sustains us, and we are disconnected from what the sustenance sustains-- we are disconnected from our very own selves.
But in the case of technology, it is human made, so paradoxically..it sustains us, some are involved in specialists aspects of it, but most are not and are only involved in a secondary way far removed from its creation or any real understanding of the processes and principles involved.
We are estranged, but not everyone.
You are saying humans are NOT human made???
As opposed to the chemical and biological processes of the human body you mentioned that we don't understand, yes.
Alienation and technology
The technology that runs our lives is increasingly growing beyond the understanding of a single individual, with the disconnect increasing year by year.
A disconnect is of itself not a problem. As long as one can turn the lights on, potholes are filled in in the roads, the buses run on time and the citizen's life is angst-free, and where each citizen plays their part in the smooth running of the public services, then such a disconnect is not to be feared. As long as technology works to the benefit of the individual, the individual may pragmatically accept the benefits of a technology they may not understand. I don't need to know details of the crankcase to know that if I turn the key the car moves where I want it to move.
But as soon as the citizen begins to suffer at the hands of a technology that they are disconnected from, and are unable to either control or mitigate, then the situation becomes dire, and it is then we have become cogs in a blind machine with no real agency. A disconnect becomes problematic when technology no longer works for the benefit of the individual, and the individual is powerless to alter or control the technology they are suffering under. Typically, the increasing use of gaslighting being used by those who control the information that we depend on for our knowledge of a world that exists on the other side of our computer and phone screens.
Information technology, the electronic screen between us and the world, is turning us into Truman Burbanks. A world where information technology controls every aspect of our lives, where we live in a false reality, as an actor on a stage populated by other actors. We play a role, directed by unknown forces behind the images we see on the screens. We are perceiving a world that has already been interpreted by a media more concerned with advertising profits and its own financial benefits than the well-being of its consumers.
Information technology is leading us to a dystopian future where we are unknowingly trapped inside a simulated and virtual realist, a Matrix, where the individual is more a source of energy for the machine than a free person with independent hopes, desires and wishes.
Information technology, with its databases creating a synthetic world populated by all of us as electronic images is creating a world where we can all be be surveilled and regimented. As in Orwell's 1984, subjected to historical negationism and propaganda, facilitated by servants of the controllers in an omnipresent government, repressing and controlling the allowed behaviour of people in society.
Information technology works to minimise the power of the individual in order to gain more control. Individual European nation states are subsumed into a supranational political and economic European Union. Small countries of 5 million people intimately knowing their political leaders are bound into organisations run and controlled by unelected bureaucrats, responsible to a distant Commission rather than the population they are intended to serve. Where their oath of allegiance of the bureaucrats is to an amorphous group rather than their home country, where the individual becomes powerless and unrepresented amongst 400 million others, where the political leaders of the member countries are decided by the diktat of central bureaucrats and economists.
Alienation is not a new phenomenon. The masses have always been alienated. In the past it was powerlessness in the face of the forces of Mother Nature. Today, it is the increasing powerlessness in the face of the Big Brother computer algorithm.
Really insightful contribution, thanks!
But I would contest a point here:
Quoting RussellA
I am not necessarily looking at it from a pragmatic/effect.. I realize that we can carry on pretty well not knowing how much of any technology works. Rather, I see the position of R&D in sciences/technologies/programming/manufacturing/mining/electric/electronic/engineering in general the whole system of symbiosis of all of them in STEM fields as being at the core of the understanding of the (modern) tools we use. They are usually placed in larger industries, though small and medium startups sometimes get in there too. Either way, it is what these people get to be a part of and the others passively just use, that I am referring to. Not everyone can be a part of this, but passively use and service the tools that the science/engineering/R&D get to invent/create/understand/are an integral part of..
You can argue that everyone has their place for the system to work, but this is not quite what I am getting at. The other laboring jobs are all in service to the tools that these people get to be a part of. There is a natural hierarchy going on.. where most people are cut off from the factors of industry/knowledge that they use.. but there are a small number of people who are at this position/level to understand.
To make an analogy (hear me out).. It's like the cave. The scientists/R&D/engineers at these strategic companies (many times used from previous governmental research) are sort of sitting with the forms, and we simply glean at it from a "use" side of it. And no, buying a book of "How stuff works" doesn't solve this disconnect of gnosis of the forms/tools/understanding as it is enacted in real life.
And oddly, at the same time, "knowing" the forms can be oh so tedious. My point with the post with all the images of the ways of the tedious complexities. We need to "mine" minutia.. It's like if the forms instead of being beautiful Platonic understanding, is just really a mining of complexities. It creates jobs, but it creates tedious monotony, minutia, etc.. Once you get to the forms, you realize it's just more tedium, all the way down to a sub-atomic level of understanding.
Do you mean something like the following ?
The graduate engineer was given the task of designing a bridge. The engineer went away and came back three weeks later with 100 sheets of computer printout, having laboriously checked each line and ensured that each piece of data was consistent with all other pieces of data, that there were no arithmetic errors and each part built up logically into a whole.
The senior engineer in charge, just approaching retirement, tore off a scrap of paper, took out their pencil, and after an hour, told the graduate engineer that their design was correct.
The graduate engineer had mined the complexities logically joining each part together to create a whole. The senior engineer started by looking at the whole, excluded that which was secondary, and only concentrated on that which was essential.
The graduate engineer lived in the cave looking at shadows. The senior engineer lived outside the cave looking at the beautiful Forms.
Pessimism is one of the consequences of not knowing what is important and not knowing what can be excluded, of knowing what doesn't need to be known. Optimism is one of the consequences of knowing what is important and knowing what can be excluded, of not knowing what doesn't need to be known.
I think you could sing this song to yourself every day as the main anthem to your world view.
Sing it loud, be proud of who you are! Sing it proud!
Perhaps you would prefer this detailed, more self-referenced, slightly yodely, Scots version with accompanying lyrics!
Not quite but cool imagery.
Rather the graduate student got to do what was primary/essential/Forms (technology creation) and everything from the transportation, marketers, finance, tradesman servicing it are secondary, and not a actually getting to participate in the technology creation (essential/primary/the actual technology creation itself).
If you actually are feeling sadness, hopelessness, or whatever it is that pessimism brings you due to the fact that the complexities that sustain us are too difficult for your to decipher, then you need some sort of counseling. Do you just seek the kinship from those who share your peculiar form of suffering or do you want some advice for how you can emerge from your pessimism?
It's just not clear why you're telling me that you're sad. Maybe it makes you happy to tell me you're sad, or maybe your despondence has grown so great you had the need to share. I really don't know what to do with the OP other than to tell you that you're letting something that isn't any big deal be a big deal, so figure out a way to deal with. I don't know, maybe telling us here of your sadness is helpful to you and we're part of your therapy.
So you are in the confused camp? So it is pessimistic in that unless you are of the elite who have these positions, you simply are a passive user of the technology.. The very thing used to maintain your lifestyle.
As far as pessimism in general, I do think there is some therapy to be had.. But I don't see that as "a-philosophical". Stoicism, Buddhism, and a whole host of philosophical systems are a kind of therapy. Philosophy itself can be seen as therapy of a self-aware creature thrown into a world where there are no certainties or (seemingly) inherent reasons for anything at all.
In fact, I see an interesting dichotomy between human-centered philosophical interests (ethics, aesthetics, values, etc.) and logic/math. It is the same thing.. The logic/math/science of the universe exist, but why should we care? Once you answer that, you get to human-centered reasons, so they are intertwined.
I already made the (human-centered) reason that technology/scientific understanding sustains us (our very physical existence in a modern social setting). Now I provide what this means when played out.. The elite who are involved in technology creation and the others that are not.
Both ways of thinking are necessary.
I'm not following why having survival mechanisms that go beyond my understanding entail pessimism. I also don't know of anyone so elite that they fully comprehend every aspect of reality so much so that they understand why they continue to live and breathe.
Cool observation, but still not quite what I'm getting at. Both the airplane and parachute creator are involved in the technology. The ones just using it are not.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Hanover
Because you are simply a passive user who does not get to be involved in that which you use for various utility.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's about being excluded.. In the cave.. But it's also about even once you find the Forms (technological understanding) you realize it's just tedium all the way down. Perhaps it's hard to explain.. That's why I am fleshing this out and seeing how others can contribute perhaps. A dialectic.
I know.
I do sometimes feel like that in my ability to comprehend the wave particle duality of light.
This is purely from a conceptual point at this time but I do not feel discouraged.
Mashallah! Mashallah!
That has very little to do with technology, but is just part of being part of a complex world with all sorts of specialized roles. Even if I were able to eat only what I killed, cleaned, and cooked, I still would have to accept I had nothing to do with creating the animal I was eating. On a simpler note, I woke up this morning when the sun came through my window, but I had nothing to do with the sun shining. That doesn't cause me great pessimism.
The awe one feels at the complexity of the world usually yields inspiration as opposed to the despair it yields in you.
Youve seemed to ignore other posts I wrote about natural vs human processes so Ill invite you to read some of those if you want.
I couldn't find them.
It's kind of in there briefly but basically whereas natural processes are not in our control, human-made processes are the outcome of other people's decisions. Where natural processes could not have been different in this universe, human decisions can. Right now it is the case that some get to create technology and others simply support or use it.
There's obviously a difference between a human created control on my behavior and a non-human one, but why does this difference matter in terms of the pessimism it should bring me?
Why am I sadder that I must rely upon a gun that I can't create in order to kill my food as opposed to the sadness I feel because I lack the physical ability to kill my food due to my physical limitations?
Because it becomes a hierarchy where you become a secondary character in your own life. You just support those who matter to the creation of the tools.
Clearly a human understood and can create those things. But that was not you. Youre just a supporting cast. Youre ignorant and far removed of the very tools you use.
So Hank Aaron was a bit player in the story of the guy who made his bat?
I think you need something more there.
Different. You are a bit player to the guy(s) who figured out principles of harnessing and distributing electricity.
You can say that baseball isn't baseball without the people who invented the official "bat". It's not even the bat producer.
The consumers allow the producers to keep producing, but I am saying that is secondary to the people who invented the stuff and/or can reproduce the stuff and improve it.
This is about control right?
In a way.. Think of it this way..
The internet is a behemoth of complex technology.. It started with Arpanet, and the technology behind that.. TCP/IP... But also relates to purified silicon (doped with boron, phosphorus, and other elements), the ability to conduct electricity directionally, voltage, current, copper alloy ionic structures.. magnetism, chemical reactions, logic gates, and the rest.. It's immense. You are but a spec in this technology (made by human efforts) but yet you have almost no real agency in its production.. Then multiply all the technology involved in that complex process exponentially through the years with hundreds of thousands more things that are involved in modern electrical and electronic technologies. There are protocols and standards, etc. etc.. It's all set out from by some other nebulous groups of peoples in corporations and agencies involved in their development.
So it's not just that we are a spec in the universe. We are a spec in our own forms of sustenance to keep our daily lives.
No, no I'm not. Neither are you, though evidently you think you are. I am a human being, not a network device, and I'm not part of the internet, but a user of the internet.
There are two possibilities here, I believe, and you needn't tell me which one applies if you don't want to:
(1) You think you are part of the internet.
(2) You feel you are part of the internet.
We may be able to talk about (1). I am not qualified to address (2).
A cog in the great machine we call the universe! Work, work, work, die! We're replaceable parts; momma nature doesn't care about us because she can always create another human being just like/better than us. Si?
You are a part I meant as a consumer of the technology. Not sure how you took that literally.
I meant more we are a passive consumer of technology rather than its creator. You can support it, buy it, service it. But you probably didnt design or invent it. Nor can you really understand all the technology that went into it. Hence my example of the internet and all its innumerable parts.
Because if you thought of yourself as, or felt yourself to be, a depersonalized part of a great machine, then your position would make sense. It's still not clear why I should feel bad that I am consumer of the internet, anymore than Hank Aaron should have felt bad before playing a game he didn't invent using a bat he didn't make.
The idea seems to be that anything that I don't have complete control over has complete control over me. I should feel bad because I am not a god.
Right, and then he draws a meaningless distinction between technological control and natural control, where I am supposed to feel powerless because I rely upon the internet but not upon my lungs.
Where others feel awe at the complexity of the universe and inspiration at human ingenuity, he feels powerlessness.
Sounds like a psychological predisposition more than a philosophical problem.
So what ... :roll:
Well, it is about control to some extent. There are those who understand and create the technology, and those that can only use it. There are those who set the protocols and standards of the technology, and those who haplessly must review the literature already set in place by the first group and to some degree work backwards to figure out what they (the big dogs) did if they need to fix it.
https://blog.robertelder.org/how-to-make-a-cpu/
Any further thoughts?
Sorry, this just looks like gibberish to me. That's not how technology evolves, not how engineering works, this whole image you have of some cabal of the powerful imposing shit on the helpless plebs, that's just what you say about everything and has almost nothing to do with the evolution of the Internet, for example.
I'm not saying it's "imposing shit on the helpless plebs". That's just what it becomes. It's not necessarily designed that way, that is simply the nature of the hierarchy of technology of those who create it and use it.
As I said earlier:
Quoting schopenhauer1
@Srap Tasmaner
I'd like to go back to this because I think I got lost in my own message. Yes, there is some aspect of what I call "minutia-mongering" going on. That is to say, as technology increases exponentially, the amount of minutia the human needs to know to produce the technology increases, thus making us very much a cog-like entity of minutia-miners. We mine minutia (and we have to "mind" minutia).
This actually ties in to an earlier thread here about what the monolith was in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. What it can mean is that the tools have made humans estranged from their workings (HAL goes off the deep end and barely a programmer knows how/why) AND we have become changed to mintia-mongering bores.. (look at the soulless Discovery ship, with Dave and Frank just sitting idly, checking stats, running in place, staring, not saying much.. HAL has more personality than they do!). Minutia is all they are minding because they are mining minutia!
I get what you mean! We're, in a sense, being led by our noses!
I just wanted to add that I think this title would look great on the NYT best seller list: Series in Pessimism, by Schopenhaur1.
But you can exit life. Just don't let the hospital get a hold of your half dead body, they'll resuscitate it.
Euthanasia says otherwise regarding your second point.
Oh, but you can. So says Epictetus:
Remember that the door is open. Dont be more cowardly than children, but just as they say, when the game is no longer fun for them, I wont play any more, you too, when things seem that way to you, say, I wont play any more, and leave, but if you remain, dont complain. (Discourses I.24.20)
was that supposed to be '-wordly' or '-worldly'?
Words, words, words! Yes, from 'wordly' affairs we may, might, should, would resign. How many times have I told a tedious pontificator on National Public Radio or the BBC to SHUT UP! and turned the radio off?
As for the world and its affairs, I am not quite done.
The only real important distinction to be made between people is by economic class - haves and have-nots; most everything else is derived from this, I think. Of course, those who have the capital will invest in technology that supports their continued ownership of capital - and sometimes they will even oppose technological progress that threatens this ownership. According to Ellul, this is one of the reasons why capitalism will disappear; the goal of capitalism is not the same as the goal of technical efficiency - it's not efficient enough.
Really though, nobody understands the entirety of a complex modern machine (including social machines like governments). They may understand how to use it, or understand a single component by itself (which is useless by itself), or the may have a vague high-level understanding of how all the components work together, but no single person can possibly understand a machine in its entirety, let alone all of the machines that are now used in our lives; nor can the average person have any real say on anything either.
Gone are the days where tool-making went alongside tool-using, with every step of the process being understood by everyone. Now we have experts, specialization, technological giantism, etc.
Wasn't Edison's lab the model for the modern groups of engineers/technicians who create the patented technology? Also the Fords and early chemical manufacturers. The knowledge was specialized, but these groups are brought together and then the worker simply fabricates and fixes it. The consumer consumes it.
It all leads back to forces much greater than us that are the backdrop of our throwness. Those who get to put together these groups of creators and manufacturers being more embedded in the vast ocean for which we consume and are bandied about as laborers upon the waves of.
You might not be far off. I believe Schopenhauer's best selling books were his essays and aphorisms that are found under the title Studies in Pessimism.
But that's the point. Intra-worldly, you exchange games. The treadmill continues or you die. There is no reprieve from the treadmill.. There is no time out.. A Platonic land of rest. Once you are thrown into the world, you must keep treading along.
Tread or die.. Don't tread on me.
Really? If humans live in society and people dont like the workings of society, isnt that rejecting life? All the people who reject society refute that idea we strive for life. We are existential beings because we are self-aware. We could do other than instinct. So I fully disagree with this. The problem is, once a life is started, that person MUST go through the gauntlet or die. Since there is no alternative, starting a life on behalf of someone else is problematic. Human life becomes problematic because of its lack of options outside the premises of life. We humans can IMAGINE better scenarios or games, but we KNOW we can only play this one.
No complaining, please.
Sure, we can. But there is no creature that wants to who is thrown into life.Quoting schopenhauer1Yes.
Request denied. Imagine having the possibility for no choice though. I mean I could have complied :wink:. Not in the case of life. Comply or die. And you or I can move on to something else (infra-worldly affairs). Not so in the life treadmill game. Youre on it and if you want off, you are out.
No, a parent wanted a life. A decision was had based on a reason. We are a species with reasons. I had a whole thread on this which poster @Banno and @Ciceronianus didnt seem to get the import of.
Thats also the point. There is no better version of the game of life (inter-worldly affairs) and so all you can do is kill yourself if you dont like it(or die from a mishap from playing the game itself but thats still affirming the game).
That doesn't contradict what I said. I didn't said a child chose a life. But that matter that was made after the choice of the parents wanted life, it strove for life. You cannot birth something that does not strive for life or it will miscarry. There is no bringing into life something that doesn't want life.
I'm not arguing that one can change the game of life.
Thats more social conditioning. Babies dont decide things yet. We tend to get hungry and fear scary stimuli. But to equate that with a reason for embracing lifes game is a naturalistic fallacy.
I am talking about an organism doing what it can to live, both on a cellular level and to whatever extent it can as it can move. There is no incarnating a not wanting life organism.
Thats good because thats exactly my point. You start a treadmill that the person can by its nature cannot be ended without simply death. There is no platonic heavenly better way except what we can imagine and cannot attain.
Thats great but doesnt quite capture human like (I.e a self-aware being that has reasons).
Life striving to live you said etc
I didn't say it did. I responded, I think pretty clearly, to this idea of a parent throwing someone into life. A someone who may or may not want life. I think that model is confused.
Sure, and it does.
You are using throw as some literal term. It just means starting someone elses life on the treadmill. Equivocating the fact that babies cant reason/have reasons/arent self aware yet withlife striving and THUS some other implication about life (that we want it?) is confused and again, a naturalistic fallacy. Our reasons dont have to confirm with any instinctual mechanism.
Not really, but I am taking it as a transitive verb. I mean, even as a metaphor it means transferring something somewhere. But that is not what happens. Any life was only ever life.
The problem with it as a metaphor (and certainly literally) is that it is as if a parent is putting some neutral essence into life. But no, this does not happen. Any life they create immediately desires life, the organism does, and strives to live. You can only create something living that immediately strives to continue living.
It is not some neutral or negatively aimed at life. It is life that wants to live more.
It seems like you are presenting this as putting someone in a situation it may or may not want. But no, parents can only make life.
My previous post still remains my reply.
Quoting Bylaw
And this is explicitly the naturalistic fallacy as stated in last post
Quoting Bylaw
Life that leads to a person with self-awareness and reasons. The parent chose to do it, and the adult functioning person is the one who deals with it (run on the treadmill or die).
But that's the case with games, as well. When you resign (e.g., in chess) the game is over--you're out. You may play chess again, but in that case you play a different game, you don't play, again, the game you chose to end by resigning.
The point is you are not forced to play chess lest you kill yourself.
He can't stop himself; "complaining", you see, expresses schop1's will to live. :death:
I have not argued that having babies is good. I don't think that even makes sense.
You are misapplying the concept of natural fallacy.
Well said. :up:
Then this isn't arguing anything contra my moral argument. It is simply a description that fetuses develop and become babies.
Quoting Bylaw
Then, I am not sure the point.
Merci beaucoup mon ami! We have work to do monsieur, the two of us. Consider me your cheerleader. :cool:
I don't understand. You're not forced to play chess for fear that (lest) you'll kill yourself?
Um, so like the OP is stating.. In a game like chess.. You can play it and if you want to resign, you can move on. You can't do that with the "game of life". Simple, but tragic. You can't get off the treadmill and move to another "game of life" with different premises. You start someone on the treadmill, the only way out is death. It's a game where someone starts you on it, and you can't move on to another game. The only option as a way out of the game is death.
Yes, if you kill yourself, you die. If you play chess and resign (unless you resign by dying), you don't die. That's because, despite what was maintained by Bobby Fischer, chess isn't life. But what is tragic about that? Death would be an end to suffering. Continuing to live would mean continuing to suffer. If you resign from a game, you continue to suffer. If you "resign" from life, you don't.
It's morally wrong to put someone in a situation where you either "play this game or kill yourself". That is a tragic thing. Yes, it is indeed the case, but what a case to defend! Seems pretty obviously tragic to me and wrong from the standpoint of starting for someone else.
Yes, thats the point. We cannot move on from this setup and rules. We cannot resign and move to a different version. If you rather the treadmill analogy think of that. A treadmill can end. This survival etc game cant lest death. Its a treadmill that one cannot step off of without dire consequences.
How easy is it to leave a game compared to life?
I was arguing that your throwing someone into life (take that literally or metaphorically) as if they are victims or as if they have not consented is confused. As I said, you cannot create life that does not seek more life and to thrive. That does not match your model. You have an 'is' model that you base your 'ought' on. Since I am not a moral realist, I am not making a moral argument. I am critiquing the is part of your postion.
I believe a refuted your argument in my last post so Im not sure theres much to say.
So it occurs to me as I wrote something on another thread that one of the pessimistic outcomes of the behemoth technology that is our modern world is that we can't democratically participate in its production. This has less to do with distribution of resources than it does about the understanding of technology. It is just a fact that some people will more readily understand complex mathematical concepts and scientific formulas more than others. There is no "democracy of understanding". We cannot all participate in being physicists, chemists, and engineers. We can't all participate in the creation and design of useful patents. The majority can only be passive recipients. They can only be fixers, sellers, transporters, administrators, and of course users of the technology made by the creators.
Exactly.
Technology seems to transform our lives drastically and one way it does that is by making us so dependent on it that a rollback would be catastrophic to civilization as we know it. We're, to that extent, invalids.
:up:
Quoting Agent Smith
Yes, and not just that but hapless users/consumers.. Not co-creators in. Which again, goes back to your first point.
:up:
And as I have asked you on other threads: So What? :eyes:
There is joy in affirming the struggle to live for its own sake; not enough joy to compensate for our suffering, no doubt, but enough joy well, enough for most of us and most other living beings with which to create and recreate and, yes, (selfishly? atavistically?) procreate. There are no "pessimists" or "optimists" in foxholes who, under fire, can afford the luxury of such poses? there's only the quick and the dead. "Pessimism", after all, is just disillusioned "optimism"; thus, in spite of it all, I'm a bluesman and absurdist (A. Murray et al).
I'm more diagnosing right now rather than a prognosis. But yes, certainly antinatalism would be an appropriate response. Can society be ordered differently? Probably not. Another pessimistic point.
1. Pessimists live longer (they don't walk into traps as easily as optimists) [and procreate more @schopenhauer1]
2. Optimists live longer (their happy disposition means a healthy mind and body).
3. Pessimists die early (their negative attitude affects their health).
4. Optimists die early (they walk into traps).
WTF? :chin:
[quote=SYR]I don't want to dieee! :cry:[/quote]
My fundamental outlook for over a decade now has been an amalgam of pessimism and optimism I hope for everything and expect nothing!
A complete pessimist cannot fight a good fight, cannot face the impossible nor believe they can escape the cage they find themselves in. It does not matter how hard we argue that the cage is all we have and any sense of escape is futile we still hope, and sometimes what was once impossible becomes common then eventually mundane. Life is full of such mundane miracles. The pessimist actively ignores that the seemingly impossible had been overcome again and again.
Nihilism is nihilism. Its foundation is based on an impossibility. It is almost like people are discomforted by comfort so need to breed hell into their lives usually this happens when we cower from life and belittle it. I have been there. I think it is a necessary struggle for humans to go through.
A struggle is only bad if you avoid it, ignore it and deny it all at once.
I quite clearly did. Not self congratulatory. If you want to readdress it, go ahead. But Im
Not repeating my argument as it still stands.
Any well informed optimist can be a pessimist and vice versa but when credible information can't change the way we view a situation then we are dealing with a psychological condition.
So this is exactly what philosophical pessimism isnt. Rather, philosophical pessimism is an evaluation of the state of animal/human existence and not about expected outcomes. What you imply is common day usage of pessimism. Hes a pessimist about how the economy will turn out is not the same as He believes the world is inherently negative in value due to X, Y, Z.
You can be a non-depressive antinatalist. You are confusing a cause with the evaluation. We may project meaning, but we cannot help but being a we. You cant take that meaning out of the equation.
'To exist sucks' mostly because even though you ought not to exist as Cioran points out: it's always too late not to exist. So 'embrace the suck' if you have the courage and the wit to do so; otherwise, you can always 'unfuck yourself' with either a pharmaceutical or surgical lobotomy. :eyes:
i.e your phrase " the world is inherently negative" can only have a meaning compared to the preferences of an observer, right?
Yes which is why I mentioned
Quoting schopenhauer1
Its about human/animal condition.
So philosophical pessimism observes our human and our world's condition from a broader scope based on a more objective evaluation?
How can this be possible without our subjective criteria and preferences? What defines something as inherently negative for example...?
Of course with anything values, it must had agreement on terms and go from there.
You previously said that we are social so you are kind of having your cake and eating it here.
The rules of life are unknown. Games are what make up life so it is possibly a little presumptuous to assume life is a game.
Always being in a tight spot; either Hobson's choice or Sophie's choice. This is the nub of (my) pessimism.
For Schopenhauer for example, suffering is a constant lack we are always overcoming but never reaching. Human existence cant help but be this and this is inherent, not just contingent to it.
Really? Survival in a social context seems pretty accurate to me.
Just to add if we are defining everything as a game then does this term actually mean anything?
I think a lot of people get caught in the ideas of Wittgenstein and start believing everything is game just because he termed the phrase language game he did use the term Language in a very narrow sense so it is worth taking that into account.
Note: I have previously used the theme of life being a game before but that was rather loose.
Human beings are human beings because we are alive. We cannot help existing. Why would we want to? I certainly have no major qualms with existence but it is certainly puzzling that I exist and attach meaning to things in my life.
Suffering is a term too easily thrown around by you I find. Why would any sane person avoid every single ounce of suffering in life? Do to so would mean you are a walking talking zombie person shuffling through life like you are already dead. This is actually something quite common to many humans but the vast majority get over it.
Would you call Schopenhauer much of a narcissist? It just seems to me that such obsession with negative thoughts often stem from a kind of narcissism as the fury/rage/disappointment is directed at the world, or life itself, rather than simply taking the world on as mere happenstance within which we are not particularly significant nor possessing any right to demand/expect reality to be other than it is.
Dumb trope. Thats not how it necessarily goes. I can commit suicide or accept that I cant change things. I want to be in neither position. But I cant. Just saying suck it up buttercup is saying nothing but the default with the added dont complain. But that is simply restating the status quo and telling people to not question the situation itself because YOU particularly dont want to hear it. Then dont worry, go somewhere else. Carry on and read nothing that challenges the status quo.
Much of life we are zombies repeating same behaviors over and over. You can fast forward most of peoples day and nothing of meaningful experiences or significance would be lost.
I am failing to see the point pf any of this. You simply state the obvious over and over like it is something we should care about whilst simultaneously insinuating we should not care about it.
It does not make sense.
Pessimism is necessary in life. Suffering is necessary in life. That is not exactly anything anyone did not know is it? Even if it is so what?
You literally said we cannot challenge the status quo which we cannot. We live, we suffer and we die. Why is this pessimistic though? It is just the fact of existing.
What can be done about it?
I'll back up. I said in a reply that I am diagnosing more than prognosing. I am giving the landscape.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
I now know what you really are. You're not a pessimist. You are a cynic. Know the difference. I think you have disdain, not despair, of things humans. Which give me hope -- pessimists annoy me. But cynics bring to life a different flavor of humanity. They're a funny lot, but truthful. Which is what's important. They tell it like it is.
:rofl:
Et lux in tenebris lucet.
I feel showing the distinctions between different views in this area would help in the understanding of a particular pessimism.
Fair enough. I think it important to point out these pervasive negatives that we cannot escape. It's like being taken advantage of but not knowing it, but trying to wake people up to the fact that they are being taken advantage of. Perhaps they don't want you to wake them up to this fact. Perhaps they liked their ignorance. It's always the same theme.. Plato telling those in the cave. The people in the cave telling him to leave them the fuck alone, and probably adds.. "You raving lunatic".
I think it is so loosely defined, that there aren't really "schools" of pessimists, but just individual pessimists with similar themes. However, I can sum up some basic differences:
Metaphysical Pessimists (Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Mainlander, etc):
These thinkers thought there was an inherent source of suffering. For Schopenhauer it was Will. Will represents a striving-for-nothing. Will's playground is the illusion of individuation. This individuation creates the appearance of separate objects. These objects are objectifications and individuations of the Will, but are not primary ("less real") than the unified Will. Animals, and especially humans, suffer due to a profound sense of metaphysical "lack". Satisfaction is temporary because we are go from pursuits of survival and entertainment to boredom and back. Satisfaction can only truly happen by transcending one's nature of willing. According to him, this requires denying the Will and becoming an ascetic along the lines of a Jainist or something of that nature. The ultimate fate would be to starve oneself to death peacefully. He didn't expect anyone except a few to live up to that kind of lifestyle. He did think there were other things that can invoke will-lessness. He thought compassion and art brought us temporarily into a state of will-lessness. It goes on obviously. He has four really large books on the matter in The World as Will and Representation.
I'll just paste from the Wikipedia article on Mainlander:
From the Wiki article on Hartmann:
Existential Pessimists (E.M. Cioran, Nietzsche, Camus, etc.)
These people tend to not focus on metaphysics but purely the phenomenological human.
E.M Cioran for example, wrote in essays and aphorisms. One of his main themes was the idea of inertia (that is my take anyway). It's the idea that there is our situation is grim, but there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. Here are some quotes:
[i]My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.
[/i]
Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.
To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.
Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.
Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.
When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, "What's your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act." And they do calm down.
Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.
There was a time when time did not yet exist. ... The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.
Not one moment when I have not been conscious of being outside Paradise.
Just read any of his quotes here:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran
Again, there is not so much a coherent movement as much as similarity in themes. 19th century Germany might be the most prominent time/place of this philosophy. Schopenhauer was the progenitor for much of the ideas that came after. Even if not directly, movements like existentialism were influenced from him.
For more reading go here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_pessimism
or read these books:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1677700.Pessimism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28192377-weltschmerz?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=CASfH7rSIL&rank=1
From Goodreads on Weltschmerz:
I believe we can resign from life, but mind you, not in the way we think.
My job is something I enjoy 80% of the time.
I do not get sucked into consumption for the sake of consumption - do not use a mobile (have one but it stays as home). I buy new clothes every 4 or 5 years, and the only possessions I have of value to me are my books and iPad. I refuse to wear clothes that have any symbol or writing on (dislike them for some reason).
People may judge, and do, and I do not care too much. I am my own judge and jury for the most part (obviously I am a social creature so others have some sway over my choices and thoughts).
Basically, the OP is a relative point of view. I have felt the general shadow of the OP in life but I simply refused to accept it and told my parents from a fairly young age that I would rather live and die on the streets than get stuck in a job I hated.
Sloth is about avoidance not lazing around. If someone chooses to sit around all day picking their nose that is their choice. I feel sad for them. Some of the most slothful people I have met are very industrious they are simply doing something easy to distract from what their passions are.
The operative phrase there is "in the modern context", by which I take it you mean western industrial capitalist society. I do realize that most of the world has followed suit, whether they wanted to or not.
A couple of things about this kind of society: it's anxious, alienated and terminally ill. The very conceptual foundation of capitalism is anti-human and anti-life. Since it runs on debt, it has to keep growing to survive and that means it has to consume everything and then die. But it's incapable and unwilling to look forward at long-term consequences. If we look back a few thousand year, so is the basis of "civilization" as we have learned to call urbanized, stratified social organization, fundamentally anti-life and anti-human. As we have domesticated and enfeebled dogs by breeding the wolf out of them, we have domesticated humans by browbeating, bribing and flim-flamming the zest for life out of them...
No, not quite. There is spark still left. Is there any hope for it to thrive? It depends, I think, on how soon the present system collapses; whether there is something and someone left for a new departure.
Since I like to imagine so, I suppose I'm not a real pessimist... yet.
At what stage of its development? Are there animals or just plants? If animals already exist, and they have to compete for survival, they will evolve into sentience, very likely through stages of behaviour that are inimical to other life forms.
Quoting Bartricks
Then, in order to get their wish, as omnipotent entities generally do, they would have to introduce a sensible life form that fits seamlessly into the sensible world.
If there are only plants and perhaps vegetarian insects, they could introduce a well designed sentient life form. It should be small enough to make a meal out of one strawberry and sleep in the hollow of a tree. It should have a long life-span and reproduce infrequently. It should be able to fly and its wings should be solar-powered and water-resistant. The body should be covered in fur just warm enough to keep it comfortable. It should be sociable as to disposition but self-sufficient as to capability.
Quoting Bartricks
That's not my definition of a sensible world. Why would I want to leave it that way? Quoting Bartricks
Not really. What would be the point of omniscience and omnipotence if you refuse yourself permission to change a world that doesn't satisfy you?
Imagine that Mary has two offers of marriage - one from John and one from Tony. So, she can pledge lifelong fidelity to John and she can pledge lifelong fidelity to Tony. And she can do both. That is, nothing stops her promising to be faithful to John exclusively and promising to be faithful to Tony exlusively.
Clearly it would be wrong for her to do both. If she pledges lifelong fidelity to John, then she ought not to pledge lifelong fidelity to Tony too, and vice versa. One or the other, not both.
So far so good. Now imagine someone else - Jennifer. Jennifer is already married to Ralph. So she is now unable to change the fact she has pledged lifelong fidelity to Ralph. Does her inability to change the fact she has promised lifelong fidelity to Ralph mean that it is now morally permissible for her to pledge lifelong fidelity to someone else? No, obviously not. It'd be as wrong for Jennifer to do that as it would be for Mary to pledge lifelong fidelity to both John and Tony.
Similarly then, the omnipotent person has the ability to satisfy both of her desires - her desire for the world to keep operating in the way that it is, and her desire to create life and make it live in the sensible world. But it would be wrong for her to satisfy both desires. One or the other. Not both. That is, either keep the sensible world operating as it does, but do not introduce life into it. Or introduce life into it, but change its operations so that it doesn't harm people to live in it.
We, by contrast, do not have those two options, for we are powerless to change how the sensible world operates. We are not, however, powerless to refrain from introducing life into it. Thus, we should refrain from introducing new life into it. If it was wrong for the omnipotent person to introduce life into it without changing it, then our inability to change it implies that it is wrong for us to introduce life into it as well.
Communications have changed everything, and are still changing everything.
Basically, it would be as everything is now the only difference being we of limited capacities can appreciate something we term difference through what is likely ignorance clouded with an idea we term knowledge.
Imagine all apples are oranges. If you were an apple are you an orange or an apple being an orange?
It is irrelevant nonsense. Contradictory and therefore closed off fro rational thought and sensible investigation.
Your hypothetical may work if you reduce the knowledge and abilities of the entity in the OP as such a being having SOME form of limitations.
Again then: the omnipotent person wants to keep the sensible world operating as it does. The omnipotent person also wants to create new life. It is wrong for them to satisfy both desires. If they satisfy desire A - the desire to keep the sensible world operating as it does - then they ought not to satisfy their other desire, B - the desire to create new life. One or the other, not both.
With this, note, a proponent of the problem of evil - that is, someone who thinks the problem of evil demonstrates God's non existence - must agree. For if they think the omnipotent person can satisfy both desires and be doing nothing wrong in doing so, then they do not think there is a problem of evil.
All proponents of the problem of evil must therefore agree that the omnipotent person would be immoral if they satisfied both desires. One or the other. Not both.
Now, unlike the omnipotent person, we are unable to change how the sensible world operates. But what that implies is that we ought to frustrate any desire we may have to procreate.
Again: if the omnipotent person elects not to change how the sensible world operates, then they ought to frustrate their desire to procreate. Similarly then, if we are unable to change how the sensible world operates, we ought to frustrate our desire to procreate.
I think if there was an omnipotent omniscient person that wished to protect their project - life, or sentient beings. I would imagine that they would act in the best practice of any parent - non interference until such a time that their creation unknowingly puts themselves in the gravest of mortal danger.
Then its wise for their parent - this omniscient being to step in/ intervene and provide some of that knowledge to help guide his /her creation away from their own demise.
In this way the benevolent omniscient being maintains as much free will as is possible for their sentient creations so they can explore and be curious and make their own decisions, all the while protecting them from total self annihilation whenever they choose to ignore their omniscient parent entirely to the point of pure delusion and self harm. For example like inventing nuclear weapons.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Etc.
I think it's obvious who is doing the imagining here:
Quoting Bartricks
There is no dialogue here, all we have is 'The delusional commandments of bar tricks!'
So, your conclusion is basically in support of anti-natalism.
Quoting Bartricks
Sensible meaning a world in which there is no suffering or injustice? Or just orderly?
If you guys would take the time to understand his arguments instead of getting triggered, you would realize that many of his arguments make a lot of sense. Even if they are pretty intense.
That's not me protecting Barricks btw, I think he is arrogant and on an unexplainable, bizarre crusade to trigger as many TPF posters as possible with *surprisingly well-thought-out arguments.
* as compared to the vast majority of people who post on philosophy of religion, or on this site at all
Offer your best example of such and demonstrate that you are not just easily impressed.
I will. Just give me like 20 minutes.
Take all the time you need!
Simple. Create a dude, ask him what he thinks about it. After all, that's the subject of the matter. I know people who love life and writhe at the idea of it ending or not existing. I know people who can't stand it and swear this is Hell who want to die. We all do. If it's good, go for more. If not, back to the drawing board. Nothing to lose sleep over.
Some people love a good life or death challenge. Others prefer peace and the stability that comes with predictability. You can't make everyone happy all the time so you know what they say, "one man's morality..."
This is probably my favorite.
Bartricks basically leverages the problem of evil into a syllogism demonstrating that since God would not suffer innocents to live in a dangerous world, we must not be innocent.
The only avenues of attack were to claim that God is unjust - humans don't get what they deserve - or that innocence can indeed be ascertained via reason. I have argued for at least the first.
I'm pretty certain 180 simultaneously craps his pants and has an aneurysm every time Bartricks posts an OP.
So, firstly, you accept the premise that 'evil' is a problem, 'outside' of the concept that it is a purely human concept and has no existence outside of sentient life. Evil is a labelled projection or manifestation of what most humans may judge certain human behaviours be categorised as. Killing for no reason or a reason which is not justified enough, is evil, killing in self-defence is not. Only other humans, given judicial authority, can judge on an incident-by-incident basis.
Secondly you accept the premise that god must exist based on a BS argument that if it did, it would not suffer innocents to live in a dangerous world.
Why is the premise that if god exists then it is the source and origin of ALL EVIL any less 'feasible?' and therefore god would allow innocents to suffer, as they do, so an existent god is fully responsible for all evil. Many theists turn atheist because they think if god exists then it allows evil. This is in fact more akin to the term 'the problem of evil.'
If you consider this 'syllogism' to have any value, then I do think you are easily impressed because it is based on two premises which have not been DEMONSTRATED as true.
Innocence, like evil is another human concept and again is purely based on human judgement on a case-by-case basis, often further informed by the outcome of previous cases or precedent/legal principle.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Not true, you can also make the equally unprovable claim that god does not exist, therefore the question is moot.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Imo, @180proof has a far more impressive knowledge of philosophy than bar tricks and is quite capable of defending his own positions.
I personally thought bartricks was female not male but perhaps I am wrong.
Well, unless you allow for a universe that bifurcates (multi-furcates?) at each choice. So, omnipotence OR omniscience OR the multiverse (if both).
Or maybe gods don't exist (my vote).
Nor do I. It is merely the most recent dysfunction of civilization. (Organized/state religion and monarchy were two of the previous manifestations.) The last and fatal one, IMO, because it compels the afflicted society to propagate it - much as a virus replicates itself by taking over the reproductive function of the cell it's killing - and the only end-point is the death of the host. No vaccine is coming from outer space.
Yes, I did. What was it?
Quoting Bartricks
By what authority do you hold and omniscient, omnipotent being to the moral standard imposed by society on ordinary mortals? You attribute superpowers to a character on whom you then place arbitrary limitations. You posit 'a sensible world' without defining 'sensible'.
Why set up an insoluble conundrum?
I can thumb my nose at God without the complications.
Morality is built around the needs and desire of a society, this is a one person society so he/she/it can do whatever he/she/it wants to do and it would always be morally acceptable.
And if he/she/it does like the results, he/she/it can redo or undo the problems he/she/it caused.
No problem to discuss here, moving on.
If by "omniscient" we mean a person that knows correctly how they are connected fundamentally to the rest of existence (the universe) then they are omnipotent through said existence (the universe). They are not omnipotent in human form as they cannot do inhuman things (humans are in one way defined by what they can and cannot physically achieve).
As an object their total power would not be available to them, however they could point to the universe saying "look.. I am it and it is me" through some core relationship (energy perhaps) and say "there is my absolute power" (the universe). However I am just a partiality of said power, here as an object (human).
In that sense knowing that the "whole" is ambivalent (both creative and destruction, both chaos and order). The omniscient person (knowing of all relationships between things) can thus also be ambivalent (not care) in reflection of the whole, or they can be malevolent or benevolent.
So what defines the difference between an omniscient person being benevolent or malevolent? It is in their choice to either keep their omniscience to themselves (the truth) or spread it far and wide to empower others to be able discern ignorance from truth.
In essence a good god wants others to know they are god also and serves them in telling so. (selflessness).
A bad god wants people to think of only themselves as God and everyone else should be subordinates to them. (selfishness).
In that way the truth can be kept to do evil or spread to do good.
This the crux of the matter. You have not demonstrated that a new life cannot fit into an imaginary world as it operates. You have not demonstrated how the conflicting desires - if indeed they are in conflict - of a deity becomes a moral issue.
See my careful explanation in my previous reply to you. It seems you missed the point of that one too.
Quoting Vera Mont
Again, nothing you're saying has anything to do with anything I have said.
The omnipotent, omniscient person desires to leave the world to run in its own way.
They also desire to introduce life into the world.
Now, as any proponent of the problem of evil will agree, it would be quite wrong of them to satisfy both desires. That is, it would be quite wrong of them to introduce life into the world and then just let the world do its own thing.
If you think they'd be doing nothing wrong in satisfying both desires, then you simply do not think the problem of evil arises. But I am taking it for granted that it would be immoral, other things being equal, for an omnipotent, omniscient person to satisfy both desires.
Morally it would be fine for them to just leave the world to its own devices and frustrate their desire to introduce life into the world. Nothing wrong in doing that.
And most would accept that it would be morally permissible for them to radically alter the world so that it was a safe place into which to introduce life and to monitor the world's operations to make sure no one comes to any horrendous harms (thereby frustrating their desire to leave the world to run in its own way).
If that is correct, then my point is that our inability to change the world and make sure it does not visit horrendous harms on anyone we bring here implies that we ought to frustrate any desire we have to procreate.
That is, if the omnipotent, omniscient person decides to indulge their desire to let the world run in its own way, then the omnipotent, omniscient person ought to frustrate their desire to procreate. We are unable to affect how the world runs. Therefore we ought to frustrate our desire to procreate.
Oh well, that happens sometimes.
My favourite colour is the colour I like most.
But if they don't introduce life (conscious/sentient beings) into the world what capacity would such an inanimate world have for it would not even be aware that it exists. A world without an observer would be devoid of both meaning and its consequence: "good" and "evil" (concepts held by sentient things).
No it isn't.
But anyway, that's an absurd 'metaethical' claim, whereas my question is a normative one. Rookie mistake.
Me: "which way to the city centre?"
You: "A city centre is a collection of trees"
I don't really see your point. There's an omnipotent, omniscient person. There's a sensible world. They - the omnipotent, omniscient person - like the world, They enjoy watching how things unfold in it. There's nothing wrong in that. There's nothing wrong, for instance, in enjoying how the flames of a fire dance about. But if you also enjoy seeing a person dance about, it would be wrong to throw a person into the fire and watch them dance about in it. Watch the dance of the flames, or watch the dance of a human, but don't combine them.
I don't really see your point. There's an omnipotent, omniscient person. There's a sensible world. They - the omnipotent, omniscient person - like the world, They enjoy watching how things unfold in it. There's nothing wrong in that. There's nothing wrong, for instance, in enjoying how the flames of a fire dance about. But if you also enjoy seeing a person dance about, it would be wrong to throw a person into the fire and watch them dance about in it. Watch the dance of the flames, or watch the dance of a human, but don't combine them.
This anti-natalism "appears" logical. But it does not consider free will. If an omnipotent omniscient presence/entity were to abstain from allowing things to run in its own way then they must remain as only "potential to be" rather than "being/existence".
To exist is to be at odds with all other existents that themselves wish to exist. As they are in constant power struggle. For example in order for a Virus to exist it is in conflict with the immune systems of its potential hosts.
Therefore if one is to exist it must be subject to both creative and destructive forces. As you cannot have one without the other. If one wishes not to exist then it is removed from competition to do so.
It is true that for free will to exist an omniscient omnipotent person could not exist for any significant amount of time. They could merely exist briefly. If they are the "truth" (because of their superior knowledge and thus power/potency) then the truth is an unstable state in a changing/free will governed system.
In essence if the truth of things were to come out, it would be gravitated towards and dissected and dissolved and thus vanish almost as quickly as it appeared. In order to preserve free will. So if there is a god (an omniscient omnipotent being, a pure unarguable logic), they would likely not wish to be known, for if they did free will would dissolve and thus they must be destroyed to bring back choice.
I think that's false, but it wouldn't matter much if it were true, given the point I am making. Just imagine that we have an omnipotent and very knowledgeable person on our hands. The same applies.
Do you understand the scenario I have described? There's an omnipotent omniscient person. Call them Tony. And there is a sensible world.
Tony does not want to interfere with the operations of the sensible world.
Tony wants to create new life and put it into that sensible world.
It is wrong for Tony to do both of those things. Yes? (If your answer to that question is 'no' then you don't think there's a problem of evil and my case is not addressed to you).
To an omniscient, omnipotent person would their own existence be compatible with a "sensible" world ?
If they "know all" and have "all power" then they're totalitarian. Nothing logical can occur outside of their omniscience. There is thus no choice for any of their subjects as their (the subjects) choice is already made knowingly and powerfully for them. In this case they are mere extensions of the omniscient/omnipotent being and not their own "Agents". They cannot logically revolt.
What sensibility is there in being the only thing that exists and the only controller. In that case you exist alone. A "sensible" world is one where mistakes can be made, experiences can be learned from, agents can be free to decide for themselves what they believe.
I don't understand that question.
I see the problem rather that there is a system that always has to be in place when someone is born. It is a system that gets entrenched and thus we become habituated beings. X hours for employer. X hours for self is our current system. Perhaps it cannot be any other way if we are to have this kind of system. Afterall, technology came about through this system. Is technology and this way of being necessarily linked (it cannot be any other way), or is it contingently linked? I don't see how it can be contingently linked and went a different way really. Engineers think of stuff, funded by financial backers. Distributors and laborers market, distribute, sell, support, fix, all the rest of it. Little communes only exist in the wider system, so that's out as a "real" alternative. You are laborer. That is your value. If you deviate, you are a free rider (or you better be either independently wealthy or a one-off genius). This is how it is and will be and will continue with each new generation. All the change is window dressing.
What I'm saying is an omniscient omnipotent being cannot create a world of "oppositions/opposites". Nothing can oppose that which knows all and has all capability (potency). In order to have freedom/free will, in order to have multiple conscious agents with their own agency and decisions to make, an omniscient omnipotent being cannot be present.
If such a creator exists then their absence/ unavailability to humanity is the only true reason people have any free will. People are illogical and make decisions based on that imperfect/flawed logic. If an ultimate logic were to be presented, individual flawed logic would be overwhelmed and destroyed and total autocratic control would be assumed.
Again, I don't know what you're talking about. Yes they can. But what's the relevance? You're not really listening, are you? You're just saying stuff. It's a puzzle to me why you're saying what you're saying. It doesn't address anything I am saying. "Would you like sugar in your coffee?" "Without sugar there can be no free will. That is what you're overlooking". "Er, I just want to know if you want sugar in your coffee. Do you?" "I can't want something without also not wanting it. And free will is what sugar lacks. Though sugar provides free will, it does not itself have it. Coffee, on the other hand, is flawed by its own internal logic. Does the coffee view itself as sugar?" And so on.
Let's make it easier. If you like watching fires and if you like watching people dance, is it ok to throw a person in a fire and watch them dance and watch the flames?
If Tony wants to create new life and put it into a sensible world, he is creating something insensible (living beings with irrational/imperfect thought) and putting them into a sensible world (something logical/rational)
To the living beings (which are illogical/flawed - as all beings are) they would naturally project insensibility onto a sensible world through their insensible perception. They would likely have disputes and argue with one another as to what the sensible world really was - again because of their insensible/flawed understanding.
Does this explain where I coming from? Or should I elaborate? If both the living things were sensible and the environment - that which they were added to, then all would be sensible, agreed upon and therefore not argued. There would be no possible difference in opinion and therefore no free will.
That's why I cited free will. It is relevant
Well, she should choose which of those desires to satisfy. If she invites James over, she should cook him something he'll like, not something he'll dislike.
Now imagine that you also want to invite James over for dinner, but the only ingredients you have in your cupboard are those that make an incredibly hot curry and nothing else. Well, you shouldn't invite him over then.
I'm trying. I think you're likely an articulate and intelligent person. I respect your views and am attempting to offer views I think may be useful. I like to listen, try to digest the information and come up with a responsible and reasonable response to furher the discourse.
I have provided a new example, this time involving regular folk. Again then:
Susan wants to invite James over for dinner. Susan also wants to cook a particular dish - an incredibly hot curry - that James dislikes. She does not have to cook that dish - she has other things available, including things James really likes.
Well, she should choose which of those desires to satisfy. If she invites James over, she should cook him something he'll like, not something he'll dislike. Or, if she really wants to cook the hot curry, then she should do that and not invite James over.
Now imagine that you also want to invite James over for dinner, but the only ingredients you have in your cupboard are those that make an incredibly hot curry and nothing else. Well, you shouldn't invite him over then. Yes?
Yes agreed. Nobody with sensible intentions wishes James to suffer an insufferably hot curry. So either cook something he will like, don't invite him or get takeout..
This is obvious. What relevance does it have to our previous discourse? Please explain
Except for the times when a system stops working and is overthrown from within, or suffers a major collapse and disintegrates or is overwhelmed by an outside force. People born into the period of upheaval have nothing to become habituated to and are free to experiment, until they empower a new elite who then impose their own system.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not quite. Technology begins with bone tools, stone weapons, fire and dugout canoes. It is a process of human invention on which each succeeding civilization builds.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Serially and temporarily. Every system takes advantage of whatever technology exists when it assumes power and adds to the body of innovations according to its own requirements. The bronze age produced a lot of war equipment and personal decoration. Agricultural expansion periods improve on farm implement. Exploring/trading systems speed up methods of transportation; industrial periods expand the use of motive power and manufactury. The monetary age creates technologies for instant transfer of funds and information. None of it is necessary to human survival; it's driven by the needs of the prevailing system.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The engineering mind tinkers whether it is funded by financial backers or not, just as the artistic mind creates art, music and poetry, whether it sells or not, the adventuresome mind explores and makes maps; the healing mind devises ways to mitigate pain. All of these activities were taking place in primitive cultures that knew nothing of money and lending.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Until the system breaks down. The Greatest Depression, collapse of the web, storms rip apart the electric grid and wipe out the commercial crops, migrants battle locals; cities starve in the cold...
and the Mennonites and Seventh-Day Adventists, Okushiri and Harga survive. Then they build whatever those small populations want to.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I am a parasite, a surplus old person, sucking up a pension and contributing only unpopular novels. I can do that, because the relatively benign political regime under which I live has not yet unravelled. It's in the process of unravelling, but might, with a bit of luck, outlast me...
... Or Putin drops a few nukes and all bets for a future civilization are off.
You are you. Susan has the ability to cook James anything. You don't. You only have the ability to cook the hot curry. Well, if it was wrong for Susan to invite James over and cook him the hot curry, then it is wrong for you to invite James over given you can only cook him hot curry.
So, it is wrong for you to procreate. It would be wrong for the omnipotent, omniscient person to procreate if, that is, she is not going to adjust the world. You can't adjust the world. So you ought not to procreate.
Quoting Sir2u
:yawn: :up:
For let's imagine that you only have the ingredients to make spaghetti bolognaise. However, this is a meal that, though far from James's favourite, is nevertheless one that he enjoys well enough. Is it okay for you to invite him over for dinner given that you can only serve him spaghetti bolognaise? Yes.
Now imagine that Susan also wants to invite James over and that she wants to cook spaghetti bolognaise. Unlike you, she has a larder full of food and could cook James the dish he most likes. But she just wants to cook spaghetti bolognaise. Is it okay for her to invite James over given that she is going to cook spaghetti bolognaise? Yes, surely. If it was okay for you to invite James over and serve him spaghetti bolognaise, then it is okay for her to do the same.
Thus, if it is morally okay for us to procreate - so, okay for us to invite (well, force) guests to eat spaghetti bolognaise - then it is morally okay for an omnipotent, omniscient person to procreate as well. She could change the world and make it a much safer place for its inhabitants. But then she could cook James his favourite dish. But she is not obliged to do so and does no wrong - does no injustice to James - if she serves him spaghetti bolognaise.
And so, in this way we can see that either there is a problem of evil - in which case it is wrong for us to procreate - or it is morally okay for us to procreate and there is no problem of evil.
I am not going to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.
Of course you're not ...
No, it doesn't. You're being far too generous.
A parent ought want the best for their child. It follows that one ought improve the way things are. It does not follow that one ought not have kids.
How does that engage with the argument I made?
That's a valid opinion. Why drag worlds and omnipotence into it?
Apparently, no response does.
Because most agree that there is a problem of evil for God. If I can show how those who think such things are committed to having to agree that this implies it is wrong for us to procreate, then that's philosophically interesting.
No, responses that don't don't.
I mark lots of essays. And a common mistake - by far the most common - is not to address the question but simply to blurt all that one knows about the subject instead.
That's what is happening here.
So, do you agree that if Susan wants to invite James over, but also wants to cook a meal James dislikes, then she ought to satisfy one or other of her desires, not both. That is, she should not invite James over and cook him the meal he dislikes (but that she wants to cook)?
And if you agree - and surely you will - do you also agree that if you only have the ability to cook James a meal he dislikes, then you shouldn't invite him over to dinner?
Quoting Bartricks
So explain to me, how is morality formed. I will even give you a basic definition of the word morality.
"Concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct"
If society does not decide what is good or bad for its population, where does it come from?
Quoting Bartricks
First of all, please tell us what YOU mean by 'metaethical' and explain why what I said comes under the heading of absurd.
Quoting Bartricks
You should know I suppose, as they say "takes one to know one".
One of the worst rookie mistakes is having to give several different examples so that others can get an idea of what you are blathering about and then insinuating that they are the ones that are lacking in brains.
Quoting Sir2u
You asked a question, I explained why the question is irrelevant. If you cannot see the pointlessness of your own question, I cannot help you to understand.
Quoting Bartricks
You must live in a nice place, do the Ewoks live around there.
Quoting Bartricks
That's the spirit, you are no use to the cause if you get shot down every time you open your mouth.
Coming up like weeds in a rose garden, and there are too many thorns to be able to get too them.
Focus! This thread is not about metaethics.
Here's how our exchange is going:
Me "which way to the centre of town?"
You: "the centre of a town is the centre of a clump of trees
Me: "er, no it isn't. But anyway, my question is about the centre of town's location, not its composition"
You: "If the centre of a town is not a clump of trees, then what is it? Where does it come from? And what is composition? Explain what a composition is"
Quoting Sir2u
No it doesn't. I am not a rookie. Yet I can tell a rookie. See? I know that the object to my left is a loaf of bread. Does that mean I am a loaf of bread?
Focussing then: if you want to cook a very hot curry tonight, but you also want to invite James over - someone who really dislikes hot curry - then do you agree that you ought to thwart one of your desires? That is, you ought either to cook the very hot curry, but not inflict it on James, or you ought to invite James over but cook him something else?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/750919
You know what would really rile me? A refutation.
Help the suffering and those that need it. That was easy.
Do you agree that the omnipotent, omniscient person ought to frustrate one of their desires? That is, do you agree that they ought either to frustrate their desire not to interfere with how the sensible world operates, or they ought to frustrate their desire to invest it with sentient life?
They obviously should not introduce sentient life into the world. And if they do, then they should help the suffering and those that need help. It is easy.
Why do you associate "work" with NEETING or slaving up a mountain? Work is healthy and doesn't have to be hard.
:100:
Here in lies the contention. You're calling it a fact. But for others, it's a point of view.
That is, if the omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to invest the sensible world with life if, that is, they are not going to change how it operates, then we ought not either, given we are unable to change how it operates?
No, that is what you are doing because you failed to understand what I said. A rookie mistake.
Quoting Bartricks
I have no opinion about the futility of you trying to prove a pointless, no correct answer question. It makes no difference to an "omnipotent, omniscient person" because those same qualities give him/her/it the ability to do both things at the same time or or fail to be an "omnipotent, omniscient person". This is just another "rock to heavy to lift" theory and comes to the same end. But only a rookie would not be able to see that.
All I did was answer your question about the morality of your "introduce life or not question". I don't give a hoot about the rest of the claptrap.
It's invalid & trivial. That's what your "argument" is.
It's literally in your own post. That is the first question you asked is basically: "Should he introduce sentient life if he has the power to do so or not?"
Obviously he should not. What do you mean by "ought to do neither"? How do you not do nothing when you are doing nothing? LOL.
Wow, nice contribution. Really making strides. Glad you shared your precious thoughts. Glad you made time to respond.
Er, what? I am arguing that we ought not procreate. And I am showing how that is implied by the fact that an omnipotent, omniscient person who does not want to change how the world is operating ought to thwart their desire to invest the world with life. You understand that, right?
You agree that hte omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to invest the world with life. So, do you also agree that we ought not procreate too, then? That's a perfectly reasonable question to ask someone on a philosophy thread who is otherwise making comments that seem a little random.
Who cares? Humans are GOING TO PROCREATE because that's what humans do. Who cares if we "should or shouldn't". This is completely unrelated to your original OP that asks:
Should some all-powerful non-human reptilian with all the power and knowledge in the world put SENTIENT life on the planet, and the answer is no, and if it DOES because of the crazy comparison you're making with humans because "THIS IS WHAT HUMANS DO" .. then it should help the suffering and those that need help.
Maybe I could offer another tip. Try looking at other societies and their histories before making sweeping, generalized statements about how society came to be.
Quoting schopenhauer1
At the behest of the likes of Nagel and Rawls, I'll mention here the Archimedian point which argues that there is indeed a rational observer whose standpoint can provide an objective account of what's happening in the world.
Example? Schopenhauer himself. He was making an observation as a rational individual, using the archimedian point, while denying the will. Is this an oversight on his part?
That he was able to make a declaration, such as the reality of suffering, is a testament to his own will.
You can't answer a question with a question. Jeez. You're fired.
It is a confused mess. Your are trying to build an argument about man doing something because a god would do it (or not do it). Not going to work.
And do not tell me that I would not pass a philosophy course with that answer. I don't need to pass anymore course than those I passed long ago. :rofl: :cool:
I actually give those courses, it pays reasonably well where I live.
If you need help presenting your ideas here on the forum, you can PM me. But I do not help people do their assignments, there is a special section for that.
They are all subsumed. Look at my text in parenthesis closely.
You have to do it. If not, free riding SOB, born into wealth, or they want you to kill yourself so you aren't a hardship on those that do work. Pessimism.
Ford, Edison, Tesla, it was all with money. And the list goes on and on.. In fact, some technology absolutely needed government backing first.. usually from wartime.. then university money, then private sector.
A point of view has real consequences when it affects/effects others. Affirming life (and then having a life) will affect others.
Look, I think my OP is pretty clear. If it is wrong for an omnipotent person to subject people to life in this sensible world unless they are going to change it, then our inability to change it implies that it is wrong for us to procreate as well. It's a delightfully simple argument.
How is this alone not reason to not willingly produce more beings into that situation? The inevitability of X suffering, doesn't mean that one thus has to willingly allow to continue X suffering because X suffering already exists in some form or another. Lions kill, therefore humans can kill for example is a really simplistic form of this argument. It is the naturalistic fallacy of course.
Maybe a change in career is needed but don't try comedy, you would fail at that as well.
Quoting Bartricks
That is one person at least I suppose.
Quoting Bartricks
And there you go right back to what I have already explained. If there is only one of these "omnipotent persons" how could something be judged as right or wrong. He/she/it is the judge and jury as well as the witnesses and victims.
Not nearly as interesting as you seem to think. If you wanted to indict God for some wrongdoing - and god know he's guilty of lots! - then go directly there and stop involving Susan and Mary and whoever in irrelevant no-applicable examples. If you are going to indict a god, you should specify which god and read the charges plainly.
All this palaver about an omnipotent entity having created a world - which is supposed to be 'sensible' according to no stated criteria - and then hanging himself unnecessarily on the horns of a moral dilemma no god would entertain for a minute... It simply doesn't work.
I don't know who these "most" are who agree that this is a reasonable way to address the problem of evil, or morality, or procreation. But of course the perennial problem of evil reflects on all the gods humans have ever invented. You simply invented another, even less credible one, stuffed with straw to joust against.
Asking what's moral or immoral for a god to do, according to our own concept of what's right in dating and mating has little relevance to what we ought to do under the auspices of holy matrimony and having been instructed by a quite popular God to go forth and multiply, which "most" of us have been doing with every encouragement from the earthly representatives of our various gods. Incidentally, I doubt any of those people found the world 'sensible' when they entered it or considered it their prerogative to decide its fate.
Quoting Bartricks
There were several unrelated questions in the OP. I addressed one:
But you didn't like the answer, so you marked it 'irrelevant' and told me, as you do pretty much everybody, "You missed the point." The point, I assume, being "It's wrong to have kids!" You could have stated it clearly at the outset.
(I know --- all of that is irrelevant and has nothing to do with what you were saying. Carry on!)
I'm not sure Tesla, Ford and Edison all come from the same mold, but you're still restricted to 20th century capitalist (the capitalistest nation on Earth) America. And ignoring all the other people and all the other inventions. That's okay, but having a narrow view doesn't mean the world has to conform.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Some technology, yes. And most of the guys who made useful things in their garage or basement were subsumed by that same capitalist machine, yes; and many were robbed of the fruit of their labour. Yet that still doesn't stop the next genius tinkering, painting, composing, solving equations, dreaming up theories, pouring the content of one test-tube into another, growing a new hybrid - unnoticed, unpaid and unappreciated - just because it is their passion. Humans are curious and creative by nature.
Bartricks, my friend, you are moving your own goal posts, very conisistently to your style, but this time you are fucking your own self.
If the world is exactly like ours, then it ihas sentient beings; if it does not have sentient beings, then it's not exactly like ours.
You shot yourself in the foot right in two of the first few paragraphs.
You show here very clearly that you haven't the slightest clue what morality entails. It is a social construct. There is no morality without society. So what society does a single god live in? Outside of his or her own company how many other gods is this god responsible for survival?
Yikes!! Your questions make exactly as much sense as your other participatory remarks on this board.
Soiciety is a living, evolving creature, which is multi-cellular, and its cells are people.
Much like a multi-cellular biological organism, its cells will differentiate to perform their functions better.
And some funcitons will be coveted because they provide power, pleasure and variety; other functions will be shunned, but some will be forced into doing it, because they are dirty, dangerious and unrewarding.
A street-sweeper or a janitor or a mortician (funeral home employee) will perform societal functions comparable to cells that line the stomach walls and the rectum.
Some CEOs, movie stars and politicians will perform societal funcitons comparable to brain cells, and to cells that promote and conduct the process of an orgasm.
Societies are not as well-organzied into differning funcitonality of their parts as biological units. Yet some permanent differentiation can be observed. They predicate the functions of a unit (humans acting as cells). A low-IQ low-self-confidence, not very attractive person is not very likely to become a mainly pleasure-receiving unit. His or her progeny, ditto.
Naturally, or unnaturally, unless you ask 180 Proof who does not beleive that there is anything unnatural in the real world, according to this writer's impression based on the posts of 180 Proof, this process will be aborted very soon with the advent of an AI population explosion.
By "this process" in the prevous paragraph I meant the evolution of societies as viable stand-alone units created by humans organized similarly to how cells are organized in a human body.
Naturally or unnaturally, my description above is a skeletal picture of the process... there are much intricacies and nuances that my post did not delve into.
Correct.
Quoting Vera Mont
Incorrect. The problem of evil is taken to be the most powerful objection to theism. So if it implies that procreation is wrong, that's extremely significant, for very few think antinatalism is true.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes, but your students are in your imagination. Mine are real.
No, I said imagine a sensible world exactly like this one. Minds are not sensible objects.
Anyway, as you'd know if you were able to recognize what is and isn't relevant, it makes no difference to my case for if necessary I could simply ask one to imagine a sensible world devoid of life (if, that is, minds turn out to be sensible things in a guise). The important point is that if the omnipotent, omniscient person is not going to make any changes to the sensible world, then she ought to refrain from investing it with life. And so if we ourselves are unable to make changes to how the sensible world operates, we too should refrain from creating new life.
So, do try and focus on what is and isn't relevant to the case.
The curry case might be easier for you, although one imagines that you might start asking questions about the precise ingredients of the curry or insisting that curry is a social construct.
If Jennifer wants to invite James over for dinner, but also wants to cook a hot curry (a dish James dislikes), then Jennifer ought to do one or the other, not both - yes? (Again, note that my question is not about curries. So, insisting that curries are not possible, or that no one called Jennifer is capable of cooking a curry, or that no one dislikes curries - these are all irrelevant, as well as obviously false).
The answer is obvious: yes. She ought either to invite James over and cook something other than a hot curry, or she ought to cook a hot curry but not invite James over to eat it.
Now imagine that you want to invite James over for dinner, but you are incapable of cooking anything other than a very hot curry. (Do not say 'but that is not possible - I am capable of cooking other things'....that would miss the point once more.....resist the temptation). Well, clearly you ought not to invite James over.
No, they're just middle-aged.
Brilliant. I am good at comedy. Here is joke. Why chicken cross road? Tell me! You not know? I tell you. It is because road cross chicken's father and chicken must avenge father. And road's children will avenge road by crossing chicken's children and chicken's children will cross road's children.
Quoting Sir2u
You answered your own question. The omnipotent person is the source of morality. It's like asking 'how can a person make themselves a cup of tea?' They make themselves a cup of tea. Nothing stops the maker and consumer of tea from being one and the same person. Likewise, for morality to exist there needs to be some moral directives - and thus there needs to be a director - and there needs to be someone who is the object of these directives. Well, there can be one person who can occupy both roles, just as the consumer and maker of tea can be one and the same.
Just focus on Jennifer and the curry. If it is wrong for Jennifer to invite James over if she plans on cooking curry - a dish he dislikes - then if all you can offer James is curry, you ought not to invite James over for dinner either, yes?
You know what Banno I think you're right. Perhaps I'm being too generous. The only place an anti-natalist view has validity is well... A permanent Hell - a place where any new child would be certain to exclusively suffer/come to harm.
However this disregards as you quite correctly pointed out the existence and role of a parent. We have the parental power, the paternal/maternal instincts available to us to protect our children. To protect the vulnerable in general as those who are vulnerable/powerless are innocent - by that I mean they neither know of their own inherent power nor then can they practice it. Children must be educated first. They therefore cannot choose a side and are subject to being preyed upon or being protected.
The shepard leads the sheep, they don't slaughter them because the sheep might come to harm if they exist. It's a clear contradiction. The shepard knows who and what the big bad wolf is, and how to fend it off. Both within themselves (their own potential to be the wolf) plus those beyond themselves - external threats.
The three little pigs knew they had the strongest defence against the wolf when they cooperated, when they recognised the strong/wisest of them from the weakest and most vulnerable and gravitated towards the protection offered by the strong/wise.
Its ironic that we tell this story to our children and yet forget that the underlying message is always applicable throughout life, even as adults - such as when being challenged by anti-natalist idealogies in philosophy and society. A classic example is the cold, empathiless sentiment that "the poor shouldn't exist because they are useless and cannot help themselves. Dead weight to society". What person in their right mind would wish such sentiments on others and call themselves just?
Existing trumps not existing because it offers more, you can always choose to die but you cannot choose to be born. As a living thing you have two options - continue to struggle for a better life, or give up and succumb to oblivion, as a dead thing you have no such options.
Therefore not existing is impotent in the face of life with hope (someone who is not themselves severely depressed, severely full of negativity and lack of love for life, suicidal).
Suicide is the moment when the conscious mind has lost the very last shred of hope it had, and thus mind becomes incompatible with the body and they annihilate one another.
I was simply outlining the dynamic, the game, not suggesting we shouldn't exist or reproduce. One exists to use their intelligence and ability to adapt and fend off adversaries (a hostile environment) and improve their living standards and those of their community.
Is this not the basis for evolution and natural selection?
Genes/collections of genes that are protective and co-operative with one another are shared/reproduced through natural selection amongst the gene pool because they allow the collective to gain the upper hand and prolong survival.
Genes/collections of genes that are selfish and detrimental on the other hand (viruses) go about via infection, trying to parasitise the rest to create more of themselves instead.
People do the same thing. Some would have you believe you are always in debt to them and ought to serve them and relinquish your resources, usually through manipulating you into a sustained feeling of guilt or shame. They make you feel ill/unwell.
Others teach you to be your own person, know yourself, to have self esteem and confidence and the ability to argue rationally and justly enough to thwart the agenda of the selfish. These people confer immunity through wisdom and intelligence.
Such is the game of life.
Yes quite right. I think your phrasing is valid also.
Ever the quote if managers giving more work to their subordinates. You can quit a job but not life itself though, lest death. Cold comfort. Paternalistic thinking. Another persons suffering started for them and heres why Im so justified. But Im not.
It has no connection to the issue of reproduction, which is an evolved natural means to combat the threat of extinction. We should all have pity for the anti-life people, just be thankful that such is not part of your daily life.
Anti-natalism has as much chance of becoming the accepted way forward as the square wheel!
Damn your own parents for YOUR existence and you damn all natural events, as it was those events that are the historical source of all life in the universe.
It's illogical to crave nothingness for everyone, because your own awareness frightens you.
Imo, we need to see living creatures who are anti-living as just scared wretches who are not coping very well.
- In the past you have included omnibenevolent as one of the properties your imaginary person could have. I'm curious why this was not included in this particular thought experiment.
- Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in in the past your omniscient omnipotent person was not constrained by LNC. Is that the case for this particular conversation?
Thats a rather pessimistic view. Not all managers are bad ones. Is it not exactly that "given the opportunity to fulfill one's capabilities" that itself begets a good manager? As far as I know managers/leaders etc are needed. And a good one surely empowers and extends that privilege to those they manage to self actualize their own set of personal capabilities. Good management is about recognising talent in the pool of employees and rewarding/promoting them accordingly.. If not even to hand the torch over happily if they are even better management material.
And yes, an omnipotent person is not bound by the lnc as she makes it true. But that's irrelevant for two reasons. First, the lnc is nevertheless true and I am assuming it to be here. Second, even though she has the ability to make it false, we do not. And my whole point is that if we are unable to do something that, were God not to do it would make procreation wrong for her, then it is wrong for us too.
A manager would say that yes. But this is the kind of manipulation slogan a manager might use to justify their subordinates to do more work.
The pessimistic fact is we have to do any of this and we are self aware of this. We can think of other ways but we are entrenched in a managerial system whereby it gets perpetuated. Group think reinforces it. We arent very creative except within our self defined ways.
No, it doesn't, and the OP is drivel and illogical. There is no such existent, as a living omni and there are no gods, and evil is not a self-sustaining force. Don't try to infect others with your own struggle with religion. If you want a god to comfort you when you are scared, then accept that any omni god must be the source of evil, as such a first cause is the ultimate solipsist, as it claims nothing really exists, except it, and its existence is only by its own will. Procreation is not evil, it's a natural imperative against extinction, that can be controlled through reason or indeed, legislation, if overpopulation is proving problematic.
The universe is a big place and overpopulation will not be a problem, once our species colonises outside of this nest planet. We are relative newcomers in the Universe. Perhaps if you study the cosmic calendar, you will be less concerned. Try to face your primal fears and you will find life and living has a lot of joyous times available to you and you can leave a legacy that adds to the fantastic achievements that the human race has already left to you.
Now, you are psychologically incapable of accepting that as you are convinced already that I am wrong and you are right. So there is really no point in you continuing to contribute to this thread, is there? Unless you plan on engaging with the OP, go away.
I am certainly asserting that you are utterly wrong, yes, just as you are asserting you are correct.
Those are the normal ingredients of 'argument.'
I continue to explain why you are being so illogical to try to help you face the primal fears that seem to make you so morose. I also wish to prevent you from infecting anyone else with your misguided logic and your negative viewpoints. You go away!
The only alternative, is indeed, a lifeless meaningless universe. The universe has already demonstrated that life is part of its evolution, therefore, we should get on with living life not as a curse but as part of the natural development of a universe.
Well, I am typing things, sure, what do you think you are doing?
Your evidence begins by positing entities that do not exist, that is illogical.
Who is this omnipotent, omniscient you posit? They exist only in your head?
If this is not evidence enough that you are being illogical, then you need professional help with your mental state. A troll is another mythical beast and the idea that I am trolling you is just you, experiencing panic. I have little interest in your ability to appreciate my humour. You go away and stop trying to downgrade the lives of others. You will fail!
When someone creates a thread, there is an obligation on those who contribute to it to address the OP.
If you think the OP is bollocks, don't just say that. Explain why it is bollocks.
Don't just say things on topics vaguely related to the OP. Don't just express your view about something.
Address the argument. Look at what I said and address something I said. Christ.
Impossible, illogical, no such entity exists.
Quoting Bartricks
BY definition, an omni cannot have 'desires,' it's illogical to suggest it can.
Desire is about need, how can an omni need? This is illogical and contradictory.
You fall miserably at the first fence. But you already know that don't you.
That's a blurt. That's not an argument. It's just you saying something.
Note too that the proponent of the problem of evil thinks that what is impossible is God existing and this sensible world (with us in it) existing (and even then, that's only those who are running the logical problem of evil). They do not think that it is impossible for an omnipotent, omniscient person to exist, for if they thought that then they would not need to raise the problem of evil as God's non-existence would be established already.
There is nothing impossible about such a person and if you think otherwise you owe an argument and, more importantly, those I am addressing will agree with me, not you (note, I am not addressing you, as you are too confused to be worth addressing - I am addressing those who run the problem of evil against God).
Try again. Try arguing something. Note: if you think something, that isn't evidence it is true. Eat that piece of humble pie and let it digest for a bit. Then try again.
Or, alternatively, throw your arms up, say illogical and perhaps bollocks and word salad a bit, and then go away. I would recommend that last one.
No, you can change the world, many historical people have and your desire to pass on your legacy to your children to continue your work is valid. Do you need me to name some people from history that have 'changed the world?' Like the unknown creature who first used fire to cook meat or used tree trunks to roll a big boulder over a distance to turn it into a standing stone?
You lack the ability to change how the sensible world operates. For instance, you lack the ability to prevent the horrendous evils that are occurring daily. You're not God.
So, identify this omnipotent/omniscient, get it to reveal itself and demonstrate its ability. Can you do that or is it you that's just typing BS.
Make an argument.
And did you understand the point about the problem of evil? Did you understand that if you can show that it is impossible for an omnipotent omniscient person to exist, then you don't need to run the problem of evil? Did that make sense to you? I need to know what I am dealing with here. Are you someone who can't understand that a proponent of the problem of evil thinks God 'can' exist - or at least, tacitly they are acknowledging this - they just think their existence is incompatible with the world as it is.
No one is, god doesn't exist. I can change how the world operates through scientific breakthrough that can indeed prevent many horrendous evils. Are you still afraid of smallpox for example?
My argument is that your omnipotent/omniscient does not exist, prove it does, put up or shut up!
Try and stick to the topic. Do you have the ability to prevent all of the horrendous evils that are occurring in the world? Yes or no?
It's no, right? So, moving on....
that's not an argument.
Make an argument.
Yes, given enough time and scientists and human assistants. If not me then others like me from the same species.
Learn what an argument is!
Then anyone who wants to discuss your random assertions can do so.
But this is my thread and I made an argument. If you are not interested in engaging with that argument, or can't even recognize that it is one, then you need to go away. That is what decency demands
Decency demands that I help ensure your BS gets revealed as such.
I am quite willing to not engage with you directly as you are currently lost in your own fallacious miasma. I hope more and more members at TPF will also choose not to engage with you.
What is a dysfunctional misanthrope? You have the rest of your life?
Do you understand how manic this makes you seem?
What?
Bart Ehrman for example, cites the problem of evil as the reason he no longer believes that god exists.
But sure, anybody can still believe any BS no matter how illogical it is.
It is an argument that has this form:
1. P or Q
2. Not P
3. Therefore Q
Now see if you can detect that argument form in the OP. You have 1 minute.
Ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people or do not introduce people into it.
You can't (and by hypothesis, the god won't) ensure the world does not visit horrendous evils on people.
Therefore, do not introduce people into it.
That's called 'an argument' and the argument in question is called a 'disjunctive syllogism'. Do you see?
If you read that with a Pakistani accent, it really is very funny.
Quoting Bartricks
That is what I said at the beginning and you said I was confused, that it had nothing to do with the topic. make up your mind.
Quoting Bartricks
OK, so if James wants to get a leg over he has to eat the fucking curry and just suck up the dislike. If not he can get on his bike.
If Jennifer wants to get a leg over then she should cook him a nice meal and suck up her desire for curry.
So if neither of them is prepared to give a little to get a quickie then there will be no babies born and the world will be a happier place without their dumb genes in it.
Makes no difference to the rest of the world how these dumb tinder twits fix their problem and has nothing to do with morality as it is just a personal problem.
And stop trying to come up with more stupid examples that do not help understand your theory.
Evil: Noun
Morally objectionable behavior
That which causes harm, destruction or misfortune
The quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice
Evil: Adjective
Morally bad or wrong
Having the nature of vice
Having or exerting a malignant influence
Why does a god need to be involved? All of the definitions above are about human behavior, characteristics or qualities.
Being about humans means that we are in some way able to influence the behavior being classified as evil, therefore we can prevent evil. The fact that it is not done in no way impedes the ability to do so.
And why do you have to capitalize the word god?
Err, no.
disjunctive syllogism: A logical argument of the form that if there are only two possibilities, and one of them is ruled out, then the other must take place.
Which are the possibilities and which one are you ruling out?
Or should I use your own words, "Oh dear oh dear. You're really not very good at this at all, are you?"
It make good laughings in any accent.
Quoting Sir2u
It is irrelevant to the argument. I never said it wasn't. You are clearly reasoning that if you say something irrelevant enough times - and I lower myself to respond to the irrelevant point in question (for I find stupid reasoning almost intolerable and believe I am doing you a favour in pointing it out to you) - then I am acknowledging its relevance. That is itself, of course, an example of incredibly poor reasoning.
What I was hoping to achieve by this - and it really was just a hope, for I don't believe for a moment that it will actually happen - was that you might then realize how unbelievably bad at thinking you are and either slink away in shame or re-read the OP with an eye to understanding it.
Quoting Sir2u
What? What you have just said reminded me of something Peter Singer once said. I think it was Peter Singer, anyway. That when he started out as a philosopher he sincerely believed that anyone possessed of reason could, if they put enough effort in, understand anything. But then after trying to teach people he gradually came to the conclusion that some people are just stupid and there's really no helping them.
I live in hope though. So, read the OP and try and make sense of my argument. I have done all I can to make it clear to you. It is now down to you. Then - and only then - should you start trying to criticize it.
I don't know what a noun is or an adjective.
But what are you on about?
You didn't know what a disjunctive syllogism was until I mentioned it, yes? You looked it up and then wrote down a line you found on the internet and passed it off as your own. And now you think that you know more about this style of argument than I do and that I didn't engage in it in the OP. Most peculiar.
And failed miserable for everyone, no one understands your ideas, that is why your are getting upset and not answering anyone's questions. You don't have any answers.
Quoting Bartricks
No I copy pasted the definition from a reliable source so that you can see how wrong you are. Why do so many people think that they are the only ones that know anything?
The number of coherent arguments you have made still stands at 0, as demonstrated by the number of people that have told you this against the number of people that have agreed with you.
Calling people beginners and using other demeaning ways to try and invalidate their thoughts is not the way to win arguments. Presenting researched, worthwhile topics to discuss works better.
So to conclude my participation on this thread I would like to offer you some advice. Get your big head out of your arse and try to be nice.
I am not responsible for the fact that most people here can't follow an argument or can't tell what is or isn't relevant.
Quoting Sir2u
No, you did what I said you did. You passed off a line on the internet as a line from you. That's called plagiarism. And you don't know what a disjunctive syllogism is. You hadn't heard of them before today. Yet you still think you know more about how to argue well than I do, don't you?
Now, when you read my extremely helpful example of Jennifer and the curry and James, you probably though that it was about curry (or the beginning of a romantic novel about how Jennifer and James eventually get together after a rocky start). When in fact it was just illustrating a pattern of reasoning. But in order to be able to tell that it was illustrating a pattern of reasoning, you'd need to have the intellectual power to abstract that pattern from the example and notice its presence in my original reasoning about the omnipotent, omniscient person. What dawned on Peter Singer - as it has also dawned on me - is that vast swathes of the population are simply unable to do this. Just as there are sounds some of us can't hear, there are mental operations that some can't perform.
Here's the example again. Try and understand what it's illustrating and try not to get hung up on the picturesque details.
Jennifer wants to invite James over for dinner. She also wants to cook a particular dish -a hot curry that James dislikes.
She should thwart one of those desires. That is, she should either invite James over for dinner and cook him something else (thus thwarting her desire to cook the curry). Or she would indulge her desire to cook the curry, but thwart her desire to invite James over.
Now. if you also want to invite James over for dinner, but you are only capable of cooking that very hot curry, then you ought not to invite James over for dinner.
So, either invite James to dinner or cook a curry, but not both
Cook a curry
Therefore, do not invite James to dinner
In Jennifer's case cooking a curry is simply something she wants to do, but does not have to - for she has the ability to cook other things. Still, if she decides to cook the curry, she ought not invite James to dinner. In your case you lack the ability to do anything other than cook a curry. But it still follows that you ought not invite James to dinner.
Now, when it comes to God, God ought either to alter the world so that it does not subject people living in it to horrendous evils, or she ought not to create new life.
That is something a proponent of the problem of evil agrees with. THey must do, for if they thought God could satisfy both desires, they wouldn't think there was a problem of evil.
If, then, God decides not to alter the world so that it does not subject any living in it to horrendous evils, then God ought not to invest the world with life.
We are unable to alter the world so that it does not subject any living in it to horrendous evils. Therefore we ought not to invest it with life either.
See?
But that's not nice, is it? I've been modelling myself on you! You called my OP "claptrap" among other things.
Quoting Banno
This is an excuse a manager uses to justify giving subordinates more work. It's shining a turd.
Quoting Bartricks
I rarely do this because it is sort of frowned upon, but.
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on
Well, that's not nice either. Odd. Did your advice to be nice only apply to me and not you?
As is your philosophy.
No, I've been modelling myself on you!
And one last piece of advice. Using what gods do as a way of specifying what humans should do does not work, humans are actually real.
But I'm clever and witty.
Trying to get another person to agree with you, that is the problem you face.
Good one :roll:. But indeed it is managerial speak to make more work for others.
It's a "learning opportunity" is another one.
Well that wasn't very witty now was it. Up your game.
The truth is seldom witty, like you.
I had surmised that you were drunk when you wrote this. Sad that I seem to have been mistaken.
With "capabilities" I had Nussbaum and Sen in mind. So you are farting in quite the wrong direction.
You are better company for Bart than I had perhaps supposed. Have a nice day.
To be fair, I didn't read what you were replying to, but that got my spidey-sense going with the phrase "capabilities.."
But looking at it, just more of the same from you.. A small sentence that has little weight behind it except that you "don't like bad ole antinatalism".
And by little weight I mean, there is no explanation.. just indignity as argument.
I simply do not share in your conviction that life is unpleasant. I'm content that I am here. From that foundation your arguments for antinatalism gain no traction, and your arguments that one ought feel that life is not worthwhile are superfluous.
Amongst my first replies to you was a recommendation that you engage with the broken and the bent, the elderly, disabled, and ill. One might expect them to side with you, but I've found them cheerful enough. Something to do with outlook, I suppose. And with a strong eye on improvement, undermining the OP.
Many of Bart's ultra-ad homs and trolling are really not much worse than things you and others tend to do and say to taunt others rather than engage with them. Granted he can get very unnecessarily pernicious, it's just an exaggerated clown mirror of the tendency of many other posters on here that also argue unproductively. If he is doing anything, it is simply being an exaggerated jester of the bad faith arguing others tend to do.
As to his philosophy, I usually also don't get the theistic approach he often takes, so I don't comment on it much because it's not what I would argue.
Quoting Banno
But even if we were to drop all other arguments, what does that say that a system must steamroll the individual? Is your basis simply, majority is always right? But also, part of the debate is what counts as negative/not right/unjust.
Quoting Banno
I don't put stock in archetypes such as "broken, bent, elderly, disabled, and ill". Rather, I try to see what are the pervasive harms that are necessary for being at all, and consider the pervasive contingent harms that are also pernicious. It is deciding what these are that a good Pessimist explores. Deciding what counts as an negative, is also in question.
In this case, I was questioning the idea that one needs to develop capacities in the first place. Why is it our job to bring others to comply with this agenda of capacity building in the first place? It's as if you are implying that this is some necessary thing. Rather, no that is not how this works. Rather, people are born, and must comply in a fashion that isn't too disturbing. Otherwise, the habitual response from those who have been thus enculturated (perhaps yourself) will respond that "you should just die so the herd is not disturbed".
Quoting schopenhauer1
Perhaps, but the quality of his arguments is quite low.
For the rest, I'm content, and hence content not to address your proposals. Pessimism is an outlook, after all, and hence chosen. I choose otherwise.
Yes there is. I've shown how those who think there's a problem of evil should accept that it is wrong to procreate. That's extraordinarily interesting. An actual philosopher would recognize that.
Quoting Banno
Er, okaay.
Quoting Banno
Like many, you ignorantly assume that the only argument for antinatalism is one that assumes life is unpleasant. Presumably that's because it's the only one you understand. Therefore, it must be the only one that is ever offered! Or perhaps it is becasue it is the only one you can say anything to challenge.
Therefore it is the only one!
There are lots of arguments for antinatalism, as you'd know if you had studied the area. Which you haven't.
The argument that I gave in the OP, for instance, does not assume that life is miserable. As anyone who has taken the time to read and understand it would know.
No they aren't. You just think they are. That's not the same.
Take the argument in the OP. What's poor about it?
For instance, do you think this is valid?:
1. Either P or Q
2. Not P
3. Therefore Q
Just answer the question.
Cheers, Bart.
That's not an answer to the question. I understand you're scared. The nasty reasoning man has come to town, so now the squiggle squoggle salesman better pack up his cart and run away.
I'll answer for you.
Banno: yes fartypants.
Right. Now a proponent of the problem of evil must accept this moral principle:
Either adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it, or do not introduce innocent life into the world
If they think that principle is false, a problem of evil does not arise. Thus, they must affirm it.
So, this premise is true (or at least a proponent of the problem of evil must accept it anyway):
1. Either adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it, or do not introduce innocent life into the world
Now, none of us can adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it, can we. So we're not going to. Thus we must accept that this premise is true:
2. We are not going to adjust the sensible world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on those living in it.
And from that it follows that we ought not to introduce innocent life into it. That's antinatalism.
Quoting Banno
Which one is false - 1 or 2? Come along.
I know that you hear a lot of stuff in your own head, but yes, I am still TYPING words, thanks for your encouragement.
Quoting Bartricks
You can try, but you are not the most reliable source of accurate descriptions.
1. P or Q allows for both P and Q to be false. Look at a truth table for an electronic OR gate.
So, in your OP, both your posits are false.
Quoting Bartricks
P = 'a desire to leave the (sensible :roll: ) world to operate in its own manner,' IS FALSE, as an omniscient would have no desires and no omnipotent exists
Q = 'a desire to introduce sentient life into the world,' IS FALSE, as an omnipotent would have no desires and no omnipotent exists.
So, your gameplay is to conflate your disjointed and dysfunctional musings with the rules of propositional logic and your attempt is irrational and laughable.
Quoting Bartricks
Are you staring at yourself in the mirror again when you form such thoughts? I agree, you are not very good at this!
Quoting Bartricks
No, reproduction will continue, as a natural imperative for the human species and we will continue to combat suffering so we can further assist people like you, when you again get scared due to your awareness of self.
You don't have any arguments, you merely live in fear, you choose to live life as a curse. I pity you.
:clap: :100:
Quoting Bartricks
Have you figured out why your reasoning is wrong yet?
It is actually quite simple. The world cannot visit evil on people, I cannot even try to imagine a tree or a rock acting in an evil manner, and animals act on instinct so they cannot be classified as evil.
Only other people can visit evil on other people, AND there is a way to stop that from happening without eliminating the entire population.
And the fact that your god wont change the beings he wants to introduce into the world just proves what assholes gods are.
Bye.
That's fine. Germans living under Nazi Germany felt more content in the 30s. Colonizers killing aborigines in Australia felt more content. Southern US Jim Crow society felt content (for those it benefited). So that doesn't do much philosophically for pointing structural problems. Pessimists simply point out what these structural problems are and explain why they are indeed structural problems and not simply a matter of contented feelings of an individual at a point in time.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
So if She is not bound by LNC, then She can satisfy both desires. Since we frail/fallible human beings are bound by LNC we cannot fathom/understand how this is possible - we simply have to accept it.
I'm a big fan of B's rambling posts - albeit not in a way he appreciates. So I'm not defending his OP. But in this particular narrow case it looks to me your critique is misplaced.
Quoting universeness
If you were to set up a standard truth table of the 4 permutations then of course you are correct, but here B is also asserting that P or Q = True. I.e. it is an axiom.
Of course, as the OP clearly states, all of this is imaginary:
Quoting Bartricks
It seems to me that you agree that bar tricks is positing the musings of his imagination and trying to pass them off as valid proposals by conflating them with propositional logic.
I would think that it's his burden to clearly state what he intends with P or Q. If he intended P or Q = True, then that's what he should have typed, which would be equivalent to the 'exclusive or.' I think this should be written as P ? Q not P or Q.
Anyway, it matters not, as
1. P or Q
2. Not P
3. Therefore Q
cannot be applied to completely illogical posits such as non-existent Omnis having human style desires.
Bar tricks is all smoke and mirrors, but he is quite capable of further damaging those people who are already depressives but lack the ability to see through his BS. I am just trying to help redress that balance.
Agree
Quoting universeness
To me, given the full context, it was clear that this was his intention.
Quoting universeness
Agree- but sometimes it's fun to embed oneself in his imaginary world and see where it goes.
Quoting universeness
I wouldn't be overly concerned about this - just my 2 cents . . . :smirk:
EDIT EDIT:
Now that I'm thinking about it some more, B is not even asserting POR Q, it seems that he is asserting (sort of) P OR ~P
where P is "leave world as it is & do not introduce sentient beings" and ~P is "change world so it is safe & introduce sentient life". Yeah, yeah P is actually two propositions, but I think you get the basic idea.
I mentioned nothing about you improving things so youre hurt over your own red herring reaction. What I said was against the idea that a person being contented means there arent structural problems with life.
Back to passive aggressive shite. Twerp.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And we can work to remove them. That's unless one is a pessimist.
You are trying to 'patch' the inaccuracies in the sophistry employed by bar tricks when you would do better to pull back the curtain and expose his sophistry.
Quoting EricH
I am glad you can garnish entertainment from antinatalism and antinatalists but I personally see them as a more destructive and pernicious group than you do. For example, they exist as a particularly nasty organised group in America. Footage from this group has already been posted on TPF and I don't take such organised nasty groups, lightly.
Quoting EricH
Easy for you to type but I think you are wrong and that there is a very real and very valid concern involved.
:clap:
HILARIOUS :rofl:. You are one of the smuggiest passive aggressiviest posters on here. You know it too. You cannot be that un-selfaware.. Or you are being super ironic. Either way, pot calling kettle black.
Quoting Banno
But that is precisely what a Pessimist does.. He sees the intractable, pervasive, necessary harms that are structural. Even contingent harms that are consistently pervasive can look quite necessary as to structural. But though you're being tongue-in-cheek with your use of pessimism here, how your using it here is precisely what a philosophical pessimist is not. A philosophical pessimist does not just think things can't get better, but rather that the fact that there are structural negatives in the first place is something to explore, and to explore what those are and reveal them. The "optimist" in this regard is not just someone who "sees the glass full" but is someone who is overlooking what is structurally the case. Perhaps just to make their case about this and that project (like discussing analytic philosophy and logic on a philosophy forum) being important.
Yes, but that's irrelevant to the case I am making. For I am not trying to shed light on what an omnipotent person is capable of doing. Rather, I am trying to shed light on the morality of procreation. I am simply using the example of God and the problem of evil to do that, for there we find much more agreement than we do on the issue of antinatalism.
When it comes to the problem of evil, there is widespread - though not universal - agreement that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person would not invest a world like this one with innocent life.
Those who think that is not true can simply ignore the rest of what I say. The majority - certainly the majority of contemporary philosophers - will agree that it is true.
These folk will agree to the truth of this claim:
Either ensure that the sensible world does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents living in it, or do not introduce innocent life into it.
For if that claim is not true, then there is no problem of evil. And they think there is.
God has the ability to do the former, but we do not. But that's irrelevant. For all it means is that we must accept that we cannot ensure that the sensible world does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents living in it. Thus, what follows is that we ought not to introduce innocent life into it.
Pointing out that God can do all manner of things that we cannot - including, if she so wishes, making the LNC untrue - misses the point. The LNC is actually true and we gain insight into moral matters by employing our reason. It is what is actually moral - not what could be - that I am interested in.
And it would seem that this is a sound argument, or at least that a proponent of the problem of evil seems bound to accept it is.
1. Either ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that you plan on making live in it, or do not make innocent persons live in it. (P or Q)
2. We cannot ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that we plan on making live in it. (Not P)
3. therefore, do not make innocent persons live in it. (Therefore, Q)
No problem. Love telling smugs why the be smugs.
Isn't that the name of your game? I mean you can retreat into what I predicted you would.. "That you are posing as ironic" all you want. Smug is smug. You can say Socrates was smug then.. but wooohee.. then you are comparing yourself to Socrates.. and maybe he was indeed a smuggy.
Ok.
1. Either ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that you plan on making live in it, or do not make innocent persons live in it. (P or Q)
2. We cannot ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that we plan on making live in it. (Not P)
3. therefore, do not make innocent persons live in it. (Therefore, Q)
Now, you have had long enough to read up on disjunctive syllogisms and research how they can fail such that you can then wearily tell me that the one above fails in one of those ways and then refuse to clarify in the hope that others will charitably assume that you do know, even though you and I know that you don't.
So, come along. Say where the argument goes wrong. You are sure it does go wrong, for no better reason than that I have made it. Yes? If Bartricks makes an argument, that argument is rubbish. So, now try and explain why it is rubbish. Do so without quoting yourself as if your pronouncements constitute pieces of evidence. And do so without any squiggling and squoggling.
Quoting Bartricks
But that is exactly what you did in your OP. Right here:
Quoting Bartricks
In other words, if She cannot satisfy both desires, then neither should you. But as you have stated, since She is omnipotent She can do both.
Quoting Bartricks
1. Either ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that you plan on making live in it, or do not make innocent persons live in it. (P or Q)
Which it is. Or at least, proponents of the problem of evil must accept it is.
To challenge me you would need to argue that a proponent of the problem of evil can reject that principle. It's not about what abilities God has. Nor is it about what I can deny or affirm. It's about what a proponent of the problem of evil can do. Can they deny that principle? No, not and be consistent.
But that seems false. At most one only needs the ability to fulfil one of the disjuncts. For instance, that is all that 'ought implies can' requires. So long as one can fulfil one of the disjuncts, one is able to comply with the directive.
And imagine a god who is unable to prevent herself from introducing new life into the world, but who does the ability to ensure that the world will not visit any horrendous evils on that new life. Well, clearly she ought to exercise that ability. That is, her inability to fulfil one of the disjuncts does not mean the principle does not apply to her. Likewise then, the fact we can't fulfil one of the disjuncts does not mean the principle does not apply to us.
But he is not the "number one". :lol:
Hilariously illogical.
These kind of [s]brainf[/s] thought constructs tell something about when actually the "me-myself-and-I" attitude is mixed with over protected lives we live now. The idea of our world now being so cruel... as if it wasn't more cruel before.
Well, it looks like we're stuck here :angry: :grimace: For clarity's sake I am re-posting your OP:
I[i]magine there is an omnipotent, omniscient person.
Imagine as well that there is a sensible world, exactly like this one.
And imagine that this omnipotent omniscient person really likes the sensible world, and likes how it operates and does not want to interfere with its operations, with one exception: they want to introduce life into it.
So, they have two desires: a desire to leave the sensible world to operate in its own manner, but also a desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world.
Morally what ought they to do? Should they frustrate their desire to introduce sentient life into the sensible world? Or should they frustrate their desire to leave the sensible world alone and instead alter it so that it does not pose the risks to the welfare of the innocent life they plan on introducing into it? Or should they satisfy both desires?
I take it to be obvious that they should not satisfy both desires. So, that means that they should either adjust the world so as to make it a safer place, or they should refrain from introducing sentient life into it.
Now turn your attention to yourself. You are not omnipotent, but you do have the power to introduce new sentient life into this sensible world. And you are not omniscient, but you know that this sensible world is an incredibly dangerous place, full of all manner of dangers and just about every conceivable harm.
If the omnipotent, omniscient person wants to keep the world as it is, then they ought to frustrate their desire it invest it with sentient life.
If you are unable to change the world, then you ought to frustrate your desire to introduce new sentient life into it. Yes?
I mean, if the omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to introduce sentient life into the sensible world if they are not going to change the sensible world, then your inability to change the sensible world should also mean that you ought not to introduce sentient life into it. Agree?[/i]
- - - - - - - -
Now you say this (I boldfaced the most pertinent part):
Quoting Bartricks
And here is the point I am trying to convey: If you are using your omnipotent, omniscient person (OO-P) as an example/template to possibly emulate - as the OP clearly states - then your discussion of the properties & behavior of the OO-P is subject to debate - since that is the foundation on which you construct your Ps & Qs. And it is this foundation that doesn't make any sense to me. Just for example (and again from the OP):
So, that means that they [God] should either adjust the world so as to make it a safer place, or they should refrain from introducing sentient life into it.
But as you have clearly stated, the sensible world is neither of these things. So clearly, since the OO-P has done neither of these things, then clearly the OO-P is fine with introducing sentient beings into a sensible world filled with pain & evil. And since the OO-P is fine with this, then (following your reasoning) so should we frail human beings be.
And this is begging the whole LNC thing I mentioned a while back.
So again, your OP has set the basis for this discussion, and I'm sticking with it.
But there is one other alternative. Perhaps the OO-P is not essential to your P & Qs (as you seem to be saying). Then perhaps (ironically at this point) you might open up a new discussion and leave out the OO-P - so the discussion can be focused on your Ps & Qs.
Yes, another fantastically prejudicial judgement by Mickie/Xtrix. This argument:
1. Either ensure that the sensible world does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents you plan on making live in it, or do not make any innocents live in it (P or Q)
2.We are not going to ensure that the sensible world is such that it will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents that we plan on making live in it. (Not P)
3.Therefore, we ought not to make any innocents live in it. (Therefore Q)
Is a 'life sucks' argument, apparently. Which means all discussion of the problem of evil should also be moved to this thread too.
Quoting EricH
What I was trying to do is show how a proponent of the problem of evil is committed to affirming the truth of a disjunctive moral principle.
1. Either ensure that the sensible world does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents you plan on making live in it, or do not make any innocents live in it (P or Q)
The omnipotent, omniscient person is dispensable insofar as it is the truth of that principle - if true it be - that gets one to the antinatalist conclusion. But as I was trying to show how those who run the problem of evil are, on pain of inconsistency, committed to affirming it - or seem to be, anyway - that was why I mentioned such a creature.
One could argue the other way - that is, one could take the moral permissibility of procreation as one's starting point and argue that it implies that there is no problem of evil.
To go back to my dinner invite examples. Jane wants to invite James over for dinner, but she only has ingredients for spaghetti bolognaise in her cupboard. But that's fine - there's nothing impermissible about inviting someone over for dinner if you're going to serve them spaghetti bolognaise (provided there's enough of it). For James does not dislike it and it's a meal of the kind a guest is entitled to expect.
But then surely it is fine for Marjorie - who is capable of cooking all manner of things for James, but just wants to cook spaghetti bolognaise - to invite James over and serve him spaghetti bolognaise too? SHe will not be doing James an injustice if she does that. She could serve him something better. But he's not entitled to anything better and so he is being done no wrong by Marjorie if she serves him spaghetti bolognaise.
That applies now to God. If it is morally permissible for us to procreate, despite the fact we'll thereby be subjecting an innocent to the risk of suffering horrendous evils - so, if we do no wrong to that person - then it is also morally permissible for God to subject innocents to life in this world despite the risk of them suffering horrendous evils. God is like Marjorie and creating life is like serving spaghetti bolognaise to a guest.
As is now obvious, this is clearly a life-sucks argument through and through and definitely belongs here.
I appreciate you starting a new thread with a more respectful name.
@Baden
:up: :sparkle:
I am agree with Clark. Thanks for taking the unbiased solution. I think all the sides win here.
As a philosophy - humane and inspiring. In this context - a grotesque and self-serving justification for prejudice and censorship.
I really have no idea what you're talking about.
[deleted]
Just for the record, I (T Clark) did not delete this post.
I'm not following you here. By "proponent" do you mean a believer in God - and how they attempt to resolve the discrepancy between an omnibenevolent god and the existence of evil? Or are you referring to a non-believer and how they use the discrepancy to dispute/refute the existence of God?
BTW - I acknowledge that this is a dramatically simplified description of a highly complex set of philosophical/religious beliefs/opinions.
I'm guessing that you're referring to believers - but perhaps I'm missing something?
I am not one of those. I think God exists. I think there is no problem of evil.
But most philosophers think there is a problem of evil. They think the evils of the world provide us with good evidence (most would say decisive) that God does not exist.
Those philosophers ought to be antinatalists. That is what I am arguing.
That's not why I am an antinatalist. I am an antinatalist for a whole host of reasons.
My point, though, is that an argument - the problem of evil - that the vast majority of philosophers think is a very powerful one against God, implies the truth of antinatalism.
So, 'if' the problem of evil provides good evidence that God does not exist, then there is good evidence that it is wrong for us to procreate.
If P, then Q.
However, it does not follow that if Q then P.
So, although I am an antinatalist, this does not commit me to thinking that the problem of evil provides good evidence that God does not exist.
I think the problem of evil fails. But most think it succeeds. They are inconsistent if they are not also antinatalists.
It is entirely consistent to be an antinatalist and to believe the problem of evil fails to show God's non existence. For there is nothing inconsistent in being a theist antinatalist.
It is entirely consistent to think procreation is morally permissible and that there is no problem of evil. False. But consistent.
It is inconsistent, however, to think that there is a problem of evil and that it is morally ok for us to procreate.
Jane wants to invite James over for dinner. She doesn't have to. She just wants to. But all she has in her cupboard is some spaghetti and a smashed jar of ragu. So all she is capable of serving James is spaghetti with sauce that has bits of glass in it. And she has no pudding to offer.
Well, I'd have thought it was obvious that she ought to refrain from inviting James over, given all she can serve him is a meal of glassy ragu and spaghetti. A guest deserves better - much better - than that.
But let's imagine that you think - bizarrely - that no, it is absolutely fine for Jane to invite James over and serve him glassy spaghetti and sauce.
Well, Marjorie wants to invite James over for dinner too. She doesn't have to either. SHe just wants to. But she has lots of things in her cupboard, including a smashed glass of ragu and some spaghetti. And she wants to serve James that. However, she is going to give him a great pudding.
Now, aren't you mega-bizarre if you think that it would be wrong for Marjorie needlessly to subject James to an evening of glassy spaghetti and sauce followed by a nice pudding, but not at all wrong for Jane needlessly to subject James to an evening of glassy spaghetti and sauce?
I think so. Yet that is analogous to the view of the person who thinks it would have been wrong for God needlessly to make innocent persons live in this world with all its evils, yet not wrong for them to do so.
God could have gotten rid of the evils - just as Marjorie could have served James something other than spaghetti and glassy ragu. But he is, it is supposed, going to provide a great pudding (an afterlife in heaven).
You, however, could only have served spaghetti and glassy ragu, for that is all you had. You didn't have to invite James to dinner, of course. And you can offer no pudding. If God did wrong, you did worse! I mean, whose invite would James prefer to receive?
My position on antinatalism is that I agree with it as being the epitome of a philosophical idea: where thought becomes greater than the life that gives it existence. People are unlike other creatures in that we can appreciate our suffering. Animals in nature accept their lot. Our nature to think, or to like thinking, can lead us to favor heady ideals over material existence. However, most people are not philosophical. Thoughts can occur to any of us, but only in an insignificant number will thinking interfere with basic functions like eating (animals), procreating, and working. Nevertheless, as I said, I agree with philosophy at its apex. This is where thought becomes greater than the material world. Mind there is not at a subservient level to matter as in science, but transcends actuality to create nothing. This is the spirit that I favor in antinatalism.
Existence before essence is the case for humans in many ways that human pretend isnt. Bad faith. :up:.
Quoting introbert
The desire for sexual pleasure doesnt seem the same as procreation, as we have divorced the two. Therefore, I consider procreation not a basic instinct. It is simply a culturally reinforced preference to want to reproduce. It could be out of any number of things including ones as banal as boredom, fear of missing out and a host of other complex socially derived, non instinctual reasons that have no discernible basis in an instinctual drive to procreate.
That said . . .
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
I think I finally understand what you're getting at - and here is where we disagree. I am not seeing any connection between being a PPE and your Ps & Qs. Being a PPE does not imply that one should have any opinion on how God should act, let alone that it is wrong of God.
To illustrate, let's take a specific hypothetical example. Let's say there's a person - call him Mr. X - who is an atheist and Mr. X thinks that the problem of evil is proof that She does not exist and that "God" is an imaginary character in various religious books. So what is Mr. X's opinion of AN? Is there any connection between Mr. Xs atheism and AN?
Not that I'm seeing.
Mr. X could be an AN - maybe he feels that there are too many people on the planet and we need to reduce the human population to keep a sustainable civilization.
Or maybe Mr. X is anti-AN. Mr. X loves children (he has 2 kids) and he is confident that humanity will eventually solve these problems.
Or maybe Mr. X has no opinion at all. He's a nihilist and thinks humanity is doomed no matter what happens.
Etc, etc.
- - - - - - - - - - -
As far as Jane inviting James over? Why does she have to serve the glassy sauce? She could serve the spaghetti plain - maybe with a bit of olive oil, a dash of salt, and some parmigiana cheese. Yum. Oh, her cupboard is empty? She can go out to the store and buy some. Oh, she's broke? She could call James and say "Hey James, I'm so sorry, all I have is plain spaghetti but I'd still like you to come over". Or she could call up James and say "Hey lover boy, would mind picking up a jar of ragu on your way over?"
Please don't give him any more ideas about how to adapted his theories, they are weird enough already.
Oh, I very much doubt it, vicar. For you just criticized me there, didn't you? Tut tut.
Quoting EricH
Yes it does. How doesn't it? A proponent of the problem of evil believes that it would be wrong for God to invest a world such as this one with innocent life. They point to the evils of the world and conclude that God would have prevented those. That's the basis upon which they believe God does not exist. They believe that God would either have altered how the sensible world operates so that it doesn't visit any horrendous evils on the innocents he puts in it, or he would not have put innocent persons into it.
Quoting EricH
Yes, clearly. Mr X believes this principle is true:
1. Either alter how the sensible world operates so that it does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents you plan on introducing into it, or do not introduce innocents into it. (Either p or q)
And this premise is clearly true:
2. We cannot alter how the sensible world operates so that it does not visit horrendous evils on any innocents we plan on introducing into it (not P)
3. Therefore, do not introduce innocents into it (antinatalism) (therefore, q)
You don't seem to understand the example.
Does it have to be even as far as horrendous evil? Id think any non-individualized version of a persons utopia would do. If its a god, youd think this could at least be in consideration of one of the avenues he could have chosen for his creation.
Another thing to consider is, the parent is only thinking about their child, not all children , like a god presumably would. The parents think their child will live a good enough life and find something like 95% of it just peachy and fine. This is why some of my recent AN arguments revolve around the notion of aggressive paternalism. You shouldnt assume for another that this lifes set of limited choices is what another would want. You shouldnt assume others would want to deal with this lifes known, foreseeable harms (foreseeable from the parents experiences and predictions), and you shouldnt assume to expose others to harms that are extreme that you may not even have expected but are known that it could happen. All these assumptions on behalf of others amounts to an aggressively paternalistic mindset and actions.
It is generally thought that the quality and quantity of the harms that befall people here are such that God, if he existed, would surely prevent.
Antinatalists, such as myself, are persuaded by a variety of arguments.
The argument I am making here is not directed at antinatalists, for we are already persuaded by other arguments. This argument is directed at those who think the problem of evil provides good evidence that God does not exist. That's most philosophers. But most philosophers are not antinatalists. This argument shows them that they should be.
Fair enough. I simply liken it to a game players are forced to play lest they kill themselves. Seems like such a bargain is prime facie unfair.
Your argument is that if problem of evil is unfair, then so are the billions of instances of procreations humans enact everyday bringing humans into what can be an evil world (and in my view always is).
Quoting Bartricks
I understand your example. I was trying to use some gentle humor to illustrate that your analogy lacks a certain rigor. But your example is irrelevant to the larger point I'm trying to get across.
Let me try once more to recap what I think you're saying (and what I'm trying to communicate). I'll do this in a conversation between you & Mr. X:
1. [Bartricks]: Imagine there's an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient entity.
2. [Mr. X]: That doesn't make any sense. An omnibenevolent entity would not allow evil & suffering to exist. Until you can resolve this inconsistency I have no reason to believe in such an entity. I might have other good reasons as well, but this is a sufficient reason in of itself.
3. [Bartricks]: Clearly your pointing out this inconsistency in my imaginary entity logically requires that you must have a certain moral position.
4. [Mr. X]: Huh? You're not making any sense. All I'm doing is simply pointing out that you are contradicting yourself back in #1. Why should your errors in basic logic have anything to do with how I live my life? I live by my own morality that has nothing to do with your imaginary entity.
Quoting Bartricks
Mr. X does not believe this - he is simply pointing out the inconsistency in the definition of God.. Mr. X is an atheist and he does not incorporate any definition of any imaginary entity or entities into his beliefs.
I dont get Bartricks using god as some thought experiment. I think a good analogy is rather a game that I think is good enough that I force other people to play it. I gaslight them and say, well now that I forced you into this game, if you dont like ir, you cant escape to a better game with different setup and initial conditions you can only play in the confines of this game. You can only imagine a different game but you cant play it. However, if you are ungrateful for being exposed to this game, you can always kill yourself! If this sounds outrageously unfair as a game analogy, it really is not much different than procreation.
The problem is people will defend by appeals to majority practice and tradition which justifies only itself and not morality which in almost every other situation outside of procreation wed consider unethical. This becomes special pleading due to long held cultural pressures and preferences.
And you don't seem to understand what a proponent of the problem of evil believes either.
My argument is addressed to those who believe that the evils of the world constitute evidence that God does not exist.
It is not addressed to those fools who think the concept of God does not make sense.
So, step one: try and focus on the relevant parties. I am addressing procreator (or natalist - by which I mean those who believe procreation is typically permissible) proponents of the problem of evil
If you think God can't exist, then you're not someone I am addressing.
I am addressing procreator proponents of the problem of evil.
Now, in order to help those who find it difficulty to follow a line of argument focus on the relevant issue - totally and utterly pointless in a context like this, I know - in my original example I asked you to imagine an omnipotent, omniscient person. Not God. Just an omnipotent omniscient person., Now, I know a little voice is saying 'ooo, but that ain't makking no sense'. Shut that voice up and focus.
And what did I then do? I then asked you to notice that a proponent of the problem of evil thinks a person like that morally ought not to invest a world like this with sentient life unless he was going to alter how it operates.
So, a 'good' omnipotent, omniscient person would either alter how the world operates so as to eliminate the risk of horrendous evils, or they would not invest the world with innocent life.
Forget whether you agree. This is to do with what a proponent of the problem of evil will agree to. And they'll have to agree to what I just said otherwise there is no problem of evil.
And that principle - either ensure the world will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents you make live in it, or do not make innocents live in it - has this form 'Either p or q'
And we are not able to ensure that the world will not visit horrendous evils on any innocents we make live in it.
That means 'not p' is true for us.
From which it follows. as a matter of basic logic, that q. That is, that we ought not to invest the world with innocent life.
1. Either p or q
2. Not p
3. Therefore q
is a deductively valid argument
Jesus!
Now, because that argument is deductively valid, anyone who wishes to deny its conclusion must deny a premise.
The second is clearly undeniable.
So it all hangs on the first.
And note, the question here is not whether you agree with 1, but whether a proponent of the problem of evil agrees with it.
if you think they do not have to agree with it, then explain how such a person could argue that the evils of the world imply God's non existence without appeal to that principle.
Shall we go through it again?
No one has to invite James to dinner. No wrong is done if James is not invited to dinner (don't question that. Don't say 'but what if James is really hungry' or something tediously stupid like that. That'd be thicker than a thick thing on thick day. So don't.)
Jane wants to invite James to dinner. But she only has ingredients for meal X. Pssst, it doesn't matter what the meal is. Don't ask about the meal. Don't ask why she only has those ingredients and didn't work harder and acquire more ingredients. That's irrelevant.
Now, given that Jane can only serve James meal x if she invites him for dinner, is it morally ok for her to invite James to dinner?
Depends what x is. A dinner guest is entitled to a meal of a certain quantity and quality.
Let's imagine it is morally ok for her to invite James to dinner.
Well, if it is ok for her to invite James to dinner given she can only serve him x, then it is surely also ok for Marjorie to invite James to dinner and serve him x, even though she is capable of serving him something better.
Now, inviting James to dinner is playing the role of procreation in the above analogy. The meal x is life here in the sensible world as it is.
Jane is us. Marjorie is God. If it is morally ok for us to subject a person to life here in the sensible world as it is, then it is morally ok for God too as well. That is, if it is morally permissible for us to procreate, then there is no problem of evil.
But a proponent of the problem of evil thinks Marjorie did wrong in serving James X. If that was what she was going to serve, she should not have invited him.
So, a proponent of the problem of evil thinks it wrong for Marjorie to invite James over for dinner if all she is going to serve him is meal X.
But that now means that Jane would also be doing wrong if she invites James over for dinner given she can only serve him meal X.
In other words, if God would have been doing wrong if he introduced innocent life into this world as it is, then we too are doing wrong if we introduce innocent llfe into this world as it is.
See?
If it is wrong for Marjorie to serve James X, then it is wrong for Jane to invite James over given she can only serve him x.
If it is ok for Jane to invite James over given she can only serve him x, then it is ok for Marjorie to serve James x (even though she has the ability to serve him something better).
Thus, if it would be wrong for an omnipotent omniscient person to subject innocent persons to life in a world such as this, then it would be wrong for us to as well, given all we can offer is life in a world such as this.
And if it would be morally permissible for a person who can only offer life in world such as this to subject an innocent person to a lifetime in it, then it is morally ok for an omnipotent, omniscient person to do so as well, even though he has the ability to alter how the world operates.
So, if there is a problem of evil for God - and virtually everyone thinks there is (mistakenly, as it happens), then procreation is immoral.
If procreation is not immoral, then there is no problem of evil for God.
Tell me Universeness what god should we leave in the dirt as BS? Bobs god? Sharon's? John's? Emily's? I wasn't aware you knew every single concept of/interpretation of god possible?
Whatever god you reject is your own personal concept of such an thing. And only that one thing. Which is fine, reject it at will. But perhaps don't pretend you understand everyone else's beliefs/interpretation of reality or what it means to them, whether they term it god, logic, reason, ethics, fundamental principle, etc.
We must maintain everyone's free will to admire and pursue a true meaning of reality with respect to them personally, otherwise we are some autocratic dictator enforcing our beliefs on others whether they want to accept them or not. Hardly justifiable.
Everyone worships something - maybe money, maybe fame, maybe knowledge, maybe humanitarism, maybe a person, maybe a god, maybe an idea, concept or thing. For us to shoot down eachothers beliefs is to damage them/to insult them by ripping their core values to shreds - hardly ethical. All we can do is debate and discuss. And those who have a good command of argument will likely convince others of the errors in their beliefs through reasoning. But none of this comes about with brute force and no explanation.
Nothing is BS, it is simply a belief we disagree with on either reasoned or ethical principles. When you express those issues people are free to agree or disagree and offer an alternative explanation.
No one can determine what is absolutely BS unless they know what is absolutely true by contrast - somehow omniscient, a "know it all."
Are you universeness prepared to proclaim yourself a "know it all" or are you receptive to other peoples ideas/concepts?
All gods. I have no problem with someone's personal woo woo regarding their personal god.
They are welcome to it but if you preach it to me as something supernatural and real then have the evidence to support it or expect me to treat it as nothing more than your own personal coping mechanism. I am interested in that which is evidence based only.
Quoting Benj96
You can choose to give mindspace to the woo woo beliefs of others if you wish, it's your brain space.
I am not pretending anything, I just don't assign the same credence to concepts like god, logic, reason, human ethics or human fundamental principle. But you can, if you want to. Good luck with that.
Quoting Benj96
That seems to be your analysis and employment of the word 'worship,' but it's certainly not mine.
I can experience heights of emotion, yes, as all humans can but I have never applied such a manic term as 'worship,' to any of my drivers or goals in life.
Quoting Benj96
If that is an analysis of my posting on TPF then I reject it completely and I would suggest that certainly on this thread, I have provided as much evidence for my position as any of the anti-life posters.
If you think I am being a bit harsh towards the anti-life posters, then fine but perhaps that's just because I am not as tender a foot as you. You reveal your own conceit with "And those who have a good command of argument will likely convince others of the errors in their beliefs through reasoning." as I assume you are attempting to disguise a compliment to yourself.
Quoting Benj96
Yes, I am completely open to the ideas of others but not when they type BS.
Donald Trump is the most intelligent man on the planet earth today!
I saw god's face in my cornflakes this morning!
Napoleon was actually a lizard alien from an exoplanet in the Vega star system!
I can tell you all the major events in your future!
I can speak to dead people.
Any of these seem like BS to you Mr Benj?
Happy to explain. Bring it on. Give me all you got.
Quoting universeness
You don't give the same credence in concepts like logic, reason, human ethics? You don't believe these things are not worth credence? (belief). Tell me then what do you believe in place of ethics, reason logic etc? Surely something you deem more enlightening I'm eager to hear all about it. I'm not one bit intimidated or afraid of having such an argument. Let it all be put out there.
Quoting universeness
You assume incorrectly. I need not do any such thing. I don't compliment myself beyond anyone else's personal values. I value discussion above all. The verdict is up to others to decide. I simply have confidence that my views aren't intended to purposefully aggravate and harm others for the sake of it.
Quoting universeness
And I suppose you're the be all and end all déterminer of what is BS? That's quite the claim. I hope it holds up to rigorous discourse, not simply because "you said so".
Quoting universeness
Of course they do. I have common sense and so do you. But citing extreme examples to highlight absurdity is hardly useful as we both already know they're easily contradicted.
What is truly valuable/useful is arguing those beliefs you genuinely believe in and don't wish to be contradicted. Which I'm happy to oblige in doing if they seem unreasonable.
As I said before and will repeat for clarity, I'm not perturbed by the prospect of arguing my points against yours to establish what the actual case is. Do your very worst. Let reason pervade /determine who has the reigns here.
Go ahead, explain!
Quoting Benj96
I don't give the same credence to posits about the supernatural compared to the credence I give to posits which are based on logic or reason or human ethical imperatives etc. I hope that clears up your confusion about what I am actually typing.
Quoting Benj96
No , you are getting too excited! I am just able to recognise BS. I am sure you can do it to.
Quoting Benj96
Ok let's try a less extreme example.
An omnipotent being can exist and yet not be responsible for evil or what humans label evil.
To me that's just BS because its illogical. If a creature is omnipotent, then it has full control over suffering. What do you think?
What would you like to start with?
Quoting universeness
And what do you believe is "supernatural"? Please clarify.
Quoting universeness
I can indeed. :)
Quoting universeness
An omnipotent object (person) cannot exist based on physics and thermodynamics. A single object cannot overcome the restriction of its own minute objectivity - a person cannot physically move mountains for example. It (a person) however, can choose to take responsibility for evil by not ignoring it in the world around them. A person can choose not to contribute to evil by figuring out what exactly it is (defining it) and taking the opposite course.
The universe as a whole unit on the other hand - containing all energy and thus degrees of potency, is omnipotent, but as a system of opposites which are neccesary and internal to its system cannot address the concept of evil. What is "evil" is relative to conscious entities within the universe - objects (people).
Supernatural has no existent.
Quoting Benj96
So you agree with me then. If you insist that an omnipotent creature can exist, then you are in BS territory. yes?
Quoting Benj96
What has that got to do with whether or not an omnipotent creature can exist?
Quoting Benj96
The universe may be one of many so you have no compelling evidence that any singular universe can be perceived as omnipotent. The universe may also be cyclical, so again cannot be perceived as omni anything. As you type, the concept of evil is a human concept, its relevance to the universe is not understood and it is BS to suggest otherwise. Is your basic complaint here that I think the term BS is warranted at times and you don't? I have already suggested that perhaps you are simply more tenderfooted than I. You are not offering much reasoning for your distaste towards me and I don't really care if its just that, your particular taste, when involved in discourse with others. You can hold hands with the anti-life posters if you want, as you try to reason with them that they are wrong. I choose to apply the term BS towards them when they type BS. If you think there are no occasions where you would employ the term BS then that's up to you. Go for it, let anyone who wants to cover you in BS, do so. You don't seem to mind.
Quoting Benj96
We started a while ago.
Addition: The universe has no known intent so are you positing the universe as an omnipotent wiith no intent?
It exists as a concept no? A concept/idea in your mind right now or how else would you be speaking of it? How can someone (something that exists) describe something that doesn't exist in any format - imagined or otherwise. Unless you are saying that concepts/beliefs/imagination doesn't exist which we can extend to basically all of the content of a mind. Therefore you would be suggesting "the mind" doesn't exist.
Quoting universeness
Yes I agree with you that an omnipotent "creature" (object/living thing) doesnt exist. I do think on the other hand that an omnipotent system exists (the universe).
Quoting universeness
You have no compelling evidence that multiple universes exist. And by the "universe" I mean "everything that exists" which would thus still be the full set, other universes would merely be a subset of "thee universe" (entirety) in that case.
Just as the infinity of numbers between 0 and 1 is a subset of the infinity of real numbers (1,2,3,4 etc) on the number line.
Quoting universeness
I don't really understand how the universe being cyclical negates the idea of it being omnipotent. If energy cannot be created or destroyed (first law of thermodynamics) then it is finite in quantity (yet still omnipotent as it is "all energy" available to the system).
Whether that sum of energy is arranged in a cycle or not seems irrelevant/incoherent with the argument.
Quoting universeness
Whoa cowboy. I have no distaste towards you - someone engaging in philosophocal argument is harmless. I don't know you. We are merely in the process of discourse, you have your views and I have mine, I see no space for personal attack only challenging beliefs. Doesn't seem reasonably to me to have distaste for a person as people are not equal to/defined by the beliefs they hold. Beliefs and opinions change.
Quoting universeness
Well as far as I know the term "BS" is used mostly a quick, informal, sharp, derogative and aggressive term used to disable other people's beliefs more by intimidation and blunt hostility than welcome discourse. More formal academic terms for "BS" would be "falsity", "contradiction", "deception", "deceit", "paradox", "illogicality" or "irrationality". Many synonyms indeed, a bit less emotionally charged and personal than the word "BS" but I guess that's up to the person.
So do fairies and orcs and a race of omnipotent beings called the Q in Star Trek. But none of them have any existent either and to suggest they have is BS.
Quoting Benj96
By imposition of that which is existent, ME or YOU. What is the beginning or end of a circle? The same place on the circle, I can choose where it is, so can you. This allows me to separate real from imagined.
I think therefore I am, and solipsism is BS nonsense.
Quoting Benj96
Stalemate then!
Quoting Benj96
Infinity is not a measure, it is a concept just like paradox is not a state of propositional logic, it is also just a concept. We are unable to take such concepts any further than we have taken them in the past 100 years or more. We probably need another million years of scientific effort before we can garnish any real meaning from such concepts.
Quoting Benj96
How can an omnipotent system be entropic? Chaos-order-chaos, or singularity-expansion-singularity-expansion, with no ability to apply intent is not omnipotent.
Quoting Benj96
Paint your wagon anyway you want! I judge by what you type not what you think you typed. You obviously disapprove of the way I engage in discourse with others, I would call that distaste.
It's ok, you don't have to tenderfoot around me. I am very resilient.
Quoting Benj96
Yes, it is!
But they are information that can be shared/communicated right? And elicit emotions, new ideas, articulation etc?
Tell me if your family member told you they felt sad would you believe that was BS too as it has no existent outside themselves? Or would you assume their emotions exist and are thus valid and due consideration? Is this not the basis of empathy? Believing in what others say about themselves without objective proof external to them?
Can you explain how your circle analogy links with the mind or the existence of you and I. I seem unable to make the leap between the two concepts and perhaps more elaboration would help
Are conscious beings like us not the part of the universe that demonstrates intent? If we have no intent/desire/agency then we wouldn't have free will would we?
I think entropy - the tendency for energy to spread away from itself is countered by negentropy - the ability of systems to self organise through gravity, then self assembly of prebiotic chemicals, then life as a strictly regulated system then evolution of that system into conscious awareness which further organises knowledge into strictly categorised information and relationships etc - the external system becoming more chaotic and spread out but the internal system (self) becoming more organised and coalesced.
To project "obviousness" on other people's minds/intent suggests you somehow understand them better than they do themselves. Perhaps my challenging of your beliefs/views came across as distaste but that was not my intention. And in such a case I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come across as distasteful.
Any viewpoint - agreeable or not to me - is insightful, it holds informative value.
I am most interested in information that has empirical support not the musings of entertaining authors of human fiction. I place fairy in a different category of information, don't you?
Quoting Benj96
You seem to depend too much on generalised conceptualisations rather than paying attention to the much more interesting, and reliable detailed case by case approach.
The family member may be a person who has cried wolf many times before or they may be sad, that's a judgement call based on your relationship. What has that got to do with whether human emotions actually exist. There is biological and neurological evidence that human emotions exist along with an enormous amount of observational evidence. What more proof do you need? Do you agree that you may show empathy and believe what another says about themselves, let them into your house and then watch them kill your family? Perhaps you need to be careful when you judge the intentions of others.
Quoting Benj96
I will try, The universe has no intent that we are aware of. We are not a networked consciousness, we experience individuality. There is me, myself and I (triune brain system) and everyone else.
I/WE demonstrate intent, so this could be conceived in its totality, as the intent of the universe.
My circle example can demonstrate this through individual choice of where a particular circle begins and ends (same place). Individually we can all choose any position we like on the circle. Every position on the circle is on offer, in this way the universe can be 'investigated' by creatures such as us. The fact that we can perform such investigations in the individual way we can (but we can also communicate our findings to each other), is evidence that there IS a YOU and an I. It is a demonstrable way to support 'I think therefore I am.'
Quoting Benj96
Yes. But the intent is individual, not universal, although there may be some concept of totality that we can suggest is some kind of emerging panpsychism but based on current evidence ...... meh!
Apology accepted and appreciated.
Same reason why so many humans are still attracted to the 'freak show,' imo.
Finding out why some members of a species would vote for not just terminating themselves, but would vote for the termination of all life that is capable of suffering is fascinating, especially when it is based on free choice and not any law of nature. No amount of happiness can compensate for any amount of suffering it seems. Is there any cut off percentage for the anti-life people? If the average amount of human suffering against human happiness was 45% suffering and 55% happiness would that be good enough or do they want something like 5% suffering and 95% happiness?
What do you mean by "empirical" support? Do you mean objectively measurable by scientific method? And if so how do you go about objectively measuring/proving empirically the existence of ethics? Or the existence of the observer that applies empirical method/scientific method for that matter.
If you cannot prove empirically ethics then I suppose we have no use for it as it doesn't exist. And we must open the doors of science to all avenues and cut up living people to collect the empirical evidence we can't collect when theyre dead. Maybe the empirical evidence pertaining to chemicals/ neurotransmitters released during pain, suffering, fear and murder.
Or perhaps there are things beyond the grasp of empirical collection? Things we should consider not to commit atrocities in pursuit of all empirical evidences.
In order for there to be neurological evidence that humans have emotions the hard problem of consciousness would have to have already been resolved. Which it hasn't. So I'm calling your bluff on this one..
As for requiring evidence I don't need objective evidence that others have emotions. I have them. And thus I believe others also have them in their likeness to me as being human.
I use subjective evidence (trust) not objective scientifically proven evidence that they have emotions.
You said you only believe in things upheld by empirical evidence and yet naturally assume people have emotions. Which definition of empirical do you use then exactly and can it be applied both to physical objects through scientific standardised measurement and also unique individuals with there individual experiences, feeling and emotions simultaneously? I think you contradicted yourself in your previous arguments and didn't spot the contradiction.
Thank you. You're more than welcome.
Well yes, especially for 'important information,' about the structure and workings of the universe but I also consider as empirical, my own empirical evidence for such information as 'She can be trusted,' 'He is a good guy,' etc. My empirical evidence would be my own observation of what they do and say. No doubt you apply a similar approach yourself, yes?
Quoting Benj96
Ethics are memorialised as words on paper and you measure by observing attempts to apply them.
I can act as an observer which convinces me that observers exist. I already typed to you that I think solipsism is nonsense.
Quoting Benj96
This sound like a theistic viewpoint that posits morality can only come from a god.
Human morality and human ethics would not allow such behaviour. I would not vote for cutting up living people to collect some perceived evidence we can't collect when they are dead, would you?
Your statement is a bit mad, is it not?
Quoting Benj96
I don't follow your logic here, Perhaps you could reword it. The last sentence makes little sense.
No bluff involved, I am only reffering to my basic understanding of what neuroscience has and is investigating. A very basic example from wiki:
Jenny sees a snake.
Jenny cognitively assesses the snake in her presence. Cognition allows her to understand it as a danger.
Her brain activates the adrenal glands which pump adrenaline through her blood stream, resulting in increased heartbeat.
Jenny screams and runs away.
There has been a lot more detailed work done in the field of neuroscience to identify which parts of the brain light up during certain emotions and then much more detailed work on what is going on in those particular brain regions etc. I have only a laymans knowledge of the area but they have made a lot of progress. Have a look at my thread https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13222/consciousness-microtubules-and-the-physics-of-the-brain
Quoting Benj96
No, I typed that I give more credence to information backed by empirical evidence than I do to information not supported by such. There is plenty of evidence that people have emotions.
Empirical in that it can be tested/investigated by experiment.
Yes, you can test the emotional responses of individuals, either in a lab or even personally in a social environment. We do it every day in our relationships, do we not? I still don't see the contradiction you are suggesting I have made. I am sure you can clearly highlight it more convincingly.
It's so boring and vacuous that, by becoming obsessed with it, it reinforces the adherents beloved notion that life is.tout court, boring and empty. Because it's a kind of constant complaint it delights those who love to constantly complain, and attracts others who love to call the complainers out for being whimps and whingers.
When the world stops becoming something to complain about
Quoting Janus
These I dont get.
While the vast majority may live happy lives, the hundreds of millions with lives of unbearable suffering are the sacrifice for this. I think there's a fair argument that this should be discouraged.
Go on...
Why ought we discourage that?
Is antinatalism the answer?
Perhaps the lure is the provocative nature of this absurd idea. After all, if everyone believed in antinatalism, we as a human race would be wiped out of the Earth. Too bad for all of our domesticated animals.
Why do you think so many people work so hard to alleviate suffering? Such as the whole medical profession and those involved in medical research and why do you think so many people get involved in protest, political movements, philosophy, debate about how we might live better lives? Is it not to reduce the number of lives of unbearable suffering?
Ah okay yes it was just confusing as scientists base their empirical evidence on objectively measurable/replicable/repeatable results that can be performed by any other scientist and get the same outcome.
Whilst individuals base their empirical evidence on their own individual observations and beliefs about one another. So it seems the criteria (subjective) or (objective) to be empirical differs depending on who you ask. That's why I wasn't sure exactly what you meant by your use of the term.
Yes you're right. That was the confusion I had, I needed clarification that you used the 2 forms depending on situational context.
On the contrary I think consciousness is fundamentally possible to occur because of how physics is set up (quantum and Newtonian). Especially the quantum phenomenon of determination of a result through observation.
I don't think any one single observer (you or I) are the only minds that exist. That's totally absurd. But I think the consciousness that underlies our ability to have minds is innate to nature itself. You're free to disagree.
Quoting universeness
It may "sound theistic" to you but that's your interpretation. Your words not mine. I don't really know why you're suggesting I meant morality can only come from a god.
What I actually said is scientific method is limited - in that it cannot pervade our innate ethical principles. We are human. They're human ethics. If a scientist did experiments like that the very great majority of humanity woukd agree that its unethical/immoral. We don't need to be theistic in that regard.
Empirical is defined as:
[b]based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic:
"they provided considerable empirical evidence to support their argument"
synonyms:
observed · seen · factual · actual · real · verifiable · first-hand · experimental · experiential · practical · pragmatic · hands-on · applied · heuristic · empiric[/b]
So, empirical evidence is not exclusively tethered to the rigor demonstrated in the scientific method. We also have the ability to apply a 'credence level,' or error margins etc.
Quoting Benj96
So, if we consider the application of rigor in the scientific method and the broader range that may be applied in general terms for the label 'empirical evidence.' When posters like @bartricks try to employ propositional logic, to help posit the existence of an omnipotent, which either has a desire to create lifeforms which can suffer horribly (akin to the problem of evil) or he posits, it cannot have such a desire, as it is also omnibenevolent. He then suggests that his conflation of logic actually proves that any theist who considers the problem of evil, a challenge to their theism, MUST declare themselves antinatalist because such an omni god would not create this world. So therefore, they MUST vote for our extinction as he would.
You are moaning at me for calling his proposal and the logic he is using, bullshit. I think I am quite justified in using that term as an emotive way of emphasising how intensely I think he is wrong. Why does my need to express that emotional intensity, warrant your, in my opinion, over the top response to it. You felt that it was valid to express your own emotive reactions, such as;
Quoting Benj96
Quoting Benj96Quoting Benj96
Quoting Benj96
Quoting Benj96
Quoting Benj96
I accept that you did apologise for some of the above attacks, but I just list them to highlight your own choice of 'turn of phrase' when you feel incensed and yet your annoyance is based on displeasure at my use of the term BS and that you think I pose as an arrogant 'know it all.'
Can you see the contradiction here?
:up:
Is 'totally absurd' merely your polite version of BS? :naughty: So you agree with me that solipsism is nonsense? Are you declaring yourself a panpsychist?
Quoting Benj96
Ok, I accept that my interpretation of what you typed did not suggest you were a secret theist.
I fully accept my status as a fallible mind, after all, if I don't admit to being wrong at times then you will continue to label me an arrogant prick who thinks he 'knows it all.' :grin:
Quoting universeness
See these two terms many people would argue can be contradictions. For example "Anna observes John and determines he is upset. She says his sadness is fact because she observed it.
Others observe John and determine that he is not upset. They say his lack of sadness is fact because they have observed it.
They may determine that because the vast majority determined that John is not sad then Anna must be wrong. However this cannot be proven as absolute. What we are missing is John's input as he is the only one that knows johns internal mood/mindstate. And furthermore everyone is observing based on preconceived ideas - of the relationship between observed behaviour and emotional state. None of which are considering addressing their own preconceptions instead of making a judgement about John.
All of them are using the same empirical approach with differing conclusions.
Haha I like your humour. Yes I suppose its the formal academic equivalent.
We are all fallible in this way. I have already made erroneous assumptions about what you meant by the words you used in this thread. But you clarified then well and then I understood. So I can totally relate.
It probably suffices to type that we both agree that the word 'perfect' (as in perfect method/system/person etc) is another one of those concepts, it is not a measure.
What is the most accurate measurement of the speed of light in a vacuum?
Is it 299,792,458 metres per second?
Surely we can get much much more accuracy that that!
Given another million years of science, will we get the 'perfect' measure?
What would be the significance if we did?
My current answer? YEP, you guessed it, I have absolutely no f****** idea but I certainly wont use that to suggest that the fact that it seems that the human race cannot reach any perfections, depite the fact the concept exists means that we are forced to slot in an omni god of the gaps, declare that humans will always be imperfect and will suffer for being so and therefore we should surrender to the BS peddled by the anti-life posters. Hah! Those pessimists can take a running jump off the highest cliff on Earth along with any other mindless lemmings. Sorry, if you find my 'turn of phrase' pressing.
That is a matter of demonstrating patience and empathy for people with what one thinks are BS beliefs. Because just saying "that is BS" is pretty useless in resolving the contradiction.
To dismiss them as BS without going to the effort of examining and arguing them is naturally not going to lead to understanding by the other as to why you think the belief is erroneous. If anything they will just consider the person touting BS as being inconsiderate and invalidating others without reasoning it. They will think such a person is arrogant and rude.
Hence/thus exemplified by what I said here:
Quoting Benj96
It wasn't designed as a personal attack but a device to implore you to explain. As only through discourse do we elicit whether we are on board with one anothers ideas or not.
Being resolutely sure of your opinion, confirming your own reasoning without sharing it with others. Without speaking your mind leaves nothing left for others to do but to define you by your own certainty - as some sort of god (know it all) and one they have no access to because they will not demonstrate this reasoning as to why they know it all. A good omniscient being would share that knowledge with others instead of stomping on the ground and just reiterating that they know it all. Claim is there, but no evidence.
The same goes for irrational numbers like Pi, Phi, and e. We can always improve the accuracy but because they never repeat themselves we can never make that accuracy discrete and full/complete. It would have to go on to infinity. So the accuracy we have for irrational things will never be perfect.
Perfection is for the discrete. It is something that can be applied to limited finite things that cannot get any better. But not systems of constant change or infinities.
Well no, as Anna's output can be incorrect despite her input having a measure of validity when described as empirical. John does look upset/sad but perhaps he just ate something that didnt agree with him and he is not actually mentally sad, just physically compromised. John can provide verbal conformation either way. We know about observational relativity, and we consider it when dealing with empirical evidence. We know observers in space can report CORRECTLY, different results for the same observation such as the particle was observed or there was no particle based on their frame of reference.
Quoting Benj96
:up:
Quoting Benj96
:up:
Quoting Benj96
The problem here is that you are assuming that your interlocuters always have honourable intentions and that is just not the case. If you were debating Donald Trump in front of a mixed ability audience. You would leave yourself almost defenceless, if you are unwilling to attack him. His fake news and conflated logic would defeat you in the minds of many of the audience because you were too busy making sure you were not 'inconsiderate' towards him and meantime so many minds are being poisoned by his BS.
But do you agree that it is concept areas such as infinity, paradox, perfection, the omnis etc which are the few remaining places that characters such as antinatalists and theists still find their pulpits.
Well I am an optimist. You can call it naive if you wish. But its just in my nature. I assume the best until shown the worst. I also think people can and do often change their views when faced with well reasoned discourse - they can become more or less honourable. That's their perogative. Mine, is to present the arguments I have available to me.
Anna's conclusion could be wrong yes. John may be perfectly fine.
But Anna's conclusion could be the only correct one (if John felt comfortable around only Anna and expressed his sadness, but then saved face in front of everyone else because of not feeling comfortable to express his true feelings, lying about Anna claiming he was sad the the larger group to Anna's disbelief.
The verifiability of the true nature of the situation from the perspective of any of the participants within the situation is difficult and limited by what each person is willing to explain.
Not all of the information is accessible to each person.
Only us the audience, third observers - have the details of each of their beliefs and their behaviours. And even then still we can only hypothesise the possible choices they may make, but we won't know which until they do.
I too am an optimist but look what can happen if you don't combat the nonsense peddled by others as truth and fact. Recent examples include the storming of the congress building, personal attack on the family of politicians (Nancy Pelosi's husband) or on the politicians themselves such as the killing of MP Jo Cox in the UK. I could start to list historical assassinations and talk about the rise of fascism in the lead up to WW II but suffice to quote the old favourite. 'Evil thrives when good people do nothing.'
I personally consider antinatalism to be an evil trope which does nothing but attempt to dismiss all human attempts to improve themselves. I will forever combat it.
Very creditable. But if it ever takes over then it will soon die out. Because we will soon die out. And there's no replacement plan aside from more babies. It's a self-limiting theory.
Yes, but in your Scenario, it turns out that Anna actually did find out the truth of Johns situation because he trusted only her as his confessor.
So, to me, you are suggesting that 'the truth is out there,' but you have to approach with a sceptical mind. Just because YOU THINK an anti-life poster is making logical posits about antinatalism. Do your own dissection of every word they type and their combinatorial interrelationships. If you cannot tear their argument to pieces, then look at the attempts of others to do so. If you still find their arguments compelling, then join them. I suspect this process is the reason why they continue to have a tiny number of convinced followers.
Yes I agree. Hence why I discuss things with people (big things, trivial things, personal ones, political ones). Arguing for what's right/ideals is activism despite people's use of the term "actions speak louder than words". They forgot that speaking is action. I try to raise awareness through discussion of both my own fallability (wherever the flaw in my thinning exists now) and that of others.
I also dislike antinatalism. I did a whole discussion with someone earlier not sure which thread where I expressly disagreed with it.
What I do believe though us that it's not going anywhere. That's why I said no beliefs are BS, in the sense that they exist for a reason - even if the only reason is to stand as an unreasonable thing to think. Just as evil isn't going anywhere as a concept. As without it we don't really have free will and good woukd be meaningless.
People drift towards antinatalism and people drift away from it again based on the persuasion of others.
:up:
Yep, no life, no anti-life people to complain about their self-awareness.
I sure did.
I quite like living tbh. Despite what they may say.
Casually associating AN with evil, whilst ironically, no one has to experience evil in the first place with AN. Its a political position with ANs against paternalistic assumptions about unnecessarily creating unnecessary harms for others, and assuming for others that they must like this game or kill themsemves (a hard thing to go through with).
I think you summarise the situation correctly, regarding the anti-life topic.
No one gets to experience anything good then either do they? Would you be satisfied taking away all the people in love (with eachother, with their kids, with their jobs, with food, entertainment friends etc, people living their life the best they can and enjoying it) just for the sake of not existing at all? Just so that two opposites can be neutralised and nothing can or ever occurs again.
Sounds super boring tbh.
Looks like the aim is at you. Enjoy the spotlight. I think you can easily handle it.
I'll do my best.
Remember! You are not allowed any exclamation of BS or your more polite 'Totally absurd!'
Impositions, even small ones, are generally regarded as immoral. Birth is one giant imposition.
Does it matter whether the imposition is made with the individual's best interest at heart? I don't think so.
Not a problem for anyone, literally, is it?
Quoting Benj96
Im not taking away anything from anyone. But if you explore that implication you would be facing problems of using peoples suffering for personal gains. Thats your arguments problem though, not ANs.
Quoting Benj96
Boring universes arent a reason to this make them less boring by introducing X negative unnecessarily.
Exactly!
Thanks for the interesting exchange. I'm away offline for a while to do some other stuff and lick all those wounds you inflicted on me. :joke:
Good luck with it.
Yes that's why we have a moral imperative if we want to exist to help eachother. Then you're not deciding to exist instead of someone else but through them, with them
Yes you can't impose on anyone. But a baby is born and its existence somehow already imposes on others through no fault of their own. So the best they can do is grow up, help others and in that way try to mitigate the blame, shame, guilt etc that comes with ignoring others that exist and are in need
And yet it's merely hypothetical because you're not omnipotent - you don't have the ability to make antinatalism come to fruition. So we should probably just settle for what we do have - the fact that we are here already.
Sentient beings that have such dilemmas and philosophical arguments would be sure to evolve again to occupy the niche currently occupied by humans in nature if all of humanity were to self annihilate. Maybe some other primate over millions of years would go through the same processes of adaptation under the same pressures exerted by nature and re-emerge.
Re-emergence of species is well documented by biologists. So the argument would just be postponed until next time wouldnt it
I'm merely saying that existence is polarised. Non-existence is neutral. If one wants to exist they must contend with navigating those opposites - the good, the bad. Etc
But they have a choice in that case dont they. To improve or worsen the situation.
You can have Good, co-operative humanitarian systems where evil is maximised to the most conceptual idea possible and minimised in the most physically acted way.
That's what entertainment is. When we indulge the thought of good and evil at war with one another without ever manifesting actual criminal things/evil acts against eachother.
That way both evil and good can exist (evil as a concept) and good as the physical world. And a good physically world is an acceptable reason to want to exist. Its our choice whether we do that.
As you say, Im not responsible for what I cant know. I do know how birth is a major imposition and can be prevented so moot point.
Not the AN issue.
Quoting Benj96
Your reasons shouldnt become anothers issue/problem/burden to overcome/imposition.
That does not change the nature of an imposition.
If I impose something on you, with the intention of "helping you through it", that doesn't suddenly make my act of imposing any less immoral.
Quoting Benj96
The baby bears no blame, of course. The parents do. To me, antinatalism is about the choice to have children, not about what to do when the child is already there.
Yep
Quoting Tzeentch
Yep
No not an issue of antinatalism as a concept. But it is a "you as a person" issue no? I mean im sure you go about living your life, enjoying things, taking care of your loved ones, watching TV etc. Because all these things are good right? You desire them.
How then do you reconcile you antinatalist ideal with your current life? It doesn't make sense to me. Everyone who continues to brave it in the world, to strive forward and survive, has hope. They have to. People who lose almost all hope and fall into the deepest pits of depression are vulnerable to violating their own right to life.
So as far as i know everyone who lives has a reason to. They believe there is something worthwhile, something good to hold onto right? That's why I disgree with antinatalism as anything esle than just a concept.
I think people who live want to continue living. And there's nothing wrong with that we shouldn't be guilty for being born when we can inspire happiness in others or at least try.
I don't think offering people ideas, suggestions, possibilities of new ways of thinking is imposing. You don't have to accept anything im saying. You're free to believe whatever you want. I just want to try to do right by others if I can and if they'll allow me.
We can leave it at that and just agree to disagree if you want.
How is it imposing to make suggestions? They're just suggestions. You can choose whether to take it on board or not. That's your call, ball in your court. Imposing would be to force you to agree or accept something.
I won't do that. You cant offer anything to someone who doesn't want it. All I can do is give my perspective and be ignored, or maybe if someone decides, listened to.
Parents were babies once too. So at what point does the blameless/innocent baby become guilty and shameful?
For me: People have evolved the means to reproduce as its biological and natural. All of nature seems to agree that reproduction is not only permissible but necessary.
As for whether two loving parents want to bring a lovely little baby into their happy lives or not, that's their business.
I don't dare impose on anyone's right to or not to have children as they have their own rights and autonomy.
I don't think anyone should have that sort of autocratic power over whether others live or die. We are equals.
I do enjoy living but personally I don't want my own child. I'm happy to be an uncle.
The point at which they decide to have children.
Again, I'm coming at this from an angle that is only concerned with the choice of the parents to create a child, and whether that is a moral action.
Quoting Benj96
I wasn't aware that nature was ever consulted on this issue. What did it say?
Quoting Benj96
Whether it's A and B's business to decide whether C shall live I find questionable. But at the very least C ought to be consulted, which is impossible, hence the dilemma.
Quoting Benj96
That's exactly the type of power parents exercise over their children, though.
So people are innocent in their entire life all the way up to the point that they procreate and then they're criminal/deserve shame and guilt etc?
So during their whole life even if they don't have children and they go around committing the most heinous atrocities they're not guilty because they didn't have children? Or perhaps is having children not as evil as I dunno, raping pillaging and plundering, mass genocides etc.
If you had the choice between having a child or having Hitler exist in the world again... Which would you pick?
Well what I'm trying to point out is I think it's a moral fixation that is overshadowed by quite frankly much worse things that could and are happening right now in the world that does exist and does have people in it.
To believe its immoral to have children is to believe you're incapable of being a good parent no? And raising them to be outstanding citizens. A lack of self belief the I suspect.
That's obviously not what I'm saying.
Quoting Benj96
No.
Whether it's A and B's business to decide whether C shall live I find questionable. But at the very least C ought to be consulted, which is impossible, hence the dilemma.
Well perhaps elaborate more so I can understand exactly what you believe? I don't want to make assumptions but I will follow the logic of what you present in your arguments.
It's not a really a dilemma because we can't "consult nature" and ask if we can have a chat with our non existent child as to whether it wants to be born before it is. How would something non existent know what existing is like to make an informed decision?.
People don't ask the stories they imagine if they would like to written down as a novel. We create, in good faith, as an exercise in trust that we can bring into existence something that offers good purpose - more beauty, more knowledge, more understanding, more benefit.
If a parent is certain their child will be an awful monster for whatever reason then yes it's likely they wouldn't procreate. But how on earth can a parent know that in foresight? I doubt Hitlers parents knew what they would be creating when they reproduced. So we can't blame the act of being born inherently. We can only blame the environment, teachings and beliefs we instill in our children. We can teach them to be racists, we can teach them to be selfish, to manipulate etc or other people could teach them that if we are too passive in our role. Parents do their best. Sometimes it's enough. Sometimes it's not. Because what they've made is another agent - with their own agenda and self determination, decisions to make, responsibilities to take on. But never is that a reason not to exist at all.
Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that does not involve the fusion of gametes or change in the number of chromosomes. The offspring that arise by asexual reproduction from either unicellular or multicellular organisms inherit the full set of genes of their single parent. Asexual reproduction is the primary form of reproduction for single-celled organisms such as archaea and bacteria. Many eukaryotic organisms including plants, animals, and fungi can also reproduce asexually. In vertebrates, the most common form of asexual reproduction is parthenogenesis, which is typically used as an alternative to sexual reproduction in times when reproductive opportunities are limited.
While all prokaryotes reproduce without the formation and fusion of gametes, mechanisms for lateral gene transfer such as conjugation, transformation and transduction can be likened to sexual reproduction in the sense of genetic recombination in meiosis.
Animals that reproduce asexually:
The Komodo dragon, the Whiptail lizard, Bees, Wasps, Starfish and many more, even some Shark species reproduce through parthenogenesis.
Where would your antinatalism argument be if we developed a tech that allowed transhumans to reproduce asexually? How about a sentient alien species that reproduces asexually? If antinatalism is based on any natural imperative the why does asexual reproduction exist?
Would the burden of blame for procreation be lifted if a human could reproduce asexually?
If so then perhaps all you antinatalists should be compelled to pool your intellect and study biology and see if you can offer asexual reproduction to humans of the future and then you would have helped humans remove some of that guilt for reproducing that you feel so happy about trying to impose on them.
If humans go extinct and the next sentient species to dominate the Earth reproduces asexually, then that would be the termination point for anti-natalist BS, yes?
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
___________________
Quoting Benj96
It's not a dilemma to you that you don't know whether someone consents before making a monumental decision on their behalf?
Quoting Benj96
And there are many things one could create that don't involve imposing monumental decisions and possibly a lifetime of suffering on another.
Also, good faith is not an excuse. Many atrocities were committed by individuals who thought they were doing good, and tragically many unhappy people are born from well-intentioned parents. Ignorance is not an excuse.
Quoting Benj96
They can't. Sounds like a darn good reason not to make such a decision on someone else's behalf.
Quoting Benj96
No, we can blame the hubris of the parents who voluntarily hurled someone into life's crucible - into conditions over which they had little control and of which they had little knowledge.
Quoting universeness
It would be exactly the same, with the same critical questions asked to whomever decides another being should be thrown into the crucible of life.
Who? Who is the someone? The yet to be born? How do I talk them what's their number? Email? Perhaps WhatsApp?
Dilemmas apply to conscious agents that "already" exist and can make decisions. They don't apply to non existing possibilities. You can't ask all your future possible children who wants to be alive? Therefore you cannot treat them as already existing agents. Only potential ones. They don't have a say because they aren't alive. Just as I cannot ask my dead great great grandmother whats her ethical attitude towards Facebook, or climate change, or autocracies.
You as the the one who is capable of creating living agents (assuming you have a partner and you're both fertile) have the option to make them or not. You do not however that that option for all peoples will - everyone else's personal choice as to whether they want to reproduce.
If you want to abstain from fathering children, if you want to remove your own genetics from the constant competing evolution of life, that's fine. No one is going to judge you for your decision to not procreate.
They would kindly ask you to respect their own autonomy of choice in a likewise manner.
The reason antinatalism isn't the predominant belief already, the reason we haven't all purposely gone extinct by now, probably means that antinatalism doesn't nor has it ever nor will it ever make much sense to the majority.
If an infertile couple approached me devastated by their inability to have kids, I think telling them "well you shouldnt have kids anyways" is not particularly empathetic.
Based on what argument? Humans would have no choice regarding reproduction, if it was asexual.
Some living species do reproduce asexually, no intelligent species does so yet but if humans went extinct then who knows what species will fill the gap. How can an antinatalist posit that its immoral for a parent to reproduce, if it's a natural imposition via parthenogenesis. No choice involved!
"Possibly" being the key word. We don't know the future so we don't know if it will be all suffering or actually pleasant and doable. We can't make the world perfect for our future chindren. No generation has ever managed that. We can however educate them and give them the tools to combat adversity themselves. A perfect utopia would be as pointless as a hell. It would have no purpose to improve or change anything, people wouldnt know what to do with themselves as all knowledge, all innovations, all challenges would be already complete. Someone could be like hey let's do this (and everyone would say oh its already done sorry. You've been beaten to the punchline). We would have no free will. Nothing left to do except twiddle our thumbs and wait for death.
I think Christians and Muslims call that heaven, but you don't even have the possibility of escape via death!
The person who the parents know will come to be as a direct result of their actions.
Who do future parents make a children's room for, or buy clothes for?
I assumed that taking into account logical consequences of one's actions was a given before going into a debate about moral action, but I guess I'm wrong?
Quoting Benj96
And a parent will never have anything other than "possibly", whether they envision a pleasant or unpleasant life for their child. In other words, their actions will never amount to more than a gamble with someone else's well-being.
Ah I see so we must be omniscient before bringing anything into existence. No room for any answers being still unknown? How's that pursuit of omniscience going for you?
One more question: if you think it's immoral for parents to ever bring children into the world do you therefore resent your own parents? Do you despise them? Or do you think they are good people just trying to do their best? Is it fair to blame everything on one/two people? Do you believe that's a mature or grown up approach to make parents suffer endlessly because you're not having a good time? Or maybe perhaps we can take control of our own narrative and create our own happiness and self fulfillment?
It's also a gamble with their own well being. They could soon find themselves the scapegoat for any and all of the problems ever faced by their child. Dragged through the mud and tortured relentlessly by someone that resents them.
It would be the responsibility of whomever brings such a situation about, and after that just a very unfortunate state of affairs, I suppose, with people not only being born involuntarily but also giving birth involuntarily.
So you would consider all species on the earth such as starfish, komodo dragons, bees, wasps and many plant and microbial species to be in your revered judgement, unfortunate species?
Yes I think we can agree that a physically manifested heaven/utopia would be temporally enjoyable but the novelty would soon wear off and become dull and unfulfilling.
Stress can lead to post traumatic growth. For example I got hit by a car a few months ago. Surely an adverse event that wouldnt occur in a utopia. Whilst the immediacy was very unpleasant, the hindsight was very motivating for me to use the time I have on earth more wisely/constructively. I became more dedicated in my career and relationships with friends. What didn't kill me did indeed in this case make me stronger and more resilient.
It seems then that many "bad things" have silver linings in the end. I don't think I would like to be "bubble wrapped" in heaven where there is no threat, therefore no means to learn, navigate, overcome and feel proud for it.
I do think heaven exists. As a concept. But only an ideal in our minds. Its something lucrative at a distance, from which ambition, inspiration, innovation, knowledge, all the good/virtuous/idealistic characteristics of humanity can be extracted in pieces throughout time to bolster progress and evolve culture.
But we should not ever arrive at the destination for then the journey is over. And usually the journey offers a longer hit of dopamine than the final brief reward.
To me, that's where Plato and Aristotle went a little skewed. I think the concept of Platonic perfect forms and Aristotelian ideals are an almost natural progression of the thinking of the atomists such as Democritus. The concept of infinite variety in infinite combination would obviously result in projection towards some idealised, perfect form. But we have to be existents to progress towards such. The omnis and the god posits are no more that human projections of what humans think they may one day achieve as a totality or a networked collective. But they probably never will as the universe will probably end first.
The antinatalists just want to terminate the human story early for the most selfish of reasons it's possible to conceive and that reason, is because they can't come to terms with their own oblivion.
If they could then they would have already gone.
Well, if they are the unfortunate species then those species that are able to employ sexual reproduction, must be, if we follow that logic, the fortunate species as they have choice to reproduce or not.
So, you hold your anti-natalism viewpoint, despite the fact that the method of reproduction for humans, evolved through natural selection, which science has shown HAS NO INHERENT INTENT.
Do you blame the first 'spark of life,' for want of a better phrase for happening? Parent can blame parents who can blame parents for the immorality of their existence all the way back to that first vital spark of life.
Do your antinatalism musings enable you to follow your logic back to that question?
Do you think the fact that the universe experienced a moment when life became an existent was a moment of immorality. Is that what you are trying to sell?
I agree with you on the Plato - Aristotle point of digression with one another. But this remark really interests me. Because I'm going to introduce a line of commentary.
I do definitely agree that the omnis/God's posits are a human projection of untenable but desirable ideals. However I also believe that "God" is a rare but possible mind state. A sort of manic, euphoria. A "Eureka!" moment when something major and groundbreaking clicks in one's mind and they're overcome by an acute and intense revelation of new meanings, new insights, new predictive value based on their discovery. This intense "rapture" or "ecstasy" may have been written about in many forms through many disciplines (science. =eureka), (religion =revelation), (psychiatry = mania).
Im not saying they are all the same thing. Perhaps not. Merely suggesting a link. That in a moment of blissful euphoria, overwhelmed by confidence and a sense of knowledge .. One feels like a God.
The danger is not in feeling a godly bliss, perhaps you did discover something authentic, impactful and useful to society. The danger is that in feeling this sensation you make the jump to the assumption that you are infallible thereafter. And that you can commit no harm. And such a sense of entitlement and surity is extremely precarious, likely to do harm indeed.
Maybe? That's not a question of antinatalism.
Quoting universeness
Sure. I don't think nature is an excuse for immoral action.
Quoting universeness
No, morality is about individuals, their intentions and their actions. That's what I am talking about.
Quoting universeness
No, because that question is not relevant to my take on antinatalism.
Quoting universeness
I don't even know what that means, so I'm going with another "no".
You are just travelling through the human psyche like the rest of us, trying to apply reason, logic, sense whilst taking into account history, primal fear, origins, emotions, mental illness etc etc.
If you are good enough at that stuff then you can become a 'head doctor' etc. YOU the almighty, ME the immortal, US the creators, they are all part of the human psyche which we project onto a manifestation of some divinity either a mono god or a whole pantheon of gods. Human create god stories. God has no existent, if it did, it would confirm its existence easily and irrefutably.
We progress from generation to generation when we correct the errors made in previous generations. That's the only way forward that I can perceive.
All agreeable statements you've made. One question though. Is that not possible, for God to have an existent? A channel of its ideals through a person, a conduit.
Suppose someone channelled an ultimate ideal, described their truth (this ideal) to others in hope that they agree, and because their truth is so blindingly convincing others took it on board and spread the notion of such an ideal. Then, naturally it would come to a point when that truth is spread far enough, wide enough ("spread the word so to speak") that it encounters rebuttal, abject denial and Intolerance, perhaps by those that can't imagine their own existence in a world where that ideal prevails (antinatalists perhaps, or something worse) , and thus they do everything in their power to stop it. They would ask "who said this?! Who is responsible for infecting everyone with this intolerable belief?!"
Of course this person channeling their truth, knowing its power of persuasion, its ability to gather a following, would already know this and know that by spreading it they are putting themselves on the line, in harms way.
They would have to accept their fate, that spreading something ideal will bring the wrath of the non-ideal against them. And probably they will be assassinated for what they believe in, but in doing so they demonstrated the highest level of integrity, not shying away or resorting to lying or violence in order to speak their mind.
The killing of such a person ties up the loose ends. If their belief is based on benevolence and unwillingness to put themselves before others, to be selfless, their death is the final proof that their truth was the truth. A good one. A beneficial one.
It would be a demonstration of pure goodness being destroyed by hatred because good will never destroy anything for its own purposes, only offer choice. Such a person would be immortalised through legacy. Considered a god only after they proved their belief by being murdered for it.
Haven't we seen this before? Who has done such things? History has shown us many martyrs which were condemned or assassinated because their beliefs were too dangerous for the most self interested of us, to the false gods amongst men, to condone.
A criminal offence that was unjust. Forbidden fruit.
Yes it is, as it establishes that only those who reproduce sexually as opposite genders have the CHOICE to reproduce or not and that is what antinatalism pivots on. The execution of that choice is the prime focus of antinatalism, is it not?
Quoting Tzeentch
But the point is that the origin of the reproduction choice a human has, had no inherent intent, so any moral question you impose based on the existence of that choice is a purely human construct and has no natural imperative. Yet all species on Earth demonstrate the natural imperative of reproduction even to the extent of the removal of that choice, as is the case for asexual species so surely you see the power of the natural imperative to reproduce as a defence against extinction regardless of any human constructed moral imperative you think has value.
Quoting Tzeentch
But you are ignoring the result of your imposed moral imperative. EXTINCTION, which as I have already suggested is contrary to the much more significant natural imperative of reproduction as a defence AGAINST EXTINCTION. Evidenced further because of the existence of asexual reproduction, which as already stated, REMOVES THE CHOICE that antinatalism depends upon.
Quoting Tzeentch
It is very relevant, you just don't want to admit it is because it destroys the foundation your antinatalism is based on, human choice to reproduce. It shows that choosing antinatalism would result in extinction and extinction is against the natural imperative. If we went extinct and there was no other intelligent life in the universe, then combinatorial biology would just reproduce it in time. Can you not understand that this makes your antinatalism futile and pointless.
Quoting Tzeentch
It's simply a statement about the concept of morality/immorality being merely a human construct.
Before life became existent there can be no issue of morality. Every happenstance before life in the past 13.8 billion years has no moral aspect to it. So, life in its infancy has no moral aspect to it. Do you think that early hominid species such as Neandertals should not have engaged in reproduction? Did they really have a choice? Most humans can never support antinatalism as it is contrary to the natural imperative to be an existent and continue our species. The alternative is a return to an earlier state of the universe that has already been, and if there was a return to that earlier point, we would just progress to this point again in some variety of what currently is. Antinatalism is therefore utterly futile.
Using our time and effort to reduce all human suffering is the more sensible choice.
Try to think about it a little deeper and you might arrive at the same correct conclusion or stay fogged. Your choice.
Exactly what i said earlier! You're right Universeness.
Quoting Benj96
A god which is shy? and needs to communicate by proxy? Not a description of a god which inspires much respect from me. I seem to be more self-assured than this god you describe. Such a channel/conduit would not be a god existent it would simply be nothing more than a communications relay. Even if you decided to be nice and call it a prophet it's still not an actual god incarnated into an existent.
Quoting Benj96
Many have done so yes, from Plato to Hitler to Martin Luther King.
Quoting Benj96
Absolutely, especially if the ideas being communicated will prove to be to the detriment of those who hold power.
You go on to describe people who have died rather than speak contrary to what they believe is truth. A rendition of what is called 'martyrdom' yes but such is just an aspect of the human psyche. I see nothing in what you type that supports your initial question: Quoting Benj96
Yep, we agree on that one!
It is a prophet indeed. You're quite right. Because for actual god to exist as a person it would require the entire universe to condense into a singular person, what external reality then would such a person exist in? The universe as a system cannot be the whole unit and also be within itself.
But a prophet is no mere lay person though. They have a deep knowledge of the relationship of them and others (fractions of a whole) to the actual whole (god/the universe).
Through that deep understanding, they would inherit the highest degree of empathy and patience for others who don't understand their own relationship to the universe as it actually is, and would naturally go about illuminating that knowledge in them so they can appreciate in full their true relationship to reality, as he/she does.
As I said they would be the fourth condition of a god worth pursuing - the benevolent aspect of the entire system. The part that can't imbue a sense of connectedness and belonging.
Not a shy god, a god that presents its true nature as the whole/the everything, in a means/format understandable and accesible to humans, a human voice, a human that beholds and shares the true nature of reality.
Precisely, it would be to the detriment of those that hold power, fame, recognition, authority, beauty, knowledge, révérence in all its formats. It would pose a threat to those that fancy themselves as gods and others as beneath them by proxy.
For me, a prophet is just a human who is trying to dupe others that god speaks through him/her.
It's an old ruse, first used to establish the divine right of kings to rule over the masses. A prophet is the biggest bullshitter there is. Especially a political prophet.
Quoting Benj96
Are you going to admit you are a panpsychist Mr Benj or am I totally off the mark?
Perhaps even a panpsychist who believes that some humans are more 'in touch' with the 'universal mind' than others are?
Quoting Benj96
Well, we worship noble people and the noble acts they do. And we condone the most intense demonstrations of evil that have existed amongst us. (Both may know the truth - god/reality)
The difference is what they choose to do with it.
If you have the entire truth but withold it entirely from others you have no choice other than to lie - the opposite of truth. You can be utterly convincing, manipulative and appear as a noble person but you intentions (to withold the truth but use its power, to take no responsibility) is an evil act. I believe this is why Hitler came to power. Anyone who understands how the mind works can either empathise with it and inform it (Martin Luther king, ghandi, jfk, Joan of arc, all the revered martyrs) or manipulate it (Hitler, perhaps Putin nowadays).
Those who don't know the truth of things are vulnerable. Children don't know much at all and are therfore vulnerable to the teachings (good or bad) of those that know the truth. Right? So the choice when faced with reality is do I choose to benefit myself by manipulating others, or do I choose to share it and empower them to be more informed and therefore less likely to be swayed by manipulation.
Well I believe you are more in touch with reason and ethics than many others. As you showed me you were. Is it not then possible that there is an ultimate reason and ultimate ethics that are one and the same? A maximum we can reach through discourse. And have done so many times in the past.
Yep its akin to the two questions we must always ask ourselves.
1. Who am I.
2. What do I want.
Precisely. They are much the same.
I think the borders of self are created by our beliefs, not definitive and discrete. So if we want to maximise our self awareness, if we want to extend those borders to the maximum, we are ever increasingly responsible for others and thus their suffering or happiness.
If on the other hand, we minimise our borders to just our body. Reduce it to simply me, then all we have to consider is "what's in it for me". A selfish stance.
The only difference between "them" and "I" (boundary of self) is to what degree I am prepared to see likeness, to believe I am the same as others, to empathise and thus take on board their suffering and delight as if it were me own.
I can only place such a question into the same file as the one that holds questions such as. How close will we get to KNOWING the actual speed of light in a vacuum with complete accuracy? Which piece of info, if known by the human race, would mean a human could completely transcend human existence and 'become' or 'ascend, ' to ........... (to be filled in when we know what should go here :naughty: )
'Ultimate' is another one of those 'concept' words. I think we are still a lot closer to the early hominid species that we are to the omnis Mr Benj.
I see what you mean. I think irrationality must exist in commune with the rational. For without eachother neither would exist. Irrational numbers for example will never be complete as they are endless and not repetitive (not predictable). They can thus never fully be known.
And on the other hand the rational and predictable can be known and thus is discrete.
So here we have two opposing forces, one that is erratic, changeable, unpredictable, inaccurate, and one that follows a rule, is clear and known and finite/discrete.
Nature always creates such opposites. That which is pure chaos and that which is pure order.
Their interaction and dynamic with one another, is the basis for evolution, for the struggle between control and lack thereof, between life (ordered systems) and death (dissolution into the chaos).
Your typings remind me again of a dilemma dramatised in an episode of Babylon 5.
A student 'warrior of light' (a Minbari Ranger) is having a crisis about what he thinks is worth dying for.
His mentor asks him;
'If I tasked you to climb to the top of a mountain to retrieve a rare flower that grew only there, and I told you that you would be successful, but you would die, would you do it?'
'No' was the reply.
When asked why? The student said, 'because it would be a futile way to lose my life.'
The mentor said, 'well if I now revealed to you that this flower is the worshipped symbol of a subjugated people and the sight of this flower will inspire them to revolt against their oppressors and free millions of them from abject slavery and horrific suffering, would you do it then?'
'Yes' was the humble response.
We just don't know what effects our actions and our words may have on others, that's why we have to think about our actions and our words deeply and carefully.
Something I don't think antinatalists are very good at.
So, perhaps we are indeed natures/the universes best attempt so far, to be able to figure out what and why it is existent. Another reason why we can't vote to end our story, as the antinatalists request, as the universe may never know what or why it is other than through the efforts of a species like us. I am not a panpsychist, but do I think that some kind of emerging panpsychism is happening within the linear time we experience? ....... meh!
I think this story from Babylon 5 holds a deep, endearing message. I'm glad you shared it with me, I had never come across it before. It's really nice and quite apt to our conversation.
We do definitely need to consider our words and actions carefully. Words are very often underestimated in place of action. But words are mighty. They have huge power when used rationally and ethically. They shape and influence eachother beyond what physical bodily action could ever do.
To use your body to enforce your ideals, to be intensely active, is often a source of aggression, imposition and intimidation. To use words on the other hand is to suggest/impart meanings and beliefs without laying a finger on the other person. It allows choice.
Agreed. We may be nature's most recent prize, its latest pride and joy, the current best effort. And we (as parts of nature) may create on its behalf something more durable, more long lasting, and imbue it with our nature, the product of nature itself, so that it may extend this awareness beyond the boundaries of what is capable by the human body. The next frontier.
But if we birth something human in mind but not in body, something metallic perhaps, then we need to tread carefully, not to assume that because it is different to us in appearance, it is not the same as us in spirit.
Here is an even tougher one from Babylon 5.
Your death in certain circumstances will be the action that will improve the lives of millions, permanently. But you will never be credited. In fact, your memory will be despised, as the circumstances mean that you will have to seem to be the traitor, the judas, the evil one. You will be forever damned. No one will ever know that you were in fact the saviour. Would you do it? no martyrdom, no credit, no memorial other than as one who is hated and utterly damned?
In the timescale laid out by the cosmic calendar we are still an infant species. 10000 years of significant human cooperation and civilisation, is a few seconds in the cosmic calendar. Many humans still suffer horrendously from generation to generation but we have improved things since the days of the first cities, Jericho, Uruk, Ur etc. So I would say to the antinatalists that before we vote for our own extinction. GIVE US A F****** CHANCE! Say another few million years (which is less than the dinos had) before you offer us antinatalism again.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting ssu
Save for editing our biology to remove the ability to suffer (as promoted by David Pearce) there is only antinatalism. Everything else is mitigation of suffering.
Alternatively, one could say the hundreds of millions living in torture are a price worth paying for all of the happy lives/
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Isaac
I don't believe there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. It could be argued, we ought to do what we feel is right. Thus, if one feels the sacrifice is wrong, then they should discourage it. If one feels the price is worth paying, they ought not.
It has been suggested on here before by pronatalists that because of their miserable lives, antinatalists are looking at the world through excrement-tinted glasses. I can't say this is true of all antinatalists, but I believe this accounts for a significant number. Of-course the opposite is also true - if you're living a pleasant life, the sacrifice is worth it - why would you throw all the wonders we experience away, just because some people suffer.
It was never something to complain about in the first place.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nor do I; some people have strange ideas about sport.
You realize anything can by fiat be called absurd right?
In that case, on what grounds are you judging the argument 'fair'? What would an unfair argument look like in this context?
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Yeah, I think all that is true, but there's a third option which I think is more significant, which is those who see the world as a bad place and see children as means of fixing that - ie ensuring there's a next generation, better than the last, to help those who still remain to live more pleasant lives.
Contrary to the archetypal antinatalist, we're not all selfish sociopaths. It's not always about me, me, me sometimes people spare a thought for their community as a whole and consider themselves (and others) to have a duty toward it.
Sure, but not the question of whoever is a fortunate or unfortunate species.
Quoting universeness
I don't see how that would inhibit a moral discussion, which is also a human construct.
Quoting universeness
Quoting universeness
There is no natural imperative, other than perhaps instinctual drives, which, again, I do not view as an excuse for immoral action. Appeals to instinct are no more than the individual admitting they're but a mindless beast, and what's the point of discussing morality with mindless beasts?
The individual is in no way obliged to care about "the species". It's not even rational for the individual to care, since they have no tangible control over whether the species survives. Nor do they have a stake in it, since they won't be around to witness an extinction if it does take place.
Additionally, even if one were to care, ends do not justify means.
Quoting universeness
Extinction is nothing more than an excuse to give in to instinctual drives. No individual reproduces because they are afraid the species might go extinct otherwise. They reproduce because they want to - because it satisfies some instinctual need.
That's not a basis for moral decision-making.
Quoting universeness
I don't care about Neandertals, or reducing human suffering.
I care about the morality of individual human actions (which is the only rational way to approach morality - individuals and their individual choices). In this case the choice of individuals to reproduce. If that choice cannot make moral sense in their individual context, it will not make sense in any wider context.
That was just a method of exemplifying your 'logic trail,' and how that trail leads to your irrational antinatalism solution.
Quoting Tzeentch
It does not inhibit a moral discussion but your antinatalism solution ignores and hand waves away the very powerful natural imperative for continuation of the human species and the natural imperative to continue all species, including those produced asexually. All you are trying to do is squirm past that point by hand waving it away because you know its fact and it is strong evidence against the validity of an antinatalist viewpoint.
Quoting Tzeentch
Based on what evidence? Give me an example of another species that has made itself extinct through the choice of all of its members to stop reproducing, thus showing there is no natural imperative to continue species. The Instinctive compulsion to reproduce is an example of the natural imperative but its not the only aspect. Humans wish to continue the story/bloodline/legacy of their family through reproduction this is also a natural imperative. Where is your evidence that if antinatalism was applied, it would be successful in the extinction of the immorality it is supposed to prevent? Intelligent life would simply continue elsewhere or reform elsewhere. You can't guarantee your fake immorality concern wont return again, and again and again. Your invalid immorality excuse is just your poor reasoning for a solution which won't work and is futile and is just based on your own inability to find balance in your own life.
Quoting Tzeentch
These are just your irrational opinions and exemplify/reveal your inability to find balance in your life.
It's up to you to solve this problem for yourself or seek outside help to do so. It's immoral for you to attempt to demand company for your imbalance.
Quoting Tzeentch
Instinctual drives are not immoral just because you think there is something immoral about the concept of instinct. Human morality guides instinct. People do reproduce for many reasons, including a wish to contribute to continuing the species through their familial bloodline. That is a moral act not an immoral one. Do you think that human instinct has no input to offer when humans are considering an area of human morality? Are all human instincts just 'dirty, base and evil,' to you? Are images in your head of 'dirty evil human instincts,' the basis of your antinatalism?
Quoting Tzeentch
The fact that you have just admitted you don't care about reducing human suffering is a very important admission for anyone reading this thread to cognise regarding someone who fly's the flag for antinatalism. Human suffering is put forward by antinatalists as the main reason for their adherence to it.
Quoting Tzeentch
But the decision to reproduce is problematic for antinatalists because they suggest this is an innocent self-aware lifeform, who was not consulted (impossible to do anyway) that MAY now experience UNACCEPTABLE levels of suffering, but YOU have just admitted YOU DONT CARE ABOUT REDUCING HUMAN SUFFERING. Can you really not see the contradiction?
Youre not even paying attention to his argument at this point. Frothing at mouth.
The attention I am paying to 'his argument,' is simply shaking your little room. If you want to help him then make your points or concentrate on wiping the slabbers from your own mouth.
I agree. Consider what a middle class person has available to them at this current moment: global communication at the touch of a button (internet), global foods and luxuries of all exotic sorts (chocolate, coffee, avocado's in frigid North regions where they historically were impossible to ever expect to eat for dinner). We have a mini Arctic climate in a little box in our kitchen able to preserve food as long as we please, we have an ever more complex and refined immune system (legal constitution) we can seek aid from for when others commit crimes against us.
We can travel at great speeds never before believable, be across the world in less than a day. We have all these tools and appliances that make previously arduous time consuming tasks fast, efficient and effortless.
Are these all things we should be amazed by, grateful for and happy thus? Yes I think so. Is everyone happy about it? No. A shame really.
To our ancient ancestors we seem like gods of unfathomable knowledge, power and abilities. And likely we would look like simpletons to the humans of hundreds of years in the future, our current methods appearing barbaric in their better refined modernity.
Antinatalism will probably still fixate on their future problems while ignoring the immense progress we have made and will continue to make at ever accelerating rates.
Not at all. Youre simply missing his points and/or ignoring them. Hes doing a fine job. Cant help if youre like a child with fingers in his ears.
Well said sir! From a google search:
In his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that despite common assumptions, violence has dropped dramatically from biblical times to the present. His new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, picks up on that theme, exploring how other threats to human well-being have been in similar retreat.
This is the kind of evidence that shows humans HAVE significantly progressed in their goal to make the human experience a better one for all stakeholders including the flora and fauna of the Earth itself.
Things are still very worrying, I dont want to dilute that one bit, but they have been even more worrying in the past. Can you imagine being in or around Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted? You really would have thought armaggedon had arrived. How about living during the black death plagues. I think even I would have called out 'we are doomed, doomed, WE ARE ALL DOOMED!,' as my neighbours and family died all around me. But we survived and we continued to progress.
It would be sad to imagine helping others and nobody appreciating it. People like to be appreciated for the good things they do. Positive reinforcement and all.
For me this would seem like an unlikely scenario. It would mean humanity would have to be totally and completely blind to what's good for them, to lack all sense of what is good. Which sounds suspiciously like antinatalism again.
I think at most, if you really were a saviour of humanity and died for their benefit, you would be a great source of controversy, but not universally hated.
Some would hail your efforts as mighty and wonderful, others would say you were an anarchist trying to ruin everyone's lives by disrupting and upheaving the systems in place (even if you did so by simply by highlighting their flaws and trying to prevent their demise through that flaw. ).
Most martyrs or assassinated leaders are very controversial indeed. History books tend to polarise those that cause a great change or Copernican revolution of seismic proportions, as history writers are undecided towards either one of two arguments (he/she was good and saved us) or (he/she was bad and trying to destroy us) so they record both.
In the case that you believe you were a saviour yet every single person things you are horrible, evil, incorrect and deserve to be hated, I think one ought to assume that their judgement is severely misplaced. If no one is on your side then why believe you're actually doing something good. It's a matter of whether you respect others ability to appreciate good acts or believe you are the only one who knows what they're talking about and totally superior, everyone else just meer simpletons.
I don't think someone hated by everyone has any power to influence them, so thus unlikely to be the saviour of anything at all.
I don't think Hitler did much good for anyone. He probably believed he was a saviour blessing humanity with his efforts and simply ignoring anyone who contradicted this belief. Good leaders, actual saviours, entertain others thoughts and navigate them not by ignorance but by explanation (revelation).
Good leaders leave the choices to be made by others. They merely offer their wisdom and ask that others might accept it (democracy). Bad leaders make the choices despite what anyone else might think or say (dictatorships).
All you do is throw another toy from your pram! around about 200 of them so far, according to the moderators. Make you antinatalist points, stop trying to throw your pelters at me, your efforts are completely benign.
I'm handwaving it, because there is no reason whatsoever for an individual to feel any natural imperative. I don't feel any natural imperative. Simultaneously seeing that people using this "natural imperative" are using an irrational "end justify the means" argument (I explained why it is irrational) to excuse their individual actions.
Quoting universeness
I don't need to guarantee anything. The only thing I'm concerned with is the morality of the act of reproducing.
Quoting universeness
Morality is about individuals and individual choices. I can point to many individuals who made the conscious decision not to reproduce, thus disproving - yes, disproving - any allusions to the existence of a "natural imperative" that we are somehow all magically subjected to.
Quoting universeness
They're rational arguments, which you'll have to refute using your own rational arguments.
Quoting universeness
Clearly this is not the case. Humans have many instincts, violent ones, sexual ones, etc. that are clearly not moral.
Quoting universeness
No, really what I'm doing is applying a very common moral principle - do not impose on others - consistently, and I view your position as special pleading to excuse your inconsistency.
Quoting universeness
Not by/for me.
To use human suffering as the reason for antinatalism would imply utilitarianism, which is another type of "ends justify the means" argument that I am principally against.
Quoting universeness
No I can't, because clearly you're responding to some generalized idea you have about antinatalism, and not reading what I am typing to you.
Based on your response, I think you agree that dilemma's such as the two I highlighted from Babylon 5, at least demonstrate that figuring complicated stuff out, can be really really tough.
I know that's a very 'no shit Sherlock,' observation to make, but I do think it's important to think deeply when faced with such irrational and impractical people as antinatalists.
I think they may be just people who are crying out for help and recognition.
Haha sometimes the "No shit sherlock observations" are the most profound and useful. We often forget the basics on such a hectic and changeable life.
For me Antinatalists are:
1). People with a fundamentally good intention (to address suffering, to find an ultimate ethical/moral solution for suffering).
2). Lack any coherent good reasoning for that intention (because from their ideal concept: no one would exist - and then oops! Suffering doesn't exist, hence what ethical intention would they have to even suppose the ideal in the first place, as they wouldn't exist to have intention. Duh. ).
In this way it is a paradoxic cycle alternating from subjectivity (concept of an ideal), to the implications of that ideal if it was objective (actually the case). In which case the intent (ideal) violates its own existence if it were to be real (objective).
You cannot have an ethical principle (existence without suffering) that destroys the assumptions (suffering) required to formulate that principle.
And that's why they feel helpless and sad. Because they don't contribute in action to mitigating suffering. Like starting a charity or educating people or doing a humanitarian aid trip. They only articulate a pointless contradictory principle and flounder helplessly by fixating on it. One needs to identify their ability to act (their agency, the fact that their life can and does matter, and they can make a positive differenve against suffering) rather than just talk about sufferings inability to be abolished entirely.
Being someone who exists (but has an ideal of not existing) signals serious concern to me for their wellbeing. Because to me it sounds like a state of helplessness and impotency - inability to reconcile their purpose (core ideal) with the fact that they exist as a person. So the only other option is to project the need for non existence onto others (in other words make it everyone elses problem).
In short, a last ditch effort to cope by denying the fact that they're severely depressed/utterly miserable and have little joy left to feel.
But that's hopeful in the sense that the only other choice available to them is to stop coping, make it their own problem to deal with, which as you can probably anticipate, doesn't end well. And that's something we don't want for them. Hence why I try to explain and help.
The challenge is to imbue an Antinatalist with a reason to live that is better than just telling everyone else they should die. Because that's entirely ineffective as an argument strategy. No one who wants to live, enjoys living, wants to agree that they should die. That's obvious. And so all an Antinatalist will ever get in return is fierce rejection from happy, more hopeful, more omtimistic people or agreement from others that are severely depressed.
There is proof in the argument itself that others want to help an antinatalist to feel happy. Because if we didn't we wouldn't argue with them about it. We would just ignore them even though we know they're helpless and vulnerable. And that wouldnt be very ethical of us. The only way to derail someone's helplessness is to educate them through conversation and help them identify their depression in themselves and try to empower them to make the right decision to save themselves. As none of us can save them without their consent.
Whether one chooses to accept help from someone who is trying to show them an interest in life, to show them some positivity, is entirely up to them. But from the point of view of their ideal any help offered is interpreted as the greatest imposition. It feels like theyre being forced by everyone to participate in life because they still hold onto that part of them that doesn't want to allow them to be happy despite suffering.
You don't have to give up the intention to reduce suffering to be happy. You can satisfy both (recognition of suffering and the desire to reduce it) by getting your happiness and fulfillment in life through helping others to feel happy, but it requires letting go of a fixation on a contradiction, by finally accepting that it is a contradiction, and living anyways to fight another day. Together.
You have simply decided to supress it, but it is still part of you, and it will revisit you at times. I have no children and imo, I am now too late in life at 58 to have any. You will see family units, having joyous interactions, especially parents and small infants, you will hear a parent talk about how their children are more important to them than their own lives. You will hear people talk about their long historical family legacy and such will make you think for a moment, and you will have to reinforce your suppression.
Even drama scenes like:
Demonstrate the 'natural imperative' and the suffering that can be caused by not reproducing.
Some people who cannot have children suffer very badly. Antinatalists also handwave that away as well with 'it's immoral to alleviate your own suffering by bringing new life into the world which can also suffer.' Which of course suggests that suffering is all that is on offer for newborns or any joys will be irrelevent because of the sufferings you will experience. Again, totally irrational thinking.
Quoting Tzeentch
So is asexual reproduction, in your mind, irrational, as well as 'unfortunate?'
Quoting Tzeentch
So, you have no interest in consequentials then? Even if those consequentials mean that the original goal of your protest remains unfulfilled and the issue is never solved because it returns again and again, ad infinitum?
Quoting Tzeentch
I can point to such people as well and their decision is not normally an antinatalist one and is more likely to be an economic or lifestyle choice or even a 'not until the world becomes a better place,' or 'the world is overpopulated' choice which is also not necessarily based on an antinatalist viewpoint.
I have no idea what is in your head that connects the natural imperative to reproduce with the word 'magic.'
Quoting Tzeentch
And when these 'unpalatable thoughts' surface in you, is your established morality able to cope and ensure you dismiss such thoughts as just the mere random musings of your mind that are based on your primal fears, formed from the fact that our species came through a 'jungle rules' phase?
In what way is the human potential for random, controllable, suppressible, immoral thought an aspect of humanity that warrants antinatalism and the extinction of our species?
Quoting Tzeentch
But you are trying to constantly impose your antinatalism on others, consistently! Why is that not special pleading and immoral?
Quoting Tzeentch
Oh, I am reading exactly what you are typing, and I understand every word, as your thinking is not exactly complicated. I find the very few, different flavours of antinatalism, typed about on this thread to be equal only in how irrational they are.
So, you are not an antinatalist, based on the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority (utilitarianism). You are an antinatalist because you think it's immoral not to be such, as you think reproduction is an imposition on those who are born, as you did not have their consent. You choose to ignore the fact that obtaining such consent is not possible and that simply means, by default, we must not reproduce and anything that reproduces asexually now or after our extinction is just unfortunate. It that basically you position? Is that the antinatalism you want to sell to everyone? Which includes people like me? What estimate do you place on your chances of success?
Do you in fact need the buzz you get from the incredulity you receive?
But the antinatalist @Tzeentch has just posted that he does not care about reducing human suffering so does your number 1 here apply to his/her flavour of antinatalism?
Quoting Benj96
Yeah, I agree, antinatalism is contradictory.
Quoting Benj96
Agreed!
Quoting Benj96
Agreed!
Quoting Benj96
It certainly seems that way but perhaps some of them do get an actual buzz out of the incredulous responses they get. Attention seekers? Some dishonest interlocuters live on the buzz of contoversy.
Look at characters like Alex Jones (recently fined a billion dollars for his BS about the horrific Sandy Hook school attack), Ben Shapiro, who loves and lives off being controversial, Piers Morgan is exactly the same as is Donald Trump.
There is a horrible organised group in America called the ANI(Antinatalism International). To me even their name seems backwards. I won't post any of their nonsense here, but they should not be merely ignored. TPF member @DA671 already posted some awful but relevant footage from organised American antinatalists and it is material that should raise flags of concern. Having typed that, I do think that antinatalism remains gnat sized in the big human picture.
I hope the anti-life posters appreciate the olive branch you offer them.
I would just still watch who you invite into your world.
Not addressing his argument.
Quoting universeness
Red herring. Applying morality to things that by definition can't be moral is a category error, including most animals. Not only is it a category error, it is simply besides the point he is making.
Quoting universeness
Yes, that is part of his central ethical argument. It's deontological, not consequential. Unnecessarily imposing on others for X reason, is wrong he is saying. Thus, obviously, imposing on many people EVEN in the hopes of preventing unnecessary impositions would by logic, also be wrong.
Quoting universeness
That's because there is no "natural imperative to reproduce" in HUMANS. We are a creature that has "reasons" that are shaped by a multitude of things, and are generally shaped by the general culture around us and simply personal preferences- anything from not wanting to miss out, to simply boredom with life, loneliness, and a host of other non-instinctual reasons.
Quoting universeness
Huh? Not even the argument. Another red herring.
Quoting universeness
Assertion that adds nothing to the argument. Rhetorical filler.
Quoting universeness
A truth isn't how successful it sells to an audience. People often don't see "truth" at all, and certainly not right away.
If there is no decision being made, then it is not irrational. It just "is".
Unfortunate, yes, because now individuals don't have a say in whether they reproduce, and they still have no say in whether they are born.
Quoting universeness
If the means are flawed the ends won't justify them, so my interest is consequences is secondary.
And what exactly do you believe my "original goal" and or "protest" consist of?
Quoting universeness
Seems like these individuals were able to put rational considerations before instinct - excellent.
Quoting universeness
It is not. It reveals your appeal to "natural imperatives" as simply an act of cherry-picking.
Quoting universeness
I'm not.
If you feel threatened by a philosophical discussion to the point it feels like people are imposing on you, maybe discussion forums are not for you.
Quoting universeness
I have actually pointed that out specifically as the focal point of the dilemma.
All I'm doing is pointing out that procreation violates a common moral principle, and waiting patiently for a weighty argumentation as to why that should be ok.
You gave extinction as a reason, to which I replied:
- I am highly skeptical of individuals who profess the prolongation of the human race as their reason for procreating.
- Ends do not justify means.
You haven't really moved beyond this, and instead are seeking refuge in personal attacks.
Well it wouldnt be true antinatalism then, if that's actually the case. If he doesn't care to reduce human suffering he doesn't behold an ultimate ethical principle for ending all suffering.
But if he believes all people should not reproduce that contradicts him claiming he doesn't care about reducing suffering because if people don't reproduce we go extinct and suffering cannot occur. So it would just lead back to the actual true antinatalist belief that we shouldn't exist to prevent suffering.
If he really doesn't care for reducing suffering perhaps he has let go of his antinatalist absolutism/fundamentalism and believes he deserves to exist despite the existence of suffering. Which is good as we can only fight suffering through existing, I think though that we ought to care a bit about suffering and not totally disregard it as doing so disregards ethics altogether.
I would see that this new view as an improvement on just repeatedly reiterating antinatalist idealogy in its endless contradictory cycle, but can be further improved by establishing a balance between one's worthiness to exist and an ethical imperative to minimise suffering.
In otherwords having the wisdom to acknowledge yourself as worthy and just do your best to fight suffering in a capacity that doesn't deny your own right to exist. That is harmony and balance.
I wouldnt say buzz so much as a minute "hope" that their belief is valid - the antinatalist one that is. The controversy in itself serves to validate their "hope-rock" that they're clinging to to justify their existence. As engaging in debate about it validates its worthiness of debate in the first place.
The buzz is the same buzz as all the buzzes in life that maintains our hope, ambition, satisfaction, enjoyment, a reason to like living. And so that buzz is not something we should extinguish in someone, as to take away someone else's last shred of hope is to condemn to their own self annihilation.
All we can merely offer is a change in the quality of the buzz - how someone gets their pleasure in life, a step away from something absurd/toxic/dangerous and towards something worthwhile, meaningful and wholesome.
Oh sure, let's go Kant. I think the clue might be in his name!
A normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, rather than based on the consequences of the action, is a very poor methodology to apply to the issue of species survival and progression.
Perhaps you need to switch your methodology to one which does consider consequences and by doing so you might finally see that the natural imperative to reproduce and continue the human story is a better choice that pausing the story, returning to the beginning and starting the process again to arrive at the same point with perhaps a different sexual reproduction method such as parthenogenesis.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not true, based on the examples I have already given. If you are correct that humans do not experience a natural imperative to reproduce, then why do so many humans feel unfulfilled if they don't?
I agree it can be suppressed but you have to work at that and maintain it. If someone claims they can suppress the natural imperative to reproduce with no effort at all, with no conflict arising ever, in their mind and body then I say they are lying.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yeah, just keep 'phishing' and keep deluding yourself that you're catching anything, never mind actual red herrings.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Typed by you as a rhetorical filler!
Quoting schopenhauer1
I know, you have demonstrated that 200 times on TPF apparently. Come on son, your audience needs more convincing. Keep schoppin!
I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing really. Its very kind of you. I think that they have good reason to accept the olive branch and perhaps they do. It's hard to tell other than observing a change in their attitude and what beliefs they support and propagate.
If you fight antinatalism and suddenly they are suggesting more rational, reasonable arguments that are harder and harder for you to reason against (because they are less extreme and contradictory) then chances are you were successful in your goal, to steer them away from that vicious cyclical contradiction. You may feel defeated, but in actual fact that's only because you had a great effect - they accepted the beliefs you offered them and are now using them as their rock - a healthier one, in which to continue discourse.
You've tipped the balance back to the middle.
Given them your insights as a tool to defend themselves against the tendency to drift back towards antinatalism (depression). No longer then do you have the upper hand because you gave it away to help them.
"it's equally important to know when the fight is already won than to continue arguing beyond the point at which you already helped, for the sake of it, because you run the risk of role reversal where you yourself drift towards antinatalism.
At some point we must leave the table of argument knowing we instilled what we needed to in others, wisdom is knowing when the point was taken on-board, and you can then move onto the next crisis in need of your insights and help them out of that nosedive the same way you did previously. "
A job well done is just that - done.
You should feel proud of that fact, and move on.
So, do you agree that if an intelligent species reproduced asexually then antinatalism as an option dies?
So, would the morality issue you champion. Does that not give 'nature, evolution, natural selection,' the upper hand over your morality issue? Natural selection can and has produced asexual species showing that antinatalism, as irrational as it is, is only applicable to species who reproduce through sex or through some future transhuman process. We also have the evidence that the universe has already passed the event of life creation. This, to me, makes antinatalism very unlikely to succeed even if we were imbalanced enough to all vote for it.
Quoting Tzeentch
I answered this at the end of my last post to you:Quoting universeness
Quoting Tzeentch
I agree, but we are not currently in danger of extinction due to lack of reproduction, so they are able to make such choices and overrule the natural imperative to reproduce but they may have to experience some suffering due to having to make that choice. Is it moral that the rich and powerful have more choice over reproduction that the poor? The poor used to have lots of kids as they believed the more kids you have the more chance you will be looked after when your are old. That didnt work out well either, it mostly failed. Desperate, poorly conceived solutions like antinatalism or having 20 kids will normally fail.
Quoting Tzeentch
Hah! this from someone who cherry-picks from aspects of human constructions of morality to peddle an antinatalist stance. :roll:
Quoting Tzeentch
I dont want to get all panto on you but Oh yes you are!
Quoting Tzeentch
Right back at you, I can confirm to you that your antinatalism is no threat to me, but it is perhaps a threat to any here who are more mentally vulnerable than I.
Quoting Tzeentch
Skeptical in what way? 'Ends do not justify means' is not an objective universal truth!
If I break the law and kill a killer who was planning to kill you and your loved ones.
If I killed that killer by breaking into their house and killing them before they carried out their plan to kill you then I would most likely be convicted and jailed for it. Well OK! That's the price I may have to pay under the law/rules of human morality. But perhaps many would feel that the Ends I achieved DID justify the means I employed. You and your family might indeed feel that way! Such is personally subjective, yes?
I dont know if you have read through his recent posts on this page regarding his flavour of antinatalism.
It is based on a moral dilemma, not the issue of human suffering. I think his main posit is simply that it is immoral to bring a newborn into this existence without its consent and as its impossible to obtain its consent, the moral default position must be applied which MUST be, the decision not to procreate.
That's my attempt to 'steelman' his bizarre logic.
We can but try! :strong:
I do appreciate what you are saying and I broadly agree with your advice, BUT when you are dealing with those who post in an evanhellical style then they will not desist as long as they have a platform, and we cannot remove all their platforms because that would suggest we cannot deal with them in a civilised manner and still defeat them. If the antinatalist fountain keeps spouting, then I for one will keep trying to bail out our ship. Better that, than trying to save some if we all end up in the water as I can't swim and would be too busy drowning to help save anyone else.
Quite right Universeness, we must continue bailing that ship. Its a noble act of you to do so.
However we must recognise the point when one stops pumping the fountain and instead picks up a bailor and bails the ship with us. For then they're on our side. We can only do our best to convince the fountainists to become bailors. The rest is up to the fates.
Well one can only say that the default to not procreate as we cannot ask the unborn if they'd like to be born is merely based on the belief that we don't think we can raise that potential child to be good and to fight suffering. If we can raise such a child then we ought to (morally speaking).
If we are sure we would create a monster instead then we ought not to (again morally speaking). It speaks to a direct reflection on one's own capacity to be good and thus train their children/teach them to do the same.
But as we cannot know for certain how our children will turn out we do take a chance by procreating. But we do know ourselves - as parents - we may be sure that we have the best intentions to do right by our children. That is usually enough to convince them (their agency) to be good because our children usually respect us as parents, as the ones that brought them into the world.
You can concentrate on that, and I will try to help stop any bailers switch to maintaining the spouting fountain. I think you have the tougher task!
Yes, you summarise the moral issue quite well. But my argument regarding the moral dilemma peddled by @Tzeentch is that his issue of 'common morality' is extensively overblown by him and it does not have the force behind it that he is trying to peddle. Human morality is not as significant as the natural imperative to procreate, as a defence against extinction. The natural development of asexuality in many flora and fauna species is evidence for this, as is the fact that natural selection will maintain those aspects of a species which best equips it for survival within the environment it finds itself in, regardless of any issue of what humans label, morality. In fact, evolution through natural selection will even alter species over evolutionary time to assist a species to survive in its environment, regardless of any issue related to the human concept of morality. I think these biological facts, push the comparative human morality issue peddled by Tzeentch, towards a gnat sized concern. I think it does the same to schopenhauer1's human suffering flavour. The theistic antinatalism flavours and propositional logic conflations used by Bartricks are just too ridiculous to need much effort to combat. He can only get the fountain to slightly drip onto the deck of the ship.
One bailer could put his pail down for most of his/her life before having to take a moment to bail bartricks out of our progressive human ship.
Could natural selection not also operate on a cultural, linguistic and neurological level? I fail to see how the process is limited to biology and cannot be extended to other things like concepts, the words that represent them and the cultures that use them.
For example if a concept is useful (logical and or ethical) in explanation of something it will be used by an individual to articulate themselves (articulation being the spreading of that concept to others).
Similarly such new concepts require new words right? To condense their meaning into something useful - a short hand explanation for quicker/more efficient spreading of the information.
For example: Instead of saying "we should like totally be friends with that four legged animal that seems pretty nice and does stuff for us in return for food" we can just call it a "dog" and refer to it as "man's best friend". The information is the same, the number of words is condensed.
Languages evolve out of usefulness. Slang and tech words are the new most useful terms accepted to describe ideas and that's why they gain popularity.
I can now "Google it". It's now a verb in the dictionary. Instead of before where I had to say "I can now search for the information using the digital world wide network". A mouthful for sure.
There is clear space between natural selection (no intent) and human selection (intent).
Human selection is directly responsible for the evolutionary direction of almost every dog/cat/domesticated animal species alive today. This is also true for many flora/plant species.
I think you are referring to human selection rather than any aspect of natural selection.
In that sense you outlined, yes I'm referring to human selection. However humans are natural - born of nature itself. At what point does natural selection convert into human selection? And how arbitrary or definitive is this boundary?
I suppose based on your distinction of "intent" and "no intent" you're referring to "choice" which pertains to agents/that which is conscious.
So the difference then between natural selection and human selection would be the emergence of conscious agents with intent right?
Does that mean then that humans are the only conscious agents with intent? Or is it perhaps a continuum graduating stepwise from a system with no agency or choice towards one that does have agency and control. And where would other animals, plants and life fall on this continuum of emergent "intent"?
Natural selection still affects humans, humans continue to evolve related to their environment, but human science will have a far more significant effect and far faster effect on human physiology/biology than evolution through natural selection. So human intent via human science creates human selection but it does not replace evolution and natural selection, that will continue until universal entropy, returns the Universe to nothing but energy.
Quoting Benj96
Yes, but I think it's more important here, to use a concept of intent, akin to 'the imposition of an individual or group human will.'
Quoting Benj96
No, I think many animals demonstrate intent. Even instinct can have an aspect of intent imo.
We don't know if extra-terrestrial intelligent life exists, if it does, then we are not even the only conscious agents with intent at our level of intellect. So, absolutely yes, there is a gradation or range of ability to demonstrate and impose intent, within all living entities.
Quoting universeness
It would be science as opposed to antinatalism that beats lives of unbearable suffering. Although this is likely to take hundreds of years.
I wouldn't say people get involved in politics etc with the goal of reducing the number of lives of unbearable suffering. Many people have other goals that take precedence, and there are those that take a deontological approach, preferring personal freedom etc, despite the consequences. Look at America electing Trump, and Brits voting overwhelmingly for the Tories who cut the NHS killing tens of thousands in only a few years, according to the Royal Society of Medicine.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/nhs-cuts-excess-deaths-30000-study-research-royal-society-medicine-london-school-hygiene-martin-mckee-jeremy-hunt-a7585001.html
I agree.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Martin Luther King got involved in politics, to reduce or stop minority groups living lives of unbearable suffering, due to racism and a lack of human/civil rights.
Gandhi got involved in politics to free the people in his subjugated nation from the unbearable suffering being imposed apon them, due to British imperialism.
I could cite many more examples.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
I broadly agree, but the people you describe above are the ones I continue to combat, by trying to convince their supporters, through reasoned debate/dialogue/discourse, to stop supporting such nefarious, narcissistic and in some examples, evil people who peddle evil policies and evil ideas, which in political examples, have the hidden agenda of gaining new or maintaining the current wealth and power of the nefarious few.
I think yes, there is an inherent kind suffering (like dukkha) that is very much the heart of the whole enterprise of life. There is a sort of lack-of-something that motivates. The goal (trick) of societies is to try to harness this motivation for "productive" purposes. I simply see it as not "being" and succumbing to becoming. We can't help it. It is self-aware angst, projected as "reasons" in the name of survival, comfort, and entertainment.
I feel you're right on the money.
Quoting Isaac
That is a good question. How can we judge an argument, when there can be no correct answer.
For one, I would say ability to convince. I don't know how far you would agree on this point, but in my view the vast majority of people don't consider the philosophy of procreation, and having and raising kids is so engrained in society it would take some serious persuasion to remove their status quo bias. However, if presented with the question within The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a fair number of people would opt to walk away. It feels wrong to them that people's happiness is contingent on others suffering. In the context I was using fair, unfair wouldn't make a lot of sense as an antonym, but would mean not fairly convincing.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, that's a third option. A factual case that procreation is a better way to cut down on suffering than antinatalism. This is different to the other two in that there is a right and wrong answer to it.
Down the lagomorphian hole it is! Isn't there a 1% rule?
Don't want to get @schopenhauer1 banned but their posts helped encourage me to join. I was already familiar with the literature but didn't know the topic was so widely discussed.
Quite the opposite for me - I know the topic's widely discussed (at least on this forum) but I didn't know so much work had been done on it!
I agree with this point, and I was hoping that by pointing out some of the moral dilemmas associated with procreation I could coax some of this philosophy out of the its defenders, but I've gotten little in the way of that.
A lack of perfection perhaps (whatever that entails for the individual), motivated by a need to improve circumstances from the imperfect towards to perfect, addressing flaws - in science, in philosophical thinking, in politics, economics etc one by one as they arise?
Quoting schopenhauer1
There is always angst to survival I think. Very apt/poignant of you to point out. We have instincts - built in searching and evaluation of threats to our survival, "critical thinking" in a sense. Perhaps this is what society takes advantage of, to pursue improvement as a collective, each having a role in maintaining the stability of society.
What angst we cannot ameliorate through productivity in society we project/invest into entertainment. A sort of escapism so it were, to entertain catastrophe and the ongoing battle against adversity conceptually through media: film, literature, music, art etc it's an outlet for personal angst.
That being said, I think we are doing an alright job, we have the institutions in place to combat existential angst and each one is usually undergoing constant revision, ammendments and improvement.
It may not be perfect, far from it, but it certainly is motoring on towards a slow steady progress towards a future idealised as getter than the past we came from.
Nah man, it doesn't go away. That is the point of the perennialism of Schopenhauer. it's a reason he was very opposed to Hegel's upward spiral notion.
Quoting Benj96
It starts with two people who decide on behalf of someone else, that a new person needs to deal with the world and deal with survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment. They are creating another source of angst, in other words. The social institutions are like a pyramid scheme.. It can't be gotten rid of or changed easily as it's all the society has to allow the forced contestants to survive, find comfort, and entertainment.
Quoting Benj96
People used to call some of that sublimation. But basically I consider entertainment anything that isn't survival or comfort seeking. Meditation and reading philosophy for pleasure can be entertainment. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's something you are doing outside of working to survive or finding ways to get more comfortable with your environment.
Quoting Benj96
But YOUR preference for X institutions shouldn't become someone else's burden to bear, simply because YOU think this is the case.
Quoting Benj96
We are far from a utopia. Rather, we are a mediocre universe doing mediocre things. The main problem is we keep putting more contestants in the game, and thinking we are doing them a favor. It's just starting yet another game on behalf of someone else, because YOU like something. I never heard of something where MY preference requires OTHERS to be forced into a game that cannot be changed. Where MY preference for what choices are meaningful or good (e.g. working to survive apparently people must love because they keep putting more laboring units into the workforce and shoving the drivel that work is meaningful so don't despair) are what OTHER people should experience.. Somehow the limited choices that life offers of survival and comfort, somehow the intendant harms of existing are what OTHERS should experience. OR, guess what they can do if they don't like it? You know (kill themselves!)...Real gaslighting if you ask me.
Agreed. It's their choice, not mine.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Absolutely. I agree.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is where our agreement departs. We are assuming the rules of such a game are fixed. Those rules being that the game cannot be changed, we must then flounder helplessly, and we must suffer/be of inherent angst thus. I think any game player can change the status quo if they want to. Not an easy pursuit by any means but a possible one.
Otherwise why bother with politics or accruing any power whatsoever - If that power cannot change circumstances in any meaningful way?
It's equivalent to outlining a game where the rigid/fixed rules are "the climate will change to such a point where earth will be uninhabitable and you will all die".
Naturally a player will ask "well in such a game is it possible to navigate away from climate doom". If the answer is "No" then the game is pretty pointless isn't it?
Except that is not the game we play in real life. The rules are changeable en masse. Science tells us "here is the path away from these rules and towards a new set of more optimistic ones where the game-play can continue".
Any sensible game player would opt for that path.
So the actual rules of the gameplay of humanity are not as rigid as you believe. Just as the gameplay was previously changed from combating infectious diseases without antibiotics/vaccines to one where they are permissable in the game.
Fundamentally it reduces to pessimism vs. Optimism. You're free to choose which game format you choose. But you're not allowed to choose on behalf of other players.
I CANNOT in good conscience FORCE you to start a game because I think there is some chance you can change the rules (which is extremely hard), and this doesn't address the point that the rules are already in place, and they are simply ACCEPTED (or kill yourself.. a shitty bargain).
Quoting Benj96
Not good enough to FORCE OTHERS into a game because YOU like it.. Still not fair. Not just. Not right. Etc. I realize that isn't how people understand things because they never had it framed that way. Re-framing perhaps is most what I am after. Perhaps that's what @Down The Rabbit Hole found intriguing.
Quoting Benj96
Politics is not what I am talking about. It is the very foundational needs and wants of the angst-human being.
Quoting Benj96
I'm not talking about climate change or things such as that, though it is an example of a greater understanding that there are only a LIMITED amount of choices this universe allows for the human. The parent thinks that these choices are "good" and thus must be lived out by yet another person as well. That's what I am speaking to.
Quoting Benj96
Yeah, I am not talking about the onward march of scientific phenomena.
What if I force someone into a game that they enjoy? They have a great time and vibe despite the fact I gave them no choice but to play? What would you say then?
What harm was done when they turn around and say "so I know you forced me into this game without my consent but I'm actually really glad you did as I didn't realise how much I would enjoy it, so thank you for taking that initial decision for me."
The best you'll get out of this line of argument is something along the lines of "There's a higher chance that they'll enjoy it than that they will not enjoy it," and ultimately amounts to little more than playing a gamble with someone else's life.
If you believe that's a sufficient justification for procreation, then have at it.
The problem with this argument in my opinion, is that the parents do not have any knowledge of what they're about to impose. The life of a new person is a complete unknown. Nor do they have much influence over the outcome - that is determined by many other factors than the parents' goodwill and expertise.
No it doesn't. I just outlined the conditions. Person A forced person B into existence and they happened to love it and be grateful to person A for forcing them to participate.
With respect to those exact conditions what would you say?
Instead of re-writing it to a position in time when person A hasn't yet forced B to participate as I clearly did not outline. Its not a speculation or gamble when it has already happened.
So ill repeat myself, in the case that we assume person A has already committed person B to existing. And person B LOVES IT. And is happy, and grateful for being born. (as is the case currently with many parent child dynamics)
In that case... What argument do you have exactly?
Person B dodged a bullet, because person A took a gamble with B's life and it happened to turn out ok.
A good state of affairs, but the result of a bad moral choice.
Quoting Tzeentch
This.
But I have some more to add, and I'm wondering what Tzeentch thinks of these ideas.
First off, I think that life is way more nuanced than the binary "Good life, bad life". It is much more analog than digital. The problem is a "gift" as you are implying here about life, is not a gift if it comes with burdens one would have not asked for or wanted. If I gave you a "gift" that lasted a lifetime, you could not get rid of unless you kill yourself, is pervasive, and has many burdensome impositions that you would have not wanted, BUT it comes with some good stuff too.. You have every right to say that this is not a gift, this is an imposition DESPITE any good aspects that go along with it. Again, just because I like a game, doesn't mean OTHERS must play it and like it too. Liking it "enough" isn't an EXCUSE to go ahead and force others to play it. It was NOT NECESSARY to start yet another contestant.
You would only have a point if the life you are starting is perfectly aligned with what the contestant wanted.. it was easy to move to a different option if you didn't like the game, etc. That is not the case.. It is comply with the already set-up universe we have (go to work to survive, go homeless, live off others, consume, find entertainment, find relationships, etc.) or kill yourself.
So my point is saying that the game is "good enough" is not enough reason to go ahead and impose on others because YOU deem it to be good enough. It is the disconnect between what you like and what others SHOULD like. Do not PRESUME for others regarding an inescapable imposition. That is aggressively paternalistic.
If anything about my posts on Pessimism, they are to reveal what are pervasive and intractable negatives that go along with life. You can look back on any of my previous posts on the matter. Overlooking this with a simple line of "But what if they say life is good!" is wishful folly that doesn't take into account the full story. One does not have a right to impose such significant things on another. One is perpetuating suffering needlessly for another. Saying that life is a statistical phenomena of degrees of good and bad doesn't negate that there are negative aspects to life that are not what people would have wanted and are entailed with life. It is not unnecessarily starting THESE negatives for another that is the problem. This is what is being overlooked.
I think we have made a clear case that the common logic to justify procreation would not work in any other example of moral human interaction.
It is now up to the "pronatalists" to argue why procreation is a special case that deserves special logic.
[quote=180 Proof]The rest follows.[/quote]
There is no 'special case of logic' involved or required, that's just another fake claim you make.
Life was formed in the universe without intent and without any 'permission' or 'consent.' This was the original natural happenstance. Evolution and natural selection has demonstrated the reproduction system as the means by which a species may continue to exist whether or not that reproduction is asexual or sexual.
These systems were established, regardless of any aspect of human morality. Antinatalists may make as many appeals to their own conflated notions of human morality as they like. You are the ones making special pleads to a logic that is only valid in your own heads.
I am not a pronatalist, I don't think such a term has much important meaning behind it. Any intelligent person understands the danger of over population. I am pro species survival. I am for continuing the human species, as I know that we give a significance and purpose to the universe that it would not have if we (or our like,) did not exist. A significance which is so fundamental to the universe that it would be ever recreated by means of evolution, if events caused a return to a lifeless universal phase.
It is now up to the antinatalists to prove that their suggested solution would work and to also prove that humans are incapable of reducing human suffering to an acceptable level, no matter how much time they have to increase their knowledge of the structure and workings of the universe and their tech.
I don't care about antinatalists who use such words as 'that's not good enough.' My answer to such is the same one as I would give a child, constantly pestering for more candy.
'Well, that's all you're getting for now, you will just have to wait under we have more knowledge and better tech.'
Who says they dodged a bullet? This assumes person B is completely vulnerable and helpless in the world. And person A is equally vulnerable and helpless and inept at parenting.
But actually they have a great father/mother (Person A) one that protects them when they're infants, teaches them to be wise as they grow up, gives them exceptional tools to combat adversity and call out the BS of people trying to make them suffer (perhaps those suggesting they ought to die or never have children) and instills in them a sense of pride at being able to fend for themselves, to be independent, masters of navigating a world of suffering without allowing it to impact their happiness, their purpose being a moral one - teach others to do as their own parents did for them.
This person B:
1). Doesn't blame/despise their parents for creating them, doesn't see themselves as the victim of some horrible "forced" thing.
2).Experienced just enough suffering to know what it is and by contrast what happiness is. To learn a valuable lesson.
3). Were given the tools by their parent to maximise the stability of their own happiness/find fulfilment in life.
4). Cannot be made feel ashamed or guilty for living by others because the fulfillment they found was helping others mitigate their own suffering. Their intention is to reduce the suffering of others so they can polite ignore any attempt of someone to punish them for that as that woukd be irrational. Why should someone suffering punish someone who clearly demonstrates the skills to be happy and the willingness to show how its done?
That...... is why Person A didn't gamble with Person Bs life.
They knew they were good people (wise, kind, resourceful etc - many a virtue) , thus knew they would be good parents (applying those virtues/skills) and thus knew they would be able to raise good children (despite experience disagreements, arguments and a bit of suffering in the learning curve of growing up, they turned out as their parents did - grateful, appreciative and accepting of those skills passed down to them).
Quoting universeness
This won't do.
There are many behaviors that have existed prior to notions of morality, and many of such behaviors are universally regarded as immoral now, regardless of their prior existence.
Quoting universeness
"Don't impose (unless there are pressing reasons to do so)," is a common, almost universal moral principle.
You may claim this is not a moral principle, and that imposing is perfectly fine. Probably you realise that would lead you down a slippery slope. So what you have left is explaining why there is a pressing reason to impose in this particular instance - special pleading.
It's the procreators who are behaving inconsistently.
Quoting universeness
Why? It's not something you have power over, nor have a stake in. Whether the human race survives for another thousand years or another hundred thousand, you won't be around to witness it.
Besides, do you expect me to believe there is even a single person on this globe that procreates not for the simple reason that they want to have children, but because they so selflessly care about the survival of the human race?
Quoting universeness
I'm not suggesting any solution. I'm pointing out an inconsistency in your behavior and asking for an explanation.
Quoting Benj96
Whether someone has a great or terrible life is not solely a product of parenting. It's also a product of the environment, and a good amount of luck. There are many things the parents have no influence over, thus it is still a gamble, no matter how capable and well-intentioned the parents are.
I do. I believe in myself as a caretaker. I had very good parents to teach me how.
The only possible reason I can imagine for an anitnatalist ideology is that the person who holds it - just hates life. Simple as.
The idealogy is literally about desire to not procreate/self annihilation/end of humanity and everything that comes with it.
Just an abject denial that joy can ever be more suffering in one's life.
And if antinatalist logic is perfectly sound from your point of view and the other is nonsense. And if our (pronatalist) logic is perfectly sound from our point of view and the other is nonsense.
I guess pronatalists still win. Because we have the opportunity to do whatever we want in life, a diversity of things and feel good about it so long as we have the intention to improve things/help sufferers. While antinatalists are reduced to only one thing - begging everyone to stop living because its so pointless and worthless and awful. Torturing themselves and attempting to (and failing) to torture the rest of society which literally would never ever commit a mass suicide or sterilisation.
Ever.
All down to a lack of potency. Lack of intelligence/wisdom/resourcefulness/lack of initiative/lack of creativity etc etc.
Put a parent and their child in the worst environment you can think of - famine, war, poverty etc and if that parent is extremely strong willed/intelligent/resourceful etc (all part of what it means to be "Good" (virtuous/highly adaptable/skilled etc), all the things opposite of what's outlined above...
... And I guarantee you they will turn a bad situation around. Whether that means escaping it spatially, moving to a better location with better lifestyle (refugees), hitting the problem head on (leadership, local politics, for example ghandi liberating India from oppression), or engineering a solution (all the very resourceful inventors eg.tesla many of which I'm sure were parents also.)
You just don't get it. You don't see the big picture. Luck exists for people who don't now how to make it themselves.
It's not random that some people seem to make the world happen for them.
Its not random that some people start with nothing and become successful and happy and have a family.
Bad environments only exist for those that are complacent and accept it as it is instead of finding a way, any way, to improve it. All of these things are excuses.
Take the excuses away, as a good parent is driven to do in order to protect the ones they love - their children, and you remove the whole basis for this pointless, floundering helpless, victim revolving antinatalist idealogy.
Just get on with it. Every other adult has to roll up their sleeves and work hard to make a good life for their family and friends. No one said combating suffering was a walk in the park but it's certainly worth the effort.
I've said what I have to say on the matter of antinatalism. You're free to disassemble and pick away at any and all parts of my argument if that's what you feel is going to get you places. In the meantime, I'll be vibing, and loving life with my friends and family and colleagues. Let us know if you fancy joining.
Happy to lend a hand if it's accepted (ie if you actually take on board and accept that maybe my points are valid and move away from antinatalism and towards the infinitely more interesting and useful discussions, otherwise, good luck with it I guess).
I won't ever agree with someone that wants me and my family and the rest the world dead. Simples :)
Well, you'd be wrong.
Quoting Benj96
It's not an ideology - at least not for me. It's about observing an inconsistency in human behavior and asking for an explanation.
Quoting Benj96
You can't make such a guarantee, and while I like the positive outlook, it is not rational.
Oh good. Finally.
I'm glad I'm wrong then and you finally accept we are on the same side and both don't hate life. You made a good choice to re-evaluate and depart from the extreme.
Quoting Tzeentch
Great again! Glad youre no longer fundamentalist and don't see it as an ideology but rather prefer to be open minded and discuss what issues we ought to, to clear up these inconsistencies. It's prudent to formulate an explanation to navigate such inconsistencies in a productive/constructive manner.
Quoting Tzeentch
I like my positive outlook too. I believe in it so it's rational for me. Just as everyone's personal concept of rationality is based on the beliefs they hold to be true.
Welcome back Tzeentech :)
Now we are truly making progress.
I'm not sure what you think I've been doing this whole time.
Looking for an explanation while already having a predefined answer (no procreation for anyone) I suppose.
You cannot just do anything in the name above. Having "good intentions" isn't license to do what you want to someone else. You probably know this though.
Imagine my defense being "good intentions" to do any X act that causes someone else an imposition of harms and limitations.
When did I say do "anything? "
In case you weren't aware, helping someone out of suffering is a mutual effort. It takes both the hand offered and the hand accepted.
It takes agreement. Not force.
If someone decides they don't want anyone's help they just want to be miserable alone. There's not much we can do for them is there?
As I said, helping is a two-person dynamic. I can't help or reason with a wall so there is no imposition of anything. It's either ignored, actively told to go way, or accepted.
So yes "intention" is a license to approach someone you think is in need of assistance. If they tell you to leave them be, you leave them be. If theyre willing to discuss, you discuss, if they're will to agree on a course of action, you agree on a course of action.
That is a harmless process respecting their autonomy. You seem to obsess over the idea of "imposition".
And no you can't "impose" on a non existent potential that currently reside in your left nut. They have no personhood, no human rights, and no say in being born.
None of us ever had a say in being born, some of us were born intentionally and some by accident,
And some of us like the fact that we were.
That's how life works. Don't ask me ask mother nature.
I have already asked you this before. Do you consider a universe without intent to start life but life started through happenstance to be immoral? If your answer is yes, then you are suggesting the universe had intent, as intent is a fundamental aspect of morality. If your answer is no, then you accept that this happenstance is beyond the jurisdiction of any notion of human morality. It is therefore way beyond YOUR mere opinion that 'this won't do.'
Quoting Tzeentch
A universal 'don't impose' is an illogical and unsustainable edict in human reality. Benevolent imposition is moral in the human world, such as preventing someone from fighting or imposing to break up a fight. If you would stand by and watch then, imo, YOU are immoral.
Imposition, which is immoral, can only be judged based on established moral guidelines, and by those involved on a case-by-case basis. I might impose suffering to remove an impaled limb to free a person, depending on the situation. I may have children to continue the experience of life and living. YOU have no right or power to judge me immoral as such a judgement would itself be immoral as you are not supported by any universal fact, BUT I AM, the fact that life started in this universe WITHOUT ANY PERMISSION OR CONSENT. You are the inconsistent special pleader with no answer to the natural happenstance of life creation. IT ALREADY HAPPENED.
Quoting Tzeentch
I do have power over the survival of my species, we all do, as we can reproduce! That's the whole point!
I don't need to be around to witness it, my like being around to witness it, is absolutely good enough for me. Only a narcissist or sociopath would deny life a future just because they themselves must die and enter oblivion. Yes, everyday people do exactly that, as the 'want to have children' IS an act which results in the survival of the human race, regardless of the fact that you are unable to grasp the connection.
Quoting Tzeentch
Why are you preaching antinatalism then? As a solution to what? You claim you have identified a moral crisis and you then suggest that you are not suggesting any solution, so why are you pushing the antinatalist nonsense? I have explained my position to you quite clearly, its simply you who (panto style), claims I have not. So, to reflect back to you in equal panto style, your position on antinatalism is the position that 'just won't do.'
:lol: Welcome brother, to those of us who will 'call out the BS of people.' :flower: :flower: :flower:
It's a matter of rational scrutiny - to demand a consistent argument from someone who chooses to impose on others. You've failed to provide that, and that's why it won't do.
Quoting universeness
Once again, I don't see any explaining going on here.
Why don't you start with coming up with a logically consistent argument as to why imposing is acceptable in this case?
Quoting universeness
And it's irrational for the reasons I've already given you, and I won't accept irrational reasoning as a moral basis for imposition.
Quoting universeness
I'm not preaching anything. I'm pointing out your inconsistency and waiting for an explanation.
I accept your opinion that I have failed to provide such for you, and I have so far been unable to wipe the antinatalism fog from your mind. You claim it is due to the fact that my points towards you are inconsistent but you have not demosntrated where that inconsistency exists. I have consistently made the same points to you.
1. The natural imperative of reproduction as a method of species survival.
2. Life started in the universe without intent, consent or permission and therefore is immune to any human constructed moral crisis you may personally be having.
3. Evolution through natural selection is still happening and still has no intent and seeks no permission or consent from humans to do what it does.
4. Humans have intent and intelligence and can alleviate, reduce and possibly even remove all forms of human suffering.
These are some of my consistent points, where is this inconsistency you are complaining about.
I accept you dont find my 4 points above compelling reasons for you to abandon your antinatalist stance but hey ho, such is life. Some folks just prefer their misery to finding the strength to join us optimists.
Or they just can't conquer their pride! They can't admit they have been so wrong for so long.
Quoting Tzeentch
I already have.
1. Life happened (was imposed if you prefer).
2. Some life became intelligent life.
3. Intelligent life is able to ask questions.
4. To understand the what, how and why of the universe, life that is self-aware and has intent and can ask questions is necessary.
5. The survival of such intent and ability to ask questions and discover answers is necessary.
6. A universe with no life has no purpose.
7. IF you accept 1 to 6 then imposing life on the universe is moral, If you don't accept 1 to 6 then you are probably an antinatalist who bizarrely does not wish to be an existent who can choose to label themselves an antinatalist. Antinatalism is self-defeating in every way you posit it.
Quoting Tzeentch
You are not an honest interlocuter. You have preached antinatalism, as you have stated that it's the only logical solution to the 'common moral dilemma,' of immoral imposition through procreation. It's preaching because you have no evidence. My evidence starts with the fact that LIFE HAPPENED in this universe and that happenstance CANNOT be logically judged as immoral. Where is this inconsistency you claim is forcing you to 'wait for an explanation?'
You are simply refusing to accept any explanation you are offered in the same way a convinced theist will never accept there is no god or supernatural woo woo.
Do you think a tsunami, or an earthquake is an immoral imposition?
People don't reproduce for the sake of the species' survival. This is just nonsense.
Quoting universeness
Unless you wish to reject morality altogether, this is more nonsense.
If you do wish to reject morality, then what are you doing in a thread that's unmistakenly about a moral question?
Quoting universeness
Evolution is irrelevant to this question.
Morality is about individuals, their choices, intentions and actions.
Quoting universeness
Good intentions don't excuse immoral actions.
Quoting universeness
Quoting universeness
Necessary, why? To whom?
Sounds like a load of New Age hooey to me.
Quoting universeness
The choices of moral agents can be judged, which is what we're doing right here.
I'm getting the sense that you have some rather subjective views about man's purpose in the universe, and are willing to resort to imposition to press gang new people into this project - an "ends justify the means" type argument and a common moral pitfall.
Oops I used your word. Lol. Touché brother.
Based on what evidence?
Quoting Tzeentch
You think in extremes! Why would I have to reject morality altogether? What utter nonsense!
Quoting Tzeentch
I typed the word intent YOU decided that was synonomous with the term 'good intentions.' You further evidence your tendency to invent and attempt to misrepresent and misdirect when you are frustrated that you have no valid response.
Quoting Tzeentch
Necessary to intelligent lifeforms who value legacy.
Quoting Tzeentch
If you are living a purposeless life and have no sense of purpose in your life, then you have reaped what you sowed. If you believe that life and lifeforms have no purpose then you are left with time as your enemy and oblivion as your saviour. How sad. If you do have purpose in your life, then you are contradicting your own words that suggest you believe HUmans have no purpose in this universe.
:wink: :up:
Quoting universeness
Based on common understanding of human psychology.
But since you're the one claiming humans reproduce not out of personal motivations but some selfless act for the survival of mankind the burden of proof is on you.
Quoting universeness
It's either that or be a hypocrite.
Quoting universeness
Because you like "legacy" you get to press gang everybody into your vanity project?
Is that your threshold for imposition then? If you like something you get to force it on others?
Quoting universeness
A thinly-veiled attempt at a personal attack, and not remotely related to what I said.
You are the one preaching antinatalism as a solution to your conflated moral issue, so the burden of proof is yours. I did not suggest that a couple looks into each other's eyes and discuss having children to ensure that the human race survives but they do exchange such comments as 'It would be great to have something that is of me and you that will carry on the bloodlines.' Especially in amongst the rich dynastic families or in the families of celebrity etc. But it happens in almost every family. It is the concept of legacy which just seems unable to penetrate through your fog. Even though the historical evidence for it is irrefutable. This is synonymous with the idea of reproducing to ensure the survival of the species as the end result of the compulsion to pass on legacy has the exact same result.
Quoting Tzeentch
Based on what logic? Try actually answering a question instead of just responding with obvious and tedious obfuscations.
Quoting Tzeentch
Your attempt to ignore legacy just because it's an inconvenient fact that defeats your antinatalist viewpoint is pernicious.
Quoting Tzeentch
The truth hurts you?
This is plainly false. I am not preaching or proposing anything.
I'm pointing out an inconsistency in the reasoning of those who choose to reproduce.
Quoting universeness
The offspring shall serve the parents' ego, then?
Quoting universeness
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting universeness
You stated:
Quoting universeness
You sought to dismiss my moral dilemma on the basis that the choice is purely a human construct.
All morality is a human construct.
So you're either consistent and dismiss morality altogether, or start cherry-picking (which is what you're doing) and are inconsistent, ergo a hypocrite.
Quoting universeness
No, I call it out for what it is: irrational ego-driven vanity.
You won't have a leg to stand on if your argument doesn't involve the well-being of the person you just forced to participate in your project, so I would suggest starting there.
No the offspring shall help to continue the species and the parent's legacy.
Quoting Tzeentch
Fogged logic. My main point is that life started in the universe without consent or permission and that is the evidence that defeats your moral dilemma. It has no relevance to the existence of life in this universe or its continuation.
Quoting Tzeentch
So, was the moment life formed in the universe immoral? Is an earthquake or a tsunami or a rainbow immoral according to your logic? I would suggest you start there and then move towards the well-being and sustaining of the life which arrived in the universe regardless of permission or consent from any source.
You're right, I don't understand much of what you're saying. I'm trying, but there are many things which are not making sense to me.
Let's start with the definition of The Problem of Evil - I'm going to echo back to you in my own words what I think you're saying. You can tell me if I'm understanding you or not.
Here is your original:
Imagine there is an omnipotent, omniscient, person.
and here is how I would phrase this:
Imagine there is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being. [OOO-Being]
Omnibenevolent was not in your original OP, I think we both agree that your argument requires this - otherwise the "person" could be evil. I also prefer using the word "being" to "person, your use of the word "person" is far afield of any other definition I know of. And I can't imagine any proponent of the problem of evil using the word "person" - they would use the word "God". I don't think this alters what you're saying, but if "person" is essential to your argument, then I need some more details to understand it.
Otherwise, for purposes of this particular discussion I am assuming that the definition/concept of an OOP Being is well formed and makes sense.
Next we have this:
[b]Imagine as well that there is a sensible world, exactly like this one.
this sensible world is an incredibly dangerous place, full of all manner of dangers and just about every conceivable harm.
[/b]Well said, I'll go with that.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
It seems like you're using the word "God" interchangeably with OOO Being, I'm OK with either, but if there is some specific context in which you use one over the other I'll need some more details.
Otherwise, I agree with this definition of the Problem of Eveil and what a PPE believes. However I want to expand a bit on this, just to make sure that my understanding is correct. Let's convert this into Ps & Qs.
Let P be the statement "God (an OOP Being) exists."
For purposes of this particular discussion I am assuming that this sentence makes sense and is either true or false.
Let Q be the sentence "The sensible world is free from all evil & violence"
So a PPE says this:
IF P THEN NECESSARILY Q.
NOT Q
Therefore NOT P
Here I'm assuming that P means the same thing as P IS TRUE
This could also be expressed as
IF NOT Q THEN NOT P
NOT Q
Therefore NOT P
Furthermore, there are countless numbers of religious people who acknowledge the evils of the world but still believe in God. These folks have numerous "hacks" to work around this contradiction, e.g., "We cannot understand the workings of God, what appears to be evil is just our mis-understanding the nature of God's goodness", etc, etc.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Before I move on, have I so far described your thinking with reasonable accuracy?
Why do you think I asked about an omnipotent and omniscient person and left off omnibenevolent?
Do you think it was a mistake? It wasn't.
Do you think you can understand me by deciding to change what I said rather than trying to understand why I said it?
If you want to understand someone, do not assume they don't know what they are saying. I mean, you'll never understand anyone if you do that.
I am not you. I do not think like you do. So try and understand why I left off omnibenevolent. Don't assume it was a mistake. Assume I knew exactly what I was doing
If an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being exists then we live in a utopia correct? (because they have all the knowledge and all the power to be good/establish goodness.)
But that is temporal in dynamic. No? So in theory such a being could exist in a world lacking knowledge (ignorance) therefore lacking potency (power) and therfore lacking benevolence (the choice to use knowledge and power for Good).
If this omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being just discovered their power, or was just born today, would it not take time for them to convince others (omniscience and omnipotence) to choose good (omnibenevolece).
As any good argument relies on omnipotency (irrefutable ethical imperative - no one can/ought to deny what's in their own best interests) and omniscience (irréfutable logic/reason- no one can/ought to deny what makes sense/is rational).
So really omnipotence and omniscience can be synthesised with one another into the statement "what's good for you to believe (ethics) and what's logical/rational for you to believe (reason) is harmless to you (benevolent).
That would satisfy all three conditions.
I am only saying these things to work within Bartrick's conceptual definitions. I don't take any of this seriously.
I get your intent now. Carry on haha my bad.
OK, maybe I made a false assumption there.
But without omnibenevolence there is no Problem of Evil. It could simply be that your your omniscient omnipotent person allows evil to exist for her own reasons which are beyond our powers of comprehension.
if the answer is 'no'. then that means that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person wouldn't do it.
See?
Now, this is so basic - so simple - that I think you are just willfully misunderstanding as you find it amusing or something.
This is a valid argument form:
1. Either p or q
2. Not p
3. Therefore q
1. Either change the world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on innocents, or do not introduce innocent life into it.
Do you see how that says 'either p or q'?
do you also see how a proponent (that means defender) of the problem of evil must endorse it?
And do you see how this premise is true in respect of us:
2. We are not going to change the world so that it does not visit horrendous evils on innocents?
And do you see how it now follows that
3. Therefore, do not introduce innocent life into it?
3 is antinatalism.
So, to deny 3 you need to deny 2 or 1.
2 is obviously undeniable
So you have to deny 1.
If you deny 1, then there's no problem of evil. For there would be nothing wrong in introducing life into the world as it is. There would be no obligation on God to change it.
So, if - if - there is a problem of evil for belief in God, then there is also a problem of evil for the belief that procreation is morally persmissible.
On the other hand, if procreation is morally permissible, then there is no problem of evil for GOd.
Now, if at this point you still do not understand me - if the above just sounds like gibberish - then I'm afraid you need to work with your hands for a living and stop trying to do this thinking business: it's not for you.
And right here is where you are going astray. Here is your "p"
Quoting Bartricks
Mr. X is a proponent of the Problem of Evil. Mr X is a person who says that an OOO Being (God) does not exist. But there is nothing inherit in The Problem of Evil that states (or even implies) that Mr X should or must have certain moral beliefs. Mr. X has no opinion as to how this imaginary creature should behave.
Now this is not to say that Mr X is not an anti-natalist. He may or may not be. But his being a proponent of the Problem of Evil has no bearing on his decision.
In other words, your "p" above is false/wrong/incorrect before you even plug it into your equation. You are saying either p must be true or q must be true. And this is simply not the case. As several other people have already noted, both your p and your q are false.
Now, if at this point you still do not understand me - if the above just sounds like gibberish - then I'm afraid you need to work with your hands for a living and stop trying to do this thinking business: it's not for you.
And I also give you the last word in this particular discussion - should you want it.
Do you know what a proponent of the problem of evil is? Do you actually know what you're talking about?
Only individuals are moral agents. Life starting in the universe is not a moral question. The individual choosing to perpetuate it is.
Violence and many other "natural" tendencies have been around long before humans evolved. Does that mean that humans perpetrating violent acts are beyond moral scrutiny? I think not.
So, by what logic do you suggest that an antinatalist viewpoint, that would have the final effect of ending all life in the universe (as you claim all reproduction is immoral without consent, which must include asexual reproduction) is warranted, based on a human constructed morality issue, when you have just accepted that the origin of life, is not a moral issue of consent?
Quoting Tzeentch
Such issues are within the jurisdiction of 'human morality.' The existence of human life in the universe is not within the jurisdiction of human morality. That is the natural imperative you cannot reconcile with your fogged antinatalist thinking.
Do you think it's immoral for a Lion to kill and eat a baby deer?
That is not something I claim.
Quoting universeness
I'm a supporter of "ending all life in the universe" now? You're starting to sound a bit like a clown.
The origin of life is not a moral issue. It's not even related to this discussion.
When individuals (in this case parents) make choices that have major consequences for other individuals (in this case children) that becomes a moral question.
I'm discussing that moral question.
Maybe you need to calm down a little.
Quoting universeness
Nor is it the object of my argument.
Quoting universeness
No.
Do I think it's immoral for a human to kill and eat a baby human?
Yes.
Apparently we hold humans and animals to different standards. Shocking, I know.
Try to be clearer than mud in what you are claiming then.
Which forms of reproduction do you think are moral without the consent of the life which is created?
Quoting Tzeentch
Typed by the person who uses clown logic regularly. If no life reproduces then the universe would have no life. YOU stated that newlife must be consulted before being born. You further stated that such consent is not possible, so, by default human morality, human reproduction is immoral. BUT this must also refer to all unconsulted life Sherlock, or else YOU are cherry-picking, and you have already stated that you disapprove of cherry-picking.
The origin of life is very much related to this discussion as you wish to terminate it, although you seem to not understand that would be the final result of your antinatalist stance.
The moral question you wish to discuss does not exist in the small bubble you are trying to push it into. Antinatalism in all of it's unpalatable flavours, has many implications for all life in this universe. Try to travel outside of your bubble musings now and again. You will encounter much more depth of thought if you do.
You have not typed anything exciting yet, so I remain perfectly calm. Don't confuse my incredulity at your logic with any kind of emotive turbulence you imagine you are causing.
Quoting Tzeentch
Do you think it's immoral for a Lion to reproduce?
If your answer is no, then what intelligence rating would you apply before your antinatalist radar/morality issue kicks in and you ban a particular lifeform from reproduction and cause it to go extinct in time?
Are dolphins safe from your antinatalism proclamations? How about chimpanzees or dogs or cats?
Quoting universeness
I never stated that. You need to read more carefully, and stop the great strawman game.
Quoting universeness
I can do no such thing, nor do I wish it.
Also, how does one terminate something which has already taken place?
Got any more strawmans for us?
Quoting universeness
Humans are the only moral actors.
This is starting to sound a lot like that rejection of morality that I predicted.
Quoting universeness
Then why are you capitalizing every other word, resorting to constant strawmanning, personal attacks and pseudo-psychoanalyzing?
Those are not the actions of a calm person.
Ok then state your position, clearly, now. You can't get the consent of a life not born yet, to be born. You have therefore suggested that the act of having a child is an unacceptable, immoral imposition on the child. You have proclaimed antinatalism as your imperative for solving this terrible injustice.
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Now you refuse to admit to, take responsibility for, and follow the logic of your own argument. If this imposition is fully founded on the fact that you cannot get consent from that which is to be born, then this must apply to all life. No lifeform can obtain such consent, so, your 'no consent, so unacceptable imposition,' morality issue must apply to all life, Including the original appearance of life in this universe.
All you are doing now is trying to squirm away from following your own logic.
Quoting Tzeentch
How shallow of you. Again, I recommend you read Carl Sagan's words about the great demotions.
Quoting Tzeentch
How surprising? YOU, EXAGGERATING!
Quoting Tzeentch
I am responding to your illogical typings. You assign yourself too much personal significance.
I've stated that impositions - 'to force one's will upon another' - are generally regarded as immoral, following common moral principles. Procreation is an imposition.
Procreation seems to be at odds with this principle, and over the last couple of pages I have patiently waited for an logically coherent explanation as to why this should be ok.
So far you have tried:
- It is not a moral question, to which I replied: it certainly is. I don't see how individuals acting in ways that significantly impact other individuals is not a moral question.
- It is moral because if man would not procreate, man would go exitinct - an 'ends justify the means'-type argument.
- It is moral because the individual cares about their "legacy" and "bloodline" - in this argument new humans are instrumentalized to suit individuals' ego-driven vanity projects.
Neither of these mention the well-being of said new humans, which is odd to say the least.
Both arguments instrumentalize the individual for ulterior goals.
Both the second and third arguments are irrational.
The second argument is a moot point, since no human reproduces "for the survival of the species", and even if people did, they have no control over whether the species survives nor do they have a stake in what happens to the species in X years from now since they won't be around to witness it, ergo their preoccupation with the "survival of the species" is irrational. Additionally, it excuses imposition based solely on the idea that the outcome is desirable, which, without any type of explanation, implies that imposition can be excused whenever the imposer considers it would lead to a desirable outcome - 'the ends justify the means' is a notoriously slippery and hypocritical slope.
The third argument about legacy and bloodlines is similarly an 'ends justify the means'-type argument, but in this case the ends are completely selfish - vain ego fantasy. A preoccupation with illusory things like "legacies" and "bloodlines" as though they have some objective value is similarly irrational. Needless to say, that will not do as a basis to attempt to justify imposition.
Quoting universeness
Only human beings are moral actors.
I hope that clears things up.
You get that I totally disagree with this, yes?
Quoting Tzeentch
Do you not see how arrogant your words here are? You are not waiting for a logically coherent argument as to why this should be ok, as posters, including me, have already given you many. How about something like 'You have not found any of the logically coherent arguments presented to you so far, on this issue, compelling.' That would make you appear much less arrogant.
Quoting Tzeentch
You removed the issue of human suffering from your flavour of antinatalism, so what is the imposition you are concerned about?
Your 'end justifies the means complaint,' suggests that the means is something bad and immoral, which is what we are debating, so you are merely attempting to label the process of human procreation as immoral from the outset, which reveals that your approach is bias from the outset.
You are judging every human couple who decides to have children as ego driven and vain and you want others to consider such an argument as rational and I don't think such a position is in any way rational or logical.
You are trying to give precedence to YOUR interpretation of human morality over billions of years of happenstance since the big bang. Which leads to what is, imo, an irrational antinatalist viewpoint.
Human reproduction has a natural imperative which is NOT ONLY to do with mere ego or personal vanity but is more importantly to continue a species and prevent it going extinct.
You can try to handwave that away as much as you like, but you will be, as you have been, unsuccessful.
Quoting Tzeentch
Neither do you, you removed human suffering from your argument so the issue of individual well-being is not under consideration in your antinatalism flavour. YOU took it out. Your concern is about CONSENT (I capitalise here for the value of emphasis rather than as a rebellious act against common netiquette, so try not to feel attacked again, I know that can be a tender spot for you.)
Quoting Tzeentch
This comes across as a cold almost narcissistic viewpoint which I think very few human beings agree with. Most people do care about the future of their own species, regardless of their own oblivion.
This is not a logical argument, it is just a manifestation of your personal misanthropy.
(Btw: Analysis of the psychology of an interlocuter is common in probably all examples of human discourse.)
Quoting Tzeentch
You are just repeating the same arguments over and over again and they dont get any better each time you repeat them. I can do that to, as you have probably noticed. Anyone can do that.
Evolution through natural selection established the 'survival of a species imperative' and there is no intent behind it. Humans did not establish the natural imperative of species survival; they are simply compelled to comply with it. They can overrule it, yes, but there will be prices to pay, including extinction, if they employ something as destructive as antinatalism to their entire species.
Quoting Tzeentch
Again, you just repeat, and I have already responded to the content of the quote above, many times. Others have even offered other varied logical angles against the logic you are employing, but you only respond by repeating your arguments and making very poor attempts to dispel the counter points put to you. That is irrational.
Quoting Tzeentch
Another restatement, which I have already given my opinion on. Shallow and arrogant!
No, but it has helped confirm and further exemplify your irrationality (not a personal insult, just an opinion on your brain fog regarding antinatalism).
What do you make of the situation? Any more insights on offer brother?
Quoting Bartricks
The standard definition of the Problem of Evil requires omnibenevolence. Here is from Wikipedia:
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God
And here is from Stanford:
God must be a person who, at the very least, is very powerful, very knowledgeable, and morally very good
Stanford is using "morally very good" instead of omnibenevolent, but this does not alter the definition of The Problem of Evil. So starting with this definition, Stanford continues thusly:
This is my understanding of what a proponent of The Problem of Evil believes. And as far as I can tell step #4 requires omnibenevolence (or some equivalent) - and step #4 is essential to the arguement.
But you are asserting that your person/being is NOT omnibenevolent.
Quoting Bartricks
I have been trying to work within your conceptual framework - to figure out what exactly you are saying. Up to now I have not succeeded at this task.
So before going any further, you have to explain how The Problem of Evil works when your person/being is NOT omnibenevolent. It would be helpful if you could supply any references or links.
Thanks Universeness. You're precious. That's exactly what I did and exactly what happened. Oh well, it seems some questions are un-questionable.
I guess we just have to live in a world where all questions are not permissible.
Who knew!?
Onwards with hope I say. There's many ways to "skin a cat" so to speak.
Thanks for your support and suggestions
If I don't agree with the mods, I sometimes send their favourite song lyrics to them along with a related picture:
We arra mods
We arra mods
We are, We are, We arra mods!
!
What's life without whimsy?
Without a wee giggle now and again, we could all turn antinatalist :scream:
Live, Love, Laugh Brother Ben!
Btw, I stole the combination of those three words 'Live, Love, Laugh, from a line in an Al Jolson song from 1926! This song was part of the legacy his life left to people alive almost a hundred years after he recorded this. A great wee song.
Oh, that's rich.
Maybe you should take a look in the mirror sometime.
Quoting universeness
It's irrelevant. Individuals have intentions, and individuals aren't subjected to evolution, natural selection or any "natural imperatives". Your issue is that you're attempting to have a moral discussion about "the human species", but the "human species" as a whole is not a moral agent, and not part of a moral discussion.
I would, if I could get past you hogging all the available space in front of it, admiring yourself.
Quoting Tzeentch
Yes, they do, and they can, and do, use that intent to reproduce for many reasons, all of which serve the natural imperative of the survival of species. Your moral objection and the consent reason you give for it are not compelling. How many support your position on this thread so far? Maybe you should take a poll.
Quoting Tzeentch
Perhaps you should make yourself clearer here. The human species is made up of individual humans who are moral agents, but you now suggest that they have no moral agency as a totality.
The universe applied no discernible morality or intent towards creating humans. It is from that angle that I refer to the immorality you assign to your lineage of immoral parents, all the way back to the point where life formed in this universe. The logic of your 'blame game' fails miserably as you journey back along that path. In what way does this also suggest that the human species as a totality, has no moral agency?
What makes you think I care? :chin:
I'm not here to convince anyone.
Quoting universeness
Precisely so. Since "the human species" cannot act, intend, etc.; it is not a moral agent. To claim as much is to personify an abstract representation of what is actually a conglomerate of individuals.
Quoting universeness
But individuals do.
Quoting universeness
That's just dictated by logic.
Then you admit you just enjoy preaching; you don't accept the burden of trying to convince others of viewpoints that you think will help them in their lives?
Quoting Tzeentch
No, it's interpreted by YOUR logic. National and International laws are informed by human past and present political debate, which certainly includes morality issues. If we ever unite as a single global species and establish a world government, then planetary law will be informed by human morality.
This would then represent the agency of the entire species. I agree that there would be very few, if any, global laws or moral standpoints which would be fully accepted by every human alive but I think we can still label the likes of a global human law, as having human species agency.
I also think the national or international laws we have now, hold up as examples of the representation of the morality of our species as a totality. 'It is immoral to rape,' for example or 'child abuse is unacceptable and immoral.' These are pretty close to being aspects of the current moral agency of our entire species.
I enjoy testing my ideas. That's the only reason I am here.
Quoting universeness
No, and especially not on a forum filled with strangers. I know nothing of their lives. Imagine the hubris.
Quoting universeness
In philosophy it is of great importance to use accurate language.
All of what you just wrote is generalized (inaccurate) language - shortcuts to convey practical ideas. Useful as practical tools for every day conversation, but not for philosophy.
"The human species" does not think with one mind or acts with one body. It is never a moral agent. Speaking of what "the human species" does or thinks is a gross oversimplification of the huge variety of thoughts and actions by individuals.
Ok, enjoy analysing the feedback.
Quoting Tzeentch
Your choice.
Quoting Tzeentch
I agree with your comments about the importance of the accuracy of language and I have the language skills I have. I have not found your use of language, demonstrates a higher skill level in accuracy that I have. I was a teacher of Computing Science for 30+ years. Philosophy has been around since we came out of the wilds, people philosophise in pubs, clubs and taxis as well as the Egyptian or Greek philosophers every did. I think you might gain more access to the thinking of a wider range of humans, if you stopped trying to paint such an aloof portrait of YOUR interpretation of what philosophy is and who is qualified to engage in it.
Quoting Tzeentch
I think this example of your philosophy is shallow and rather misanthropic. Humans are quite capable of networking and thinking as one, close enough to act as one, in mimicry, of how a single mind might think and act and who knows what future networking level humans might achieve, as we enhance longevity and ability through transhuman technologies.
Posted by another member in the shoutbox, copied and pasted here by me, as I thought they were good examples, relevant to this thread.
In Utero Enzyme-Replacement Therapy for Infantile-Onset Pompes Disease
New England Journal of Medicine; Nov 9, 2022
Rare, deadly genetic disease successfully treated in utero for first time
Avis Favaro; CTV; Nov 9, 2022
In a First, Doctors Treat a Fatal Genetic Disease Before Birth
Jonel Aleccia; Time; Nov 10, 2022
Another one
I will always be in awe of such people: applying their intelligence and talents to revolutionising our fight against suffering. I will always commend them, their courage and persistence. Long live the good amongst us.
That's not @Tzeentch argument at all in this current argument. In fact, it wouldn't matter what people do or don't do in terms of technological breakthroughs with his argument about impositions.
The antinatalist viewpoint is a weak jelly, in comparison with such people. Past, present and future.
That doesn't even mean anything.
Don't worry about it, such can never be for you.
I think the problem here is twofold; a) you are a bad faith interlocutor and b) IQ
If we reflect on what an omnipotent, omniscient person ought to do in circumstances X, we then learn what an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person would do in those circumstances.
I will repeat things I've said in the past. You're a smart person and you are obviously well educated in many aspects of philosophy. You are not a troll. I find your ideas bizarrely fantastical and illogical, but I keep trying to figure out what (if any) logic is underlying your posts. This is why I take this step by step approach to try to echo back to you what I think you're saying.
Quoting Bartricks
And here's where you are just not making any sense. In the absence of omnibenevolence there are no constraints on the actions of your person. There is no aught for such a person. Your person is free to do whatever she pleases.
You have not given any explanation or description of (in the absence of omnibenevolence) what an omnipotent, omniscient person ought to do in any circumstance.
I have given you an account of my understanding of The Problem Of Evil and what it means to be a proponent of this problem. You have not done so.
I find it hard to believe that you can re-formulate The Problem of Evil without omnibenevolence, but I keep an open mind. Maybe you have some unique approach. But in the absence of any explanation your argument fails.
If there is no problem of evil then you never even get to your Ps and Qs.
Quoting Bartricks
So one last time, if your argument is to succeed you have to successfully resolve this issue.In the absence of omnibenevolence, how does an omnipotent, omniscient person decide what to do? What ought she do?
Please show us your reasoning.
I don't understand your reasoning. I think you are confusing descriptive claims with normative ones.
Moral constraints do not prevent you from doing things. If it is immoral for me to do X, that doesn't mean I am being somehow prevented from doing it.
Now, again, try and understand the point: if an omnipotent, omniscient person 'ought' to do x, then an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenvolent person 'would' do x. Not because they have do, but because they're omnibenevolent.
So, if an omnipotent, omniscient person ought not to introduce innocent life into a dangerous world without first removing the dangers, then that's what an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person would do.
It really doesn't matter if an omnipotent, omniscient person will, by dint of being omnipotent, also be omnibenevolent, for the same point would apply
Anyway, you seem very confused to me.
Quoting EricH
Again, you're just saying stuff. You have not explained why my argument fails. You have just stated that it does, though you admit that you don't actually understand what I am saying. You don't understasnd why premise 1 of my argument is a premise that any proponent of the problem of evil must endorse, do you?
Now, do you think I don't know what I am talking about? Just out of interest. Do you think I know a lot about the problem of evil, or not much at all?
Premise 1 of my argument states:
Either remove the evils from the world before subjecting innocent persons to live in it, or do not subject innocent persons to live in it.
Now, my claim is that a defender of the problem of evil - so, someone who thinks the evils of the world imply God's non-existence - has to endorse premise 1.
If you think they don't, explain why.
In the Muslim and Jewish traditions God is not omni-benevolent. Yet theodicy still exists; see book of Job. One can be good without omni-benevolence. God lays down the law but he is fundamentally beyond us.
If you just ask if a human had the choice to end all suffering by stopping procreation in some fashion or another then aught they do so? Then there is the question of how this would be done.
Antinatalism is merely a thought to ponder not a realistic position to take as we are not omnipotent nor if any being omnipotent exists can we shoehorn in human sensibilities.
I've read Job, and I while I am not an expert in these matters I get the basics. But AFAICT that's not what B is saying.
If B had said that a person who believes in God in spite of the problem of evil (either via theodicy or some other explanation) should be an anti-natalist, then that would have made some sense.
In fact that was my initial assumption as to what he was saying, since simply denying God's existence due to the problem of evil does not oblige one to take any moral position about how an imaginary God/person aught to behave. But AFAICT that's not what B is saying. B is saying that by virtue being a proponent of the problem of evil (one who denies God's existence) it logically follows that such a person must also be an antinatalist.
However, as if that weren't illogical enough, B goes one step further and asserts that the problem of evil does not require omnibenevolence. I have asked B to explain this, but he keeps repeating that it's obvious and that I'm not getting it.
Dear Professor B,
This week's homework assignment in Philosophy 101 was to explain the problem of evil. I went back to the primary sources and here is my understanding of the standard definition:
1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is omnibenevolent, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesnt have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesnt know when evil exists, or doesnt have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God doesnt exist.
Please grade my homework. If I have gotten anything wrong, please correct me.
Your humble student,
EricH
Write out hundred times: I will answer the question set and not an easy one of my own invention.
Then answer the actual question. You are not a promising student.
I cannot answer your question set until you explain how YOU define/explain the problem of evil (POE) and what it means to be a proponent of this problem.
Just to recap where we are in this discussion:-
- You have stated that omnibenevolence is not required for the POE.
- This does not even remotely correspond with any standard definition of the POE.
Now maybe there is some formulation of the problem within the writings of one of the medieval philosophers about which you are highly knowledgeable - or - maybe you have your own explanation.
But either way, you need to clarify your question before it can be answered.
1) How do you define/explain the POE without omnibenevolence?
2) What does it mean to be a proponent of this problem?
3) In what way does your definition require that a proponent of the POE must agree with AN?
In the course of our conversation I have asked you these same questions multiple times in a variety of different ways, but for some reason you choose not to answer them. This I do not understand, but I am still trying.
BTW - if you are realizing that you made a mistake and you now agree that the POE does require omnibenevolence, I will not hold it against you to change your mind.
if you can't understand why a proponent of the problem of evil has to accept this principle
Quoting Bartricks
Then I'm afraid I consider you the intellectual equal of the crow that is currently strutting about on the lawn outside. I think you're just trying to be annoying.
You can't begin to explain, can you, why you think a proponent of the problem of evil does not have to endorse that principle? Like I say, you haven't a clue - not a clue - what you're talking about. You don't understand the problem of evil or anything I have said. It's just noise, yes?
If you can't understand that without omnibenevolence there is no problem of evil, then I'm afraid I consider you the intellectual equal of the crow that is currently strutting about on the lawn outside. I think you're just trying to be annoying.
You can't begin to explain, can you, how the problem of evil requires omnibenevolence? Like I say, you haven't a clue - not a clue - what you're talking about. You don't understand the problem of evil or anything I have said. It's just noise, yes?
You have failed. Like I say, you're a bad faith interlocutor and then there's the IQ thing.
This is my last exchange to you on this topic. It's been most revealing.
It has revealed that you do not understand the problem of evil. Or how to reason.
You think that there is no inconsistency in thinking that God could have introduced innocent life into this world without removing any of its evils and not thereby have done anything wrong and also thinking that God would not introduce innocent life into a world like this without first removing some or all of its evils as that'd be wrong. That's quite something. Good job! What an excellent thinker you are.
Again: someone who thinks that the problem of evil is a problem is someone who thinks that principle is true:
Quoting Bartricks
You can't see why. That's somewhat astonishing, given how blindingly obvious it is. But it doesn't affect the matter.
You can pretend to know what you do not know but I do not see how such is at all relevant as a foundation to build a argument from. As a place to explore from and create new ideas maybe there is something there for someone with an extremely open mind and/or a more fluid interpretation of the terms used.
People often get offended by antinatalism, as a position, rather than antinatalism as an idea. The former appears as a personal dogma whereas the later is merely a place to think about what it means to bring life into the world, how we were brought into the world and how we can apply/should/might apply terms such as responsibility, ethics and innocence.
This has all been pointed out to you before though and remains unanswered, ignored and/or attacked with vitriol.
Antinatalism is certainly an idea worthy of contemplation. As a doctrine to be applied to a humanitarian lived life it has no foundation. Believing that procreation is not the best idea is fine too. Trying to provide ethical evidence for it is complete nonsense though.
It may or may not be better not to live a life (assuming such can be judged by some hypothetical omnipotent being) but we as mere human beings have sparing insight into that we cannot do more than attach a highly sceptical and unrealised concept to - the concept of omnipotence.
Would you enjoy having bar tricks as one of your teachers?
:scream: Perhaps why many decided to skip certain classes!
Antinatalism IS an ethical idea that that is what is being contemplated. There are many arguments of various takes on the matter. Why wouldn't it be any different than other human behavior in its evaluation as an ethical question?
An ethical idea can be turned over without it being taken as wholly applicable to real lived lives - like with the trolly problem.
There are no real ethical arguments. They are just positions to consider and jostle with because there is no way of drawing a clear line under some item that is universally right or wrong. Antinatalism as an idea is on par with the trolley problem it is just dressed up differently.
It's fair play to fire some arrows back in the direction they are coming from towards yourself or towards others unjustly.
But thanks for the support. :pray:
:up:
A proponent of the problem of evil must believe this disjunctive moral principle is true:
1. Either remove the evils from the world before subjecting innocent persons to live in it, or do not subject innocent persons to live in it.
EricH can't understand why this is, but that's why he has to eat everything with a plastic spoon.
Now, in respect of us this premise is also true:
2. We are unable to remove the evils from the world before subjecting innocent persons to live in it
From which it follows:
3. Therefore do not subject innocent persons to live in it.
Now totally ignore the argument and say some stuff that occurred to you while you looked at it. That seems to be the policy of most around here.
It's a highly significant argument. Why? Because loads and loads of philosophers - probably the bulk - would agree that the problem of evil is a significant problem for the existence of God.
Yet none of them have noticed that this commits them to affirming antinatalism.
One could run the argument in the other direction of course. One could argue that as it is clearly morally permissible for us to procreate despite our inability to rid the world of its evils, then it is not wrong for God to subject innocents to life in it either.
But either way, we have something of an earthquake: either most philosophers have to accept that the strongest objection to theism fails, or most philosophers have to accept that antinatalism is true.
I know that people overtly fond of the antinatalist idea do not wish death and extinction on the human race, but at the same time they effectively are shifting towards that result if procreation itself is regarded as propagating evil.
The buddhist belief is more or less that it is a lie that life must contain some suffering this is perhaps partially true but it depends exclusively on how one defines and delineates suffering and evil.
If the base argument you are offering up is simply that people born will inevitably suffer to some degree then I cannot disagree. I would also add that suffering is tied into learning, change and growth so one either opts for change, learning and potential growth or they opt for oblivion and death that is where any serious dogmatic application of antinatalism falls down.
As a means of questioning our existence it is a worthy idea to ponder on and see where our personal sense of responsibility lies.
It is not at all clear cut to everyone what the difference between ending a life, taking a life or even defining what life is in the first place. That is why there is so much contention around items such as abortion and euthanasia.
Surely you know what I am on about now and why it is an intrinsic part of what antinatalism is bringing into question. What can we do about suffering? Yet, why not ask if we should look to eradicate suffering completely if the price paid is effectively the end of all life now and in the future? Clearly there is a wide area of middle ground that for some reason is difficult for us to realise and explore.
Depends on a lot more than you are saying. First off, many arguments being made here are ones about impositions. What kind of impositions are acceptable if at all? Procreation is problematic as it isnt just a gift but comes with many burdens and can never be consented. One cannot get out of this universes setup to some better one, and even if one thinks theyd rather not comply with this worlds standards, limited choices of how to survive, and harms one must endure, self-harm/suicide is still a big enough fear that its not a realistic option as just a casual and accessible alternative. It would be gaslighting to and wrong to even use that as an excuse for why life must be good then.
At the end of the day, is it acceptable to create impositions onto others unnecessarily that are significant and not easily escaped? The only way out is ITSELF a significant traumatic harm to the person (death) or the only way out is to comply. Comply or die seems to then be the only two alternatives.
If this world always ended up being a utopia, individualized for every individual- where even the boredom of everything being good was not in the equation, wed perhaps be having a different argument. Then truly it was purely a gift with no burdens or other agendas. But life isnt just that and so theres always some excuse as to why someone else needs to be burdened.
The question of whether it is better to abstain from procreation may have some credit to it but even then I cannot fathom how we can say one way or another given that our scope and understanding of life is rather limited.
To argue not to have have children is an action that may or may not reduce suffering. We are in no position to say with any real authority what is better only to make personal judgements that sit well with us as an individual among other individuals.
We do not consent to breath, nor do we think about breathing every second of the day, yet this does not necessarily mean we are forced to comply. There are certain situations where the term comply can be readily applied but I cannot see how you can bring me to agree that comply applies to living a life. It just does not make sense to use that term here. I can understand why you can, with some force, make it appear as wholly applicable to living but it is just a term used loosely and no matter how hard it is forced it does not hold up for me.
Just wrong/error in thinking because this isnt addressing that consent cannot be had. That doesnt negate this fact. Just because its post facto also doesnt negate it. It is the non ANs that have to address the issue. its not simply handwave it away as inevitable. Someone ELSE made the decision on behalf of someone. That is the fact of the matter.
Quoting I like sushi
This is not addressing the argument from imposition that @Tzeentch and I have been presenting.
Quoting I like sushi
Comply means here, having to do the actions necessary to survive in a social setting. You cannot live by simply being, you must do certain things you might otherwise not have wanted to do. Your only recourse if you dont like ANY of the options is to kill your self- hence comply or die.
Your definition of what is means to live simply does not fit with my understanding of what life is. This cannot be resolved so any disagreement is moot because they do not even start on the same footing because neither of us is willing to give up such key terms and neither see enough flexibility, in terms of being generous with these terms, to make much headway.
If we can at least agree that the conflict between our views is due to having almost entirely oppositional uses of terms like life, living and comply then that is good enough for me. That is how I see it.
Antinatalism is an interesting item to explore. I wish the mods would not be so silly and lump several completely differing points together making it more than difficult to tease out what each person is trying to communicate.
Thanks for your responses :)
I don't think parents believe they are responsible for the things they are causing.
Scary. Either they think they are responsible for things they haven't caused or they think they aren't responsible for anything at all. Glad I'm not a parent.
Theres always a starting point from which one is trying to overcome. Buddhists and mystics will say this life is an illusion. Yet why is there an overcoming of the illusion in the first place? At that point its word games. The overcoming points to a real situation. That situation (the supposed illusion) came about through a cause- reproduction.
Here is one way of framing the argument I was going to make.
Premise 1: You cannot be responsible for something you didn't cause
Premise 2: You didn't cause your own existence
Premise 3: Your actions are caused by what caused your existence
Conclusion your parents are responsible for your actions because they caused you existence
However this leads to the ad absurdum that no one is responsible for their actions because of their parents actions.
We are all not here by consent. But I want to differentiate between the responsibility of the person creating human life and the person who never creates another human life.
I usually resort to a notion of causal responsibility. Your parents caused you which caused your actions. It might not be a moral responsibility but they were a causal necessity for your actions. Nevertheless in a purely causal deterministic world their actions were forced by their parents actions.
Is there a way to frame all this to something beneath the concepts involved like a mathematical equation?
Yes, life happened in this universe without intent, so that happenstance has no moral component.
By imposition vis-à-vis life do you mean no one was/is/will be asked whether s/he wishes to be born?
It is impossible indeed.
Yep, that be impossibile!
I was wondering @schopenhauer1, how subjective is pain & pleasure?
Good question :up:
Any reasoning on whether people should live or not per se is beyond me. Sometimes I hate myselt and humanity and sometimes i love those two groups. Cant make up my mind. But 2, thats a good sound limit.
I mean the following:
A) Imposition- foisting one's will onto another.
B) Imposition- creating a burden for another.
Both of these definitions can apply here. In the case of the utopia example, the absence of B makes the the case a bit murkier, but this existence never has a case where there is not B, it it wouldn't matter. In my argument I had three things here:
1) The range of choices are limited to the physical-cultural arrangements of this existence and circumstances of time and place. This was assumed to be an appropriate set of choices for another.
2) Known harms are assumed to be enough for others to endure.
3) Unknown harms are simply had by a person through collateral damage of being born. The parent knows there are unknowns but they can't say what they are.
2 and 3 are certainly a violation of B.
1 may seem to not be a violation of B, but besides just the fact one is imposing one's own will (A), the fact that the choices are limited to what existence currently has to offer, B is still relevant too in that the choices may not be wanted if otherwise one could choose so. A and B are violated in all three parts of the argument.
It doesn't matter as far as I am concerned, towards the imposition (comply or die) argument.
Parents have a responsibility; true, they're imposing themselves on their kids. A reasonable person wouldn't bring children into the world. Why start families at all?
Are you sure?
You tell me. As long as life is non utopian for that individual, the question becomes irrelevant as to whether it is objective or subjective. I am not making an argument of good or bad, but whether someone should create an imposition on others. I refer you then back to my previous response
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/760143
I agree that life on Earth is not an idylic Garden of Eden, but as you implied, we human care-takers are assiduously working to improve a less-than-perfect situation. We haven't eradicated suffering and unequal distribution of benefits, but Philosophical Pessimism is not going to produce a Utopia. On another thread, I've been engaged with pessimists in a Science vs Religion debate. Whereas most Religions put their faith in all-powerful gods or nature spirits to alleviate their suffering, modern Science is learning to control the vicissitudes of nature directly via Technology. Even so, some posters remain pessimistic in the face of implacable & all-powerful thermodynamic Entropy driving the world toward destruction. However, I am endorsing Enformy*1 as an inherent positive counter-agent to Entropy.
I'm not sure who you are referring to as "new age positivists", but most New Age religions are still relying on Nature to fix its own shortcomings in human relations. On the other hand, modern ecologists, both science-based and religiously-motivated, are espousing a return to human caretakers working hand-in-hand with Nature to keep the Garden and its inhabitants healthy. Unlike the anthro-morphic gods who supposedly answer prayers, Nature/Entropy seems to be deaf to human pleas. However, impassive Nature is inherently balanced between positive & negative forces as it evolves toward more complexity and intelligence. So, you could say that Nature has bred its own race of gardeners. :smile:
*1. Enformy :
"My own interpretation of Enformed history is not based on divine revelation. Yet I remain somewhat optimistic that the self-organizing natural force of Enformy will prevail over disorganizing Entropy in the end (Omega Point)."
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13862/the-self-under-materialism
*2. Ecologist :
a person who studies the relationship between living things and their environment.
Well, I just wanted to raise the issue of positivism as the antithesis of Philosophical Pessimism. In that positivists seem to have a strong desire to alter brute suffering and lack that some of us have experienced in our daily lives.
The new age positivists label was directed at entrepreneurship and huge stores of money in Silicon Valley to alleviate said lack and suffering, through technology.
Quoting 180 Proof
The question seems incoherent. As I posted elsewhere, pessimism is an attitude. So, for some pessimists who view reality with dukkha and all the suffering of the world or even the senseless samsara that we undergo, until we break through the karmic cycle, then no matter what kind of progress technology has to provide they probably wouldn't change their attitude. I say it is an attitude because Buddhists don't fall into that mood for example. Furthermore, it also seems that if what the Philosophical Pessimists profess as hard truths or brute facts about reality, then doesn't that make their point universal?
Quoting 180 Proof
Yet, the Buddhists didn't just advocate complacency with dukkha, they professed non-attachment to desiring things or goods that we hear from self-help gurus from the Eastern tradition.
Quoting 180 Proof
Progress, as defined wouldn't solve the issue but alleviate the degree to which it is apparent in ones condition.
I mean, I agree.
But as you well know, some people aren't born with "reality-agreeing" lenses and choose the "rosy-picture" one instead and remain with them.
My intuition is that pessimism (which I share many sympathies with) is very much person dependent. Some people are more predisposed to such views, others are not.
And in the latter case, existential dread is at most covered by an hour long visit to the church on Sundays - if that.
Interesting. Probably right. I sometimes wonder if there is intellectual pessimism and emotional pessimism. Personally I have usually taken pessimism for a disposition. Generally my answer to existential angst has been the same as Pablo Casals', "The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step.' Is this just a version of Camus' insistence that we must see Sisyphus as happy? Even pessimism comes with choices.
I'd guess that it depends on how hard-wired the pessimism is on that particular person. If it's not too deep, then surely Sisyphus could simply go up the mountain and enjoy the view and forget about the bolder for a while.
If it's more deep-seated, you still have options, but they're drastically reduced. Which further feeds into the whole pessimistic scenario. It has its own logic and lived experience can be a very powerful force in terms of how deeply felt such feelings are held.
True that.
Reasons for philosophical pessimism
1. Suffering (greatly) exceeds happiness
2. The universe on the whole and even our dear ol' planet earth is on the whole anti-life; imagine having to navigate a boobytrapped übercomplex maze.
3. Life is meaningless
As the OP correctly identifies, these hard facts mirror the Buddha's distillation of what life is in the 4 Noble Truths (dukkha). It's quite odd that the pessimism that prevailed in 500 bC ancient India rang true in 17[sup]th[/sup] century Europe and that it still makes sense to be pessimistic in the 21[sup]st[/sup] century. Not much has changed then, oui?
This, however, may be a mistake, one that is all too easy to make. There's been a sea change in our circumstances - science and technology have drastically reduced suffering and that's not all, the duo has promised even greater prizes such as ... :zip: not a word, ya hear! ... resurrection, immortality, mind uploading, etc.
To get right to the point then, there are problems, but a few of them if not all at some point seem remediable. Pessimism then is a defeatist attitude - it fails to take into account the subtleties and nuances of the problem of suffering and also the solutions.
The problem of burdens in the first place. Forced situations that one would otherwise not have wanted to deal with. We are always put in a deprivation to get out of. That doesn't go away due to economic circumstances. Also, if this is considered "ideal" state of being, then maybe we should reassess how we are measuring the situation at hand.
.
@Shawn why do you bring this topic of philosophical pessimism up every so often in this forum? I am the only one who identifies as one here so it is oddly pointed, even if broadcast to "everyone".
@Baden if you want to be consistent, you should probably throw this in the Antinatalist thread bin where you merged the "Life Sucks" thread. If you are going to be thorough about the more recent policies against philosophical pessimism and antinatalism threads, do it consistently.
Gracias, I was finding it difficult to explain pessimism in the modern world after what I wrote in my last post. Suffering is no longer a viable reason, it has lost its force as a convincing justification, for pessimism as the OP suggests and I concur (statistics clearly show an upward trend in overall well-being).
This, to me, weakens your forced-to-play-the-game argument. The game is (going to be a whole lot of) fun! Who wouldn't want to play; nevertheless, choice is a basic sentient right. Even if I were to be taken to paradise, I would prefer to be asked "paradise, yes/no? A quick question though: Would you rather be offered a cake even when you don't want it or would you prefer not to be asked at all, whether you would like some cake?
How is this either empirically or ethically justified?
Quoting Agent Smith
Having X amount of technology doesnt a paradise make.
Quoting Agent Smith
Id rather the option to decline the cake, and if the cake came with limiting choices to just cake and then causing a plethora of harms not even ethical to give that cake.
These dont deserve independent threads remember?
I agree this - what we have here at the moment - is for sure not paradise. You forgot to mention progress with regard to the problem of suffering - life expectancy for example went up from, what?, 40s to now 70s (global average) and how long you live is a pretty good measure of well-being if you ask me. You shouldn't ignore this proven fact if you base your argument on dukkha, oui?
Like I admitted, it's hard to disagree with your forced-to-play-the-game argument. It is, how shall I put it?, the little fly in the ointment, the David that brings Goliath down. However, it just dawned on me, pessimists/antinatlists, for the exact same reason, can't advocate for abstaining from having children. They, in this case, are being forced-not-to-play-the-game, oui monsieur? It seems we're at an impasse. The card you've always been playing is not exactly to your advantage.
Not really. Its a measure of something but not what is the case with human suffering.
Quoting Agent Smith
There is no they prior to existence being forced into anything. The parent is deciding to impose something and that is what is relevant.
There was also no one there to ask for consent to life. Just as there is no one there for consent to non-life.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What would be a good measure of human suffering then?
The innovative & pioneering & super-rich entrepreneurs (go-getters), including Elon Musk, do indeed seem to be optimistic about their technological innovations improving life conditions for all of mankind. But their risk-taking positive attitude may be based on a "trickle down" economic theory, in which the rich get richer and the poor get less-poor. But, in practice the 1 or 2% at the top get richer faster than the 98%, upon whose shoulders they are standing . That's why political progressives are impatient with the long wait for signs of progress at the bottom of the pyramid.
Regarding the question of "better for whom", abstract statistics seem to tell a different story from emotional politics. Gradual natural evolution took 13 billion years to get us to the point of primitive human culture. Since then, various technologies have been incrementally chipping away at the inequities of the economic pyramid. However, because human societies seem to be inherently hierarchical*1, instead of egalitarian, we may never reach the ideal of total eradication of poverty & suffering. But, we should be grateful for any changes that put more power in the hands of people-in-general to control their own conditions of life.
The site linked below*2 provides statistics on progress using various measures : economic status, literacy, health, mortality, etc. Unfortunately, the charts are typically based on raw population numbers, instead of percentages of the global community. Also, Steven Pinker's Skeptical Inquirer article, Progressophobia*3, provides lots of reasons for informed optimism, instead of news headline pessimism regarding social progress.
Admittedly, it's mostly those near the peak of the socio-economic pyramid who feel optimistic about their own future, and for the trickle-down improvement for all of mankind : "better living through technology"*4. Those near the bottom typically require some kind of supernatural promises, or a turtle-shell shield like meditation. So, it may be up to us philosophically-inclined thinkers to focus on the long-term evolution of human culture, and for short-term Stoicism, to keep us keeping-on toward the goal of improvement in living conditions for our fellow men. :smile:
*1. Human Hierarchy :
The presence of a drive for dominance is clearly present in humans and has been documented through various psychological constructs.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/dominance-hierarchy
*2. STATISTICAL EVIDENCE FOR PROGRESS ON POVERTY
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/23/14062168/history-global-conditions-charts-life-span-poverty
*3. Progressophobia :
Why Things Are Better Than You Think They Are
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/progressophobia-why-things-are-better-than-you-think-they-are/
*4. Better living through technology :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Living_Through_Chemistry
Are you familiar with any of Schopenhauers philosophy?
A Sanskrit word meaning 'axel hole'.
The philosophical up-shot of dukkha is that off-center axel holes can be fixed.
Philosophical pessimists, riding (not trudging along with the peasants and cattle) would rather complain about the annoying thud which accompanies every turn of the wheel then get the fuck off the wagon and fix the damned axel hole.
Pragmatists have a positive, practical view that bad axel holes can be fixed.
Quoting Shawn
WTF?
Quoting Shawn
Hey, I like a Mac, iPhone, or iPad as much as the next consumer, but let's not get carried away with paeans to Silicon Valley. [paean = song of praise] Technogurus are hired hotshots who think of things to sell, NOT sustain and improve our lives.
I like the Economist; it's a good source of information, but it isn't the Oracle of Delphi. Of course it takes an upbeat tone when talking about Silicon Valley. It's pro-capitalism. Surprise, surprise.
Quoting Shawn
Unlike the funny characters in a Monte Python sketch, digging in the mud who pause to discuss political philosophy. we are more or less programmed to keep on keeping on. It's the needs of the organism that drive us onward, not philosophy--that comes after we have made it to a safe harbor and can pause to philosophize.
Thanks for the report. I'll look into it. Next time you can send a PM though.
As you say, the topic was directed at everyone and didn't have anything to do with antinatalism, go figure.
We put his "series on pessimism" in here, so you are the sacrificial lamb of consistency.
I honestly do not think life is getting worse. Progress, is a difficult measure to calculate and there doesn't seem to be a lack of it. I also doubt that trickle-down economics works by any measure. Elon Musk is addressing some hard problems nowadays, with neuroimplats that will possibly enable a person to walk again or solve depression for the depressed
Regarding progressives, I live in a highly progressive state that is handing out money to build shelter for homeless people, and direct funding for the bottom of the economic spectrum. So, I have no doubt that things are getting better for those who are most in need in my corner of the world.
I might start a thread inspired by your post regarding, How do we define progress? I hope you can join.
Sorry to hear about that. He must be angry.
My personal philosophical worldview, Enformationism, is not exactly Pollyanna optimism, but it does have a positive outlook, based on the evidence for upward-trending cosmic complexification, due to the self-organizing ability of Nature. Moreover, one offspring of Nature : human Culture, in modern times, is accelerating the progression of life-sustaining organization -- even as it creates more ways to dominate each other.
From that pragmatic perspective, things are looking-up. But, for me personally, my economic status varies with the general economy of the US, and in step with worldwide recessions and booms. So, my Stoic attitude gets me by whenever I'm scraping the bottom of the economic middle class. Compared to the "huddled masses", though, I have no reason to complain. :smile:
PS__I just noticed the new heading for this thread. So, I see that some on this forum don't share my Stoic optimism that, if we learn to control our unruly emotions, Reason will forge a path to a better life. But, some of us seem to be so depressed by life's imperfections that species suicide is an attractive option.
Doe it not include suffering & (premature) death in reasons why life sucks?
Also, go on anti-depressants if necessary because a lot of times people unfortunately can't will themselves to stop being depressed due to it apparently involving biological factors in their brain or something like that.
Even if one doesn't want to personally raise children, one can still have them and then give them up for adoption in the form of an open adoption. But of course this is easier to do for women than for men. A man would need to hire a surrogate and use an egg donor for this (in order to be the child's sole legal parent so that he could subsequently unilaterally give the resulting child(ren) up for adoption), and even Mexican surrogates cost a lot of money for Americans. One would be expected to spend tens of thousands of one's own money in order to improve the future human gene pool, and that's too altruistic to expect from most anti-natalist/childfree people. I myself might not mind doing this if I actually had the money for this, though. I'm a huge fan of *voluntary* eugenics.
Idiocracy
Totally missing the point of most antinatalists' stance against creating suffering for future generations. Also, a lot of ANs aren't even consequentialists. There is something about being aggressively paternalistic and creating suffering and choices on behalf of others for X cause that violates deontological principles.
And are a lot of anti-natalists from financially well-off backgrounds? If so, then that means that their kids are likely to suffer less than normal children. Unless I suppose the anti-natalists just beat them up to a bloody pulp or something, but that would be against anti-natalists' ethical code since anti-natalists want to *prevent* suffering.
From at least two perspectives, this is not a good moral justification. One reason its not is that not being born means no person experienced the collateral damage of no joy. No one is sitting in nothingness regretting no joy. However, collateral damage is created the other way. When someone is born there is always at least some regrettable harms that will befall people- sometimes (and not infrequently) quite burdensome for that person.
It is also simply a violation and an insensitivity to the dignity and worth of the person you are procreating to assume on behalf of another person, that they need to live the X number of years of limited choices that this game of life offers and that they need to experience known and unknown harms. It assumes this game (the limited survival game of this life) is what another person must experience and play. This stance is aggressively paternalistic in that it assumes one can and should create unnecessary harms and assumes choices for other people. Rather, prior to the potential childs birth, is one time when one can perfectly follow the non-harm principle, and not have to mitigate greater violations of harm for lesser ones. One can perfectly follow the duty to not unnecessarily cause harm to others.
One would be using the other person and violating their dignity by indeed causing unnecessary harm, and for x cause (even to see the possibility of a happy child). The overlooking of the harm caused, for X result is indeed violation of someones dignity in this situation where no one needed to be caused harm in the first place and where no one needed to assume for another what set of choices is appropriately good for others to have. With this last point I might elaborate that perhaps this lifes set of choices is not one they would have chosen. Perhaps this games limited ways of surviving of being in the world would have been less optimal than their preference. The assumption that other self-reflective beings would agree that the parameters of this world are what they would have chosen is aggressively paternalistic. Indeed even if someone experiences joy (whether frequently/deeply or not) might still regret many aspects of this particular setup. They may have preferred a world where survival through work/labor (or otherwise destitution, free-riding, hacking it in wilderness, and death) are not the de facto parameters.
This argument strikes me as at best indentured servitude to a hypothetical or slavery to a hypothetical at worst. Am I off the mark?
"You must exist and suffer because some hypothetical beings might have it better as a result."
Slave owners had it better than their slaves.
Hi. Welcome to the forum. Agent Smith is no longer on the forum, so you won't get a response from him.
A little history for youThe moderators here on the forum decided to lump all anti-natalism discussions into this one thread because they annoy some people. I mean the threads annoy some people, not the moderators. Well, the moderators annoy people too. So, anyway, you might find yourself responding to posts that are really old. Alsoif you start a new anti-natalism thread, the moderators will likely move it here without telling you.
For your information@schopenhauer1 is our resident anti-natalism expert.
Yeah I think I agree here. The argument was:
Quoting Xanatos
My response was basically:
It is immoral to be aggressively paternalistic- that is to say, to assume
a) others should experience a certain existential arrangement that you deem as good (like having to survive in this universe in some socio-economic way)
b) causing known harms (you know this is part of almost all human lives)
c) causing unknown harms (you know of harms that you cannot predict)
All of these assumptions would be violating the dignity of the person, as forced choices and forced, unnecessary (avoidable) harm was caused on behalf of someone else when this situation could have been avoided (by not procreating).
So my argument rests on deontological considerations of duties towards others not to violate their dignity or use them.
Xanatos also implied that it is okay to do X negative to someone (that could have been avoided) as long as it is with the intention or the hunch that the person being harmed would appreciate it post-facto. Using someone, by causing avoidable harms unto someone, EVEN with the intention that they will have positive experiences from it as well, is still a violation of dignity, the violation of not using people, and a violation of the principle of doing no harm.
Once born, the situation changes whereby there is no WAY to both live and avoid harm and pursue interests. It would in fact be a violation to prevent certain goals and such that might cause harm because the person born now has interests, values, and such. At that post-birth stage, it becomes using heuristics whereby one respects the goals, values, and worth of others while still trying best to exercise ones own will.
However, prior to birth, this is the only time someone (a potential parent) can avoid doing harm 100% towards someone else (by not procreating a child that will be forced and harmed). Thus, really, the decision to not procreate is one of the only ethical decisions where someone can "perfectly" follow the rule of not causing avoidable harm, not using someone, and not violating someone else's dignity by forcing your will on their behalf.
I could not disagree more, and suggest you read more of the posts of @DA671
Good people have such thrusted upon them. Your judgement of yourself is often not as important as how others might judge you. In my opinion your views are far far more balanced, and show more insight, into the very fringe issue of anti-life(natalism), compared to posters such as schopenhauer1.
Now you're just looking to start an argument. Let's share a meat pie instead.
:grin: Forfar or Killie?
Mull.
:roll: Another non-existent who's followers you pander to! Only Kiddin! Put down the gun/Killie pie, and walk away slowly! :fear:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13310/antinatalism-arguments/p1
I think Mr Schop1 has been able to sneak in a few new antinatalist threads since the move the mods made to put them all under 1 title.
Quoting Benj96
I have made a similar point many times when discussing antinatalism. Life existing in the universe is, has, and always will be, a natural consequence of very large variety in every combination possible and my main evidence, is the fact that it has already happened that way.
The antinatalists on TPF don't seem to be concerned with the general existence of 'life' in the universe, they just think that the best cure for human suffering, is no more humans, it's as banal and irrational as that.
In the words of Winston Churchill, "Eat it raw, fuzz nuts."
I don't think so. Assuming that the occasional joys of life do not justify or compensate for life's inexorable and useless suffering, antinatalism proposes that it's better not to be born in the first place, and failing that, therefore, we who are already born and suffer should not breed any more generations of 'innocents' who will uselessly suffer as we have and do. For the antinatalist, it's (hypothetical) never-borns which are "better off", not "the dead" (especially since the prospect of an 'afterlife' remains an open question perhaps the dead can suffer?! (which is, for some, another precautionary / paranoid reason not to breed)).
Btw, I'm an antinatalist in principle at least until a viable mode of Abolitionism is invented but not by policy (i.e. ideology). I am far more concerned with reducing the suffering of actual already-borns (naturalized ethics) than preserving the 'hypothetical bliss' of never-borns (speculative inexistence).
Don't get over-excited auld yin! :lol: Yer nuts will shrivel even mair than they already huv!
I understand. You never have been one to speak out about what's fair and what's not.
One topic, only needs one soap box.
Well that's a strawman based on a mischaracterization of the argument. I believe 180 Proof already addressed this though.
You are bringing up every anti-antinatalist fallacy there is and that I have dismantled over the years. The latest argument is here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14291/the-ethics-of-burdening-others-in-the-name-of-personal-growth-when-is-it-justified/p1
If I do something that burdens you but also brings you joy, that doesn't excuse burdening you, especially when I can't get your consent, de facto. Its breaking a deontological principle of making burdens for other people, and deciding for another what burdens another person should endure. Its creating the problem that another person has to solve but it did not have to be made in the first place.
This argument is specious and a strawman. It is not about "living or dead" but living and "not yet born", huge difference. One has a potential to actually come into existence, and that choice is indeed made by those who are already born. And what of it? This seems like a red herring point. The people already alive are deciding for others what kind of burdens they should endure. See my response above. Also, gambling with people's lives is not so great either. Not existing hurts nobody. No one is obligated to create joy, preventing harm however, is something. Also, creating joy with incumbent burdens is not a purely good act, and creates harm on top of the intended good. See my thread about creating burdens unnecessarily, with no mitigating reason for that person being affected.
This might be the worst argument when debating antinatalism. Not starting a life and preventing harm for a future person, and not killing yourself are two separate things. Just because upon birth, people don't immediately jump off a cliff, doesn't mean that one is caused harm. Fear of death, etc. are a very real thing. This is the worst strawman.
Is this a joke? This is like a parody of a bad natalist argument. Antinatalists don't believe people should be kill themselves! So uncharitable I'm not even going to take this further. Go back and read what antinatalism really believes. Read some proper philosophers like David Benatar even or Gerald Harrison! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism#:~:text=Antinatalism%20or%20anti%2Dnatalism%20is,humans%20should%20abstain%20from%20procreating. Come back when you at least know what you are debating.
It is about causing suffering/harm/negatives on behalf of others. This can be both negative utilitarian and deontological for NOT violating the principle of harm and autonomy. But also creating the least amount of harms, with no consequences to an ACTUAL person (see Benatar).
This is the naturalistic fallacy. "Mother Earth" does a lot of things that don't fall into the ethical realm.
My suggestion is at least to read some of my past discussions on this. You can look them up in my profile if you'd like. They go back pretty far. I've seen every argument you can think of, so be careful what you want to rehash. It's been said, believe me.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13246/trouble-with-impositions
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13574/series-in-pessimism-you-can-resign-a-game-and-move-on
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13543/series-in-pessimism-we-can-never-know-what-sustains-us
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13118/marxism-and-antinatalism
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12594/pessimisms-ultimate-insight
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13027/this-existence-entails-being-morally-disqualifying
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11847/what-would-be-considered-a-forced-situation
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11469/the-most-people-defense
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10842/willy-wonkas-forced-game
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7092/what-justifies-a-positive-ethics-as-opposed-to-a-negative-one
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5981/schopenhauers-deprivationalism
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5098/procreation-and-its-central-role-in-political-theory
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4121/reproduction-is-a-political-act
There is a significant use in contemplating how your actions effect others and your personal motivations for having children.
"that I have dismantled over the years."
This is how delusional some antinatalists are.
You are attempting to use rational argument against fundamentalist style ossification.
The continued existence of humanity and it's future expansion into space, is the best answer to antinatalists. The best aspect of the antinatalist position, is if the human race ever does go extinct, for whatever reason, we wont have to ever endure their exclamations of 'we told you so,' as they will all be extinct.
They are an utter irrelevance, to the vast vast majority of people deciding whether or not to have children.
I have NEVER heard any young couple say 'well we chose to not have children, because of the global power of the antinatalist movement.' :lol: I don't think I ever will hear such!
This topic is meant for you since you display an example of it here so well.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14307/ad-populum-indicator-of-a-moral-intuition/p1
Yeah sure, I will click on YOUR recommendations. :lol:
I am seeking more wisdom and enlightenment so, no thanks, I have no such spare time to waste.
It would be good if there was somekind of positive afterlife to reward struggling through this.
No children equals no genocides,wars, murder,famine misogyny, slavery, racism, cancer deaths, MS, inequality and so on. It is a positive philosophy that says no to suffering and false hope.
I disagree. I think scarcity is the source of (all) human harm and that "not having children" doesn't solve anything ...
... as I pointed out in this old (antinatalism?) thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/505320
When is a human a human? In the sense of gradual slight changes over evolution?
Presumably if we have a strict set of conditions that determine us as homo sapien, then there was a point in time in which a predecessor homo species that failed to meet this criterion gave rise to the first sapien that did meet it. The parents = not sapiens, the offspring = sapiens.
In that case if there is "harm" in giving birth to children. The harm is not human. But from other animals that "imposed our humanness on us". Should we then go out and blame all human hardship on australopithicus?
Maybe we take it back further and blame everything on LUCA (last universal common ancestor).
If we are to take this sharp delineation, then creating human children was not harm done by humans. As the parents were originally not human. But rather pre-human animals. Should we then blame all the primates or extinct homo genus groups for harming us in their contribution to birthing us?
You can blame away if it helps you have peace of mind. But it seems totally pointless.
The universe gave rise to life. It imposed living on itself. Through biogenesis, evolution and speciation.
Should we just blame the entire universe then? And if we do, what comes of it? The universe doesn't give a rats ass. Nature operates the way it does. Nothing will change this.
Is there any point in exterminating life in a universe hellbent on its emergence? What is to stop life from rekindling. It is the law of chemistry and physics that dictates the emergence of biology. You cannot swim against that tide.
Just like many a tyrant has claimed on the past. Ironically they pursue obliteration and/or various forms and extensions of human suffering rather than tempering them. An aim with an absolute solution is always fanatical and often antithetical to its proposed purpose.
I think philosophy should be based on real life and lived experience and not exist in a closed off abstract domain.
My dad worked in hospitals and I once asked my mum if he ever worked on a children's ward and she said something like "No because he doesn't have an affinity with children" I asked if she knew that before she married him and she replied yes.
She then went on to have six children with him. Neither of them were good parents and he was particularly unreasonable.
For example when my late oldest brother left the Plymouth Brethren for a Pentecostal church he soon after developed MS and my dad told him he developed MS as a punishment from God for leaving the Brethren. My mother also told me that her cousin died in a bike car collision because he left the brethren and had a career in music. My aunt later told me an open bible was found next to the bed in my deceased cousins bedroom.
The church we grew up in focused on original sin and hell and damnation so like a lot of Christians my parents believed in the principal of total depravity and that they were giving birth to children cursed from birth and heading for hell unless they become religious drones.
So I don't see how you can justify having children with someone that doesn't like them and like a lot of religious people under the premise they are cursed from the outset. The bible and other religions also have a built in narrative to justify human such as the Adam and Eve story.
As a child I asked my mum why brambles had prickles on them that could hurt humans and animals and she said it was all to do with the fall of man. That any suffering and problem in nature was to blame on Adam and Eve.
So parents do give rationalisations for having children that can be and examined and are not just like animals in the wild spontaneously procreating.
It should be a personal choice not to create a child based on conscience. I don't know which tyrants tried to obliterate suffering. A lot of current western governments claim to want to end human suffering in contradiction to their policies. The same with the general public who's actions go against their alleged moral stances.
You can have a (transhuman?) policy of ending human suffering without advocating antinatalism. We just know it is not working and is unlikely to work. It also flies in the face of the natural cycle of change and decay - call it entropy if you will.
I don't see why people get angry about antinatalism considering it is a minority held position that is having no impact as far as I can see and their are billions of humans a live to day and many more being born all the time.
I believe in free will based on my own experience and as I have pointed out in one of my last posts humans give reasons for having children and have stated beliefs that can be examined unlike any other animal.
Human society is built on reason not on blindly responding to natural urges. I am gay so I am not going to accidentally impregnate a woman whilst drunk or in a fit of lust so I can sympathise with heterosexuals maybe succumbing to wild lust. But strangely most humans are successful at controlling family size ( and even some species restrict population size).
Parents are causally responsible for harm because they are a necessary component in human harm occurring what ever their intentions.
However much I am enjoying an aspect of life (Like the music of Handel or a takeaway) It doesn't make me consider forcing it on someone else. I know most people don't listen to baroque music and I don't like sport and don't like that being forced on me. Having some niche tastes and viewpoints and cognitive issues like ASD and ADHD I can see how one size does not fit all. I cannot just assume other people are like me and replicate that.
We are all going to die anyway and barring an afterlife scenario go extinct and be unaware that we ever existed. I am personally frightened of suddenly ceasing to exist. But when you are in the thick of life it is hard to imagine nothingness and having no concerns and never seeing anyone again. This is one area where I think the religious and other believers in an afterlife have an advantage. They are offering their children eternal life. But unfortunately I see no evidence for the major religions claims.
As a thought experiment it has value. As an ethical template it is both irrelevant and contrary.
If you had the ability to give the gift of the following to a friend:
But then, in order to gift the above positives to a friend you also definitely had to give that person at least several of these things below:
Would you feel comfortable and moral providing the group of positives if you knew you will 100% also be giving some variation of the group of negatives?
I think you would not feel comfortable nor think that this was moral. But procreation is not seen this way. And here lies the misguided and wrong-headed thinking regarding procreation. It's no different.
If one is absolutely sure that the harms would be outweighed by the good, then it would indeed be better to focus on the latter. However, procreation is certainly different because one's actions are not affecting an already existing person who may have interests that diverge from our perspective and who may not require the positives for living a life they value. In this case, one's purportedly benevolent act would either be unnecessary (if the person is already in a state they cherish) or downright detrimental (if it carries overwhelming risks that would destroy the good that is present). When it comes to procreation, there isn't pure knowledge about the future, which is why one has to think about the risks as well as the opportunities. Universal anti-natalism is, I think, obstinately misconceived.
This makes no sense. There is no difference in the scenario I provided except one is a friend that exists. The form is the same for both. You give one you give the other.
The point is that you would not be comfortable in one of them, but it should be both because they are essentially doing the same thing. A gift is not truly a gift if you burden someone. Thinking it is would be its own problematic idea of gifts and/or ones megalomaniac idea that you are the bearer of someones burdens because you think this is somehow good to cause for someone else. Again, problematic.
This is still wrong. If I give my friend a car and they might get into an accident is a different calculation than if I give my friend a car but they will get various pains and woes of life. I would never make that trade off on behalf of a friend,
The action isnt about an existing person, its about a future person that could exist. In lingistics this is the future conditional tense.
Happiness giving is not ethical but supererogatory. If I dont give someone happiness in my daily life but dont cause suffering I have done nothing wrong. If I cause suffering, at least potentially I have. Circumstances matter.
An accident would qualify as a woe, but the car can also save one's life as one is attempting to reach the hospital or enable one to spend time with their significant other, even if they live far away. Unless all the concomitant pleasant aspects of existence are sitting in the car alongside the woes, it would undoubtedly be immoral. And it's not as if the benefits alone are adequate. What also matters is whether these positives would put the person in a preferable state to the one they would have found themselves in without them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Which is why it has no value. If it can be bad, then the condition is that it can also be good.
Quoting schopenhauer1
A society where people were constantly being bombarded for gifting happiness would be sawing off the branch it was sitting on. For most existing people, not directly harming them is surely enough for them to live lives that they find worth living. However, when one is creating people (a state which nobody prefers), the positives matter as much as the negatives.
Its not ethical to judge for someone else the amount of harms is appropriate for the treat of goods. In fact, thats perverse. You are playing god of misery and pleasure on behalf of someone. Remember this gift is given, its not requested. And they cant tweak it beforehand to their liking or predict what it is.
Quoting Existential Hope
This literally is the scenario in both cases . Future conditional in both cases. Your non-identify argument is weak and special pleading. Id drop it.
Quoting Existential Hope
Not understanding so no comment.
It is not ethical to judge for someone else that a good they could be deeply grateful for should not be bestowed because one has been tempted by the religion of pessimism. Gifting something that cannot be requested is not unethical.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It isn't. In one case, one's actions are affecting a real person. In the other, nobody is being left in a more desirable or less desirable state as a result of what we have done. And if the prevention of harms can be good without a person being there, the prevention of happiness is also bad, even if there is no experience of hankering for the positives. Consistency and consideration for the range of applicability should not be hastily dropped. Although, their robustness is not something to be trifled with.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Fair enough (and apologies for possible equivocation). All I meant was that the nature of giving happiness differs to existing beings who already have varying levels of well-being differs from those who are yet to exist.
I'm sorry it doesn't work that way. I can't assume someone wants me to do a "happy" thing for them. But I can safely assume, and in fact am morally obligated not to purposefully harm someone when I don't have to. Certainly, not because I think the pain intendent with whatever happiness I bestow will be "worth it" in my own estimation. You can't keep doing this reverse role and think it comes out the same. It doesn't.
Quoting Existential Hope
When that person is born, it will be real. That is how the future works. Do you believe in a state called "the future"? Sounds like you don't. I wonder why :roll:.
Quoting Existential Hope
Future conditionals exist. If you do X, then Y will happen. You are preventing Y from happening. You don't need someone for the statement "Y will happen" to be true, because there will be a person who exists. Get over this argument. It's not a good look. It really shows special pleading and lack of common language usage.
Quoting Existential Hope
No because as stated earlier, happiness-giving is not an ethical act but a supererogatory one. Not causing avoidable suffering is ethical though. Even more so, willingly wanting to cause suffering because it brings about good is more than negligent, and certainly misguided.
Quoting Existential Hope
I don't think so on any substantive level. The person presumably to be born will have varying amounts of happiness just as your friend. The scenario is the same for each so it's not even considering individual levels, just broad experiences like "appreciating friends, art, achievements, etc.".
I am sorry, but I am afraid that it does. No matter how many times it is repudiated by some, the fact that the good is relevant is inescapable. Just as one may choose to rescue someone based upon their judgement of the perspective of that person and then find out that they wanted an end without making their action wrong when it occurred, one can also decide to do the right thing for someone else when they cannot attain the positive themselves. In the end, your worldview is far too narrow due to the pessimistic biased that fuel it and restrict it to risks and burdens, not opportunities and gifts. And, once again, for those who exist, not directly harming them can, usually, be enough. This is not a about reversal; it is about not being obsessed with one dimension of life. I think that it is far too deficient of a worldview.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And then, when they do possess the capacity to be harmed and benefitted, we will hopefully behave in an ethical way. I have little time for imaginary goodness or inconsistent ideas.
Quoting schopenhauer1
They certainly do, but this does not automatically lead to the manifestation of value for someone. If X does not happen, then Y will have absolutely no significance for anybody who is absent. "Common language" and intuitions can be wrong. It is not a good look to arbitrarily argue that the absence of harms can be good sans true benefits, but the lack of happiness is not a worse state of affairs simply because nobody can ask for it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Giving happiness is an ethical act. If you do not cause me pain, you have allowed me to live a happy life, which is good (though, admittedly, it isn't the same as actively doing something for others). The mere fact of practical limitations of providing happiness does not diminish its worth. Not creating positives is unethical. Willingly wanting to prevent all of it because one is unable to look beyond their obstructed perspective is even more wrong-headed.
Quoting schopenhauer1
However, I think otherwise and believe that you are mistaken here. It isn't the reality of happiness that is pertinent. Rather, the point is that there is a non-trivial difference between doing good for one who already exists and has a particular state of well-being, and someone who does not. In the former case, current positives should compel us to rethink the necessity of risks, whereas in the latter case, the dearth of any existing level of happiness and interests put the harms and the benefits on equal footing.
Getting someone a traditional gift, and handing someone a box of gifts with tremendous burdens are two very different things, and to equivocate the two is rhetorical obfuscation.
Quoting Existential Hope
Only totalitarian regimes would force people into opportunities and post-facto justify it. It is totalitarian thinking to think that one forces another's hand in the name of "opportunities" and then say, "Well, let's get the suicide machines out" as a consolation prize. Cringey.
Quoting Existential Hope
That capacity exists as a real state of affairs. Again, that is what we mean by "future conditionals". It's not inconsistent to understand how future conditionals work. You are denying a whole range of states of affairs don't exist.
Quoting Existential Hope
That's the point. Don't bring about X so Y doesn't happen. Cause and effect. Future conditional. If this, then that could happen. Don't do this.
Quoting Existential Hope
You are confusing how epistemology works. Future conditionals are only understood by someone who exists to know "If then statements". It is from the POV of someone who can comprehend "If then statements" that we know this to be true.
Quoting Existential Hope
Oddly, this is just bolstering the AN point. This is how it works when someone is born (they just live their life without your negative interference). However, from the future conditional perspective, you are not going to start negatives for another. It is not letting known harms occur (that could have).
Quoting Existential Hope
But we are not talking about unmitigated good are we. Perhaps if a paradise only universe existed and guaranteed you might have some argument. So hey, at least I'm giving you that point! But alas, we know this world is not that. But I'd even argue, EVEN in that scenario, though it is perfectly permissible to go ahead and start that life, not starting it isn't unethical. As you admit, not starting something does nothing for no one. Nothingness doesn't "hurt" anyone.
Receiving a pointless burden that stands in the way of a free and happy life is quite different from being given the very ability to experience the positives (and not by dragging inexistent souls from a superior state of existence). Evasion resides on many territories.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Your usage of the word "force" despite the absence of any evidence that demonstrates the desire of non-existent beings to avoid existence is indicative of your excessive faith in the negative. Only dictatorial dispensations would seek to eradicate all potential good due to their failure to observe value in it. It's myopic to think, "Well, I can see that you sincerely love your life, but since you were not there to ask for it, they ultimately mean nothing and, if given the chance, I would have prevented your existence." Is it "cringey"? I cannot answer that. Nevertheless, I believe that it is unfortunate. It's also not as frivolous as getting the machines out. It is undeniably tragic that people have to go through terrible afflictions. Our efforts to address this have to be incessant and multifaceted (without annihilating the good). If no other option remains, being able to find a graceful exit should not be an unconscionable demand.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I am denying that the absence of states of affairs can be better/worse in any meaningful way without a being. More importantly, I reject the double standard that attempts to devalue that which is positive.
Quoting schopenhauer1
X not happening results in A happening instead, which is good for Z. When Z is not there in the first place, the absence of X or A means nothing to Z. However, if it does in one case, I don't see any good reason to think that it doesn't in the other.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not really. It is you, I think, who is projecting value judgements onto nothingness by conflating the absence of a being and the presence of some good that supposedly comes from it. Also, if/them statements stretch beyond the negative.
Which is a mirage. Negative interference and positive intervention both have a role to play. The only thing is that an existing person can live a decent life without the latter, whereas there is no life at all before birth.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I am thankful to you for your magnanimous attitude. However, I cannot but continue to disagree. If, hypothetically, we lived in a hellish landscape devoid of all love and beauty without any hope, your view would have had immense worth. But as we are not discussing boundless harms, ignoring the good cannot be ethically justifiable. Your next statement about that possible utopia further reflects your deep-rooted pessimistic bias by forgetting about the fact that procreation can also have unimaginable value for those who exist. Finally, not starting anything benefits nobody either.
https://unherd.com/2023/04/we-need-to-talk-about-extreme-antinatalism/
I came across this article, and the following is an excerpt from the linked article:
... Jiwoon Hwang, Rafe McGregor, and Ema Sullivan-Bissett (last two are not antinatalists) have all persuasively argued that promortalism is the core of antinatalism. ... For all three individuals, if you accept that life is suffering, it is reasonable not only to want to cease the propagation of life but to end life. Sullivan-Bissett and McGregor offer the analogy of smoking if you think smoking causes harm, you dont only think people shouldnt start smoking. You believe that people should stop if they already smoke ...
This is a paper by Jiwoon Hwang (an antinatalist) arguing it's always better to cease to exist
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3184600
So, is there really no reason for an antinatalist to live?
That is answered from where the premises are being framed. Most AN arguments are about notions of starting or imposing suffering onto others. Not starting does not necessarily entail thus ending ones life once born. Indeed part of the suffering and imposition to begin with is even being put in a position where once must decide if life is worth living, and thus where Ciorans quote encapsulates a sort of resigned mindset of the living pessimist:
Meaning, suicide is an impossible wish of undoing the suffering that has already occurred. What we really want is to never have suffered in the first place. Annihilation after the fact doesnt negate this.
Doesn't non-existence in the first place leave the equation absurd? To not have existed is to never have had a will to not suffer. The relief from suffering cannot exist for something that does not exist. We have to exist with suffering in order to want to be free from suffering. This paradox makes the will to never have existed an essentially meaningless yearning. Since it is with even less meaning in its fundamental emptiness than a meaningless existence that actually exist.
Can you explain your objection? At the end of the day my point is antinatalism doesnt entail promortalism, whatever the reasons great or small for suicide. Camus asked if we should kill ourselves if life has no meaning and of course his answer was live rebelliously with the absurdity. Not causing suffering for others, by imposing life doesnt mean one ought to not choose to continue with the burdens foisted upon them by continuing to live.
That strengthens Ciorans point in suicide. We are put in an impossible situation. The nostalgia for unbirth can never be attained. It doesnt negate choosing not to impose the very dilemma on another.
You simply didnt answer me so I guess I will carry on since you have no response..shrug.
But we do impose the dilemma on others by acknowledging that the suffering of existence exists, putting a spotlight on ideas that in themselves lead to the suffering. And we also need to interact with the ideas in order to process suffering and find a way past it. To interact with the ideas require interaction with others over these ideas.
I think that when adding our biological drives into the mix, people find social bonds meaningful, regardless of their meaninglessness intellectually. We have this vague feeling of meaning when with others. So in that sense, imposing the ideas that lead to suffering on others is impossible to avoid, but equally required for us in order to find meaning and a will to exist. So we can't be free from imposing these things on others because we need to interact with the ideas about our suffering to process it through our social bonds.
Suicide is multifaceted. My point was how its not entailed with antinatslism. We can discuss peoples reasons for suicide but the quote was to point the paradoxes associated with it. It ends suffering, but for whom? The suffering has already occurred by the time it is committed. I believe life to entail suffering, both necessary and contingent. Suicide in some way is a response to this in some way, whether philosophically driven regarding meaning or acute reasons like specific circumstances.
Sure, and others can cause suffering.
Quoting Christoffer
Not sure what this means.
Moar argument please. Justify your "if, then".
Quoting fdrake
Yes what fdrake said, please. Evolutionary as in truth is evolutionary? In what way? how does it fit in that schema of truth? Evolutionary as in the biological mechanism of change via natural selection and adaptation over time for an ecological niche?
Adopting that view, antinatalism has to be false, at least after a few generations.
I am not here to argue that view of truth by the way :100:
Ok got it, you meant the latter definition I asked about- evolution, the biological mechanism. Well, this to me just stinks of the naturalistic fallacy. We evolved a lot of things, and culture has shaped our beliefs in ways that perhaps, originally, it was not physically intended for. I type here on this keyboard, not because my ancestors 100,000 years ago needed it, but because human biological makeup allows for tremendous general learning capacities (as compared with other animals), we can often reason out logical, moral/psychological, and empirical conclusions that are wildly varying "contradictory" to the if/then programming of other animals where things like, "Is it okay to kill?" or "Is it okay to impose suffering by procreation" is not even amenable to their psychological programming.
That is to say, just because "it's in nature", doesn't mean it is morally right, simply. And there are thousands of examples to speak against this naturalistic fallacy thinking. And also, contrary to this view, humans being so culturally "plastic", are naturally able to pose and try to answer various moral questions, so what of that fact?
My point was more of, if we accept that truth is determined by the universally held views of the surviving group, antinatalism will soon enough become false, and it will do so every time, as the holders of that view will eventually extinguish themselves.
Ok, so you are trying to pose a hypothetical scenario and treat it like a "meme" that gets phased out. But the problem is the same as the naturalistic fallacy as applied to humans.. Humans are so plastic that it is possible that humans have the ability to refrain from procreation and discontinue humans for ethical reasons, like suffering (that those future humans might face if born). Humans are not if/then enough to count out those possibilities. Granted, the likelihood is low, that is not due to some fixed law, simply people's preferences which rather than fixed by physical or innate mechanisms, are largely social, personal, and existential depending on how you look at it.
Right, but even then, under evolutionary truth, antinatalism turns out to be false, even if there are no humans around anymore especially when there are not more humans around. The truth value of something does not depend on whether there is someone there to state it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Of course, but I will not pretend that the moral argument works either. Antinatalism can be rejected by default in frameworks such as virtue ethics and deontology, as well as ethical egotism. Being that AN works under the premise that suffering outweights joy in life, it could also be rejected within consequentialism, as most people would reject that premise.
What makes it truth? It seems a category error to apply truth to a process. You havent explained how this term is meant to be used in this context. It seems like a misuse.
Quoting Lionino
This is all false. Antinatalism can be supported in almost any normative theory, including deontology.
Quoting Lionino
If a belief leads to a groups' extinction while its opposite leads to its survival, the belief would be false.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Right, that is why I said can be rejected, just like you said can be supported.
How is that about truth or falsity?
Quoting Lionino
Ok
It is one of the theories of truth (or so I remember reading it).
The pragmatist theory of truth is about practical consequences based on their success in solving a problem, and thus is an argument for pluralism for methods that lead to an outcome. As far as I see, it has nothing to do with what outcome is deemed as successful. If we are going for someone not suffering in the future, that would be antinatalism.
Right, but if we are going for survival, which was my initial premise, natalism would be the answer.
Sure. But obviously one could contend that "survival" is some moral mission, especially above and beyond that of imposing the conditions of suffering for a future person.
Well, everything can be contended in ethics, which is why I use more common sense than a philosophical approach when I am faced with a dilemma in real life not my intellectual topic of interest.
But to talk about, the future conditions of suffering are an unknown, which is an argument against suicide. Not only that, but the conditions of suffering are also relative. A young adult athlete might end up killing himself after a tragit accident that puts him on a wheelchair. People born without movement in their legs do not kill themselves over being on a wheelchair, because that is all they have known, and they make do without being able to walk, and sometimes they make do wonderfully. Of course, there is a limit to this, such as Harlequin disease or glass bones, but we do put down Harlequin disease patients and always have they end up dying shortly after birth anyway.
My response is not based on the empirical per se, but the empirical can be added to it. Rather, it is contra the paternalistic idea that imposing the limitation of life's choices (as life can only provide a range of choices one may have ultimately never wanted to choose from), known suffering (one knows of suffering but is willing to expose others to it anyways), and unknown suffering (one doesn't know ALL the forms of suffering), is acceptable. Rather, it indicates that procreation is in fact a violation of a deontological sort against the person who is so affected by this decision (the child born).
In Kantian terms, it is violating the principles of non-malfeasance which ultimately has its basis in not using people for a means to your ends.
In any case, my original comment was mostly playful. As a personal dogma, I don't think antinatalism is a serious idea that has to be debated. So I will just hide this thread. Cheers.
I am an antinatalist and it is patent to me so perhaps thats just par for the course
And the argument would go like this: you are delusional.
I didnt miss anything. I agree, but thats not what suffering consist in. Suffering is not a bad feeling. It is the state of being emotionally perturbed by an experience to the point you cannot integrate it. It precludes a silver lining type framing, without further fact.
Negative experiences can be sublimated. Suffering is the end state of failing to sublimate an experience. Most people choose to do this first, unfortunately. But nevertheless I am not nitpicking at all. Suffering and having a bad time are not synonymous and can be separate in some sense
I must begrudgingly comment that you make a good point here.
So there are a lot of points to make, that it is hard for me to distill it in a concise way. However, I'll try from the perspective of deontology...
So deontologically, if one believes that others should not be used as means to an ends, it would be wrong to put others in a situation whereby they have to be put in harms way in order to "grow". Thus, knowingly putting someone in harms way so that they can grow, when that situation could have been avoided, is still wrong, even if they "grow" from it.
Of course, there are mitigating factors for this. If someone is already in a situation where it is judged they will be harmed if you do not take care to mitigate the harm in some way with a less harm, then this is permissible. For example, it is better to give children shots to immunize them against disease. It is better to put children in some form of education so they an survive well in society etc. However, that is only due to the fact that the children were put in that situation in the first place. It is a different question whether they should even be put in the situation for which one must mitigate greater harms with possibly lesser negative experiences/harms/suffering.
See this thread for more detail as it is almost exactly to do with this discussion of purposefully putting people in harms way for "growth":
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14291/the-ethics-of-burdening-others-in-the-name-of-personal-growth-when-is-it-justified
Quoting schopenhauer1
The Kantian deontological maxim is something like, "Do not use others as a means to your own ends." If a parent teaches a child a skill, then arguably, according to your ideas, they are "burdening" the child. So when Honest John teaches and forces Pinocchio to perform, he is taking advantage of him and using him as a means for his own selfish ends. But suppose that Geppetto teaches Pinocchio to make toys in order that Pinocchio might make a living. In this case he is using Pinocchio as a means to Pinocchio's own ends, and it is actually a parent's duty to educate their children in this manner. A relation between a parent and child is different from a relation between two adults. Thus your means/ends analysis is flawed.
Your distinction between example 1 and example 2 does not hold water given the fact that example 2 also fits your definition of "necessity" (). In example 2 the burden was not created "just to see that person overcome the burden," but rather to provide the child with skills of survival and independence. Further, the duty of the parent to educate includes more than helping the child survive. If a parent teaches their child to dance for the sake of the child's happiness, they are not violating Kant's morality. It doesn't matter that dancing is not necessary for survival.
Kant's maxim does not include a dispensation for cases where the end is necessary for survival. The maxim is not, "Do not treat others as a means to an end unless the end is their own survival." Your Kantian argument and your survival argument are therefore two different arguments, but neither one succeeds.
(Another odd presupposition here is that everything a parent subjects their child to is necessarily a burden.)
This isnt in any way odd. Compared to not existing, its inarguably a burden to be, do or know anything
According to Aristotle the depraved man does feel this way, so I will take your word for it. :joke:
So stasis and boredom are never burdensome? We have a word to describe people for whom all activity is a burden: lazy.
"Nothing" excludes boredom or stasis. Clearly. So, not sure how you think I would respond, but im laughing.
Antinatalism is not promortalism. It's a strawman. Antinatalism is about not creating new life, not about whether, once born, it is moral or "worth it" to continue.
That can be said about literally any moral topic- not well-thought out or philosophical. Very internet trolling though, so not surprised on an internet forum...
Quoting Vaskane
Fear of death/dying is not cowardly, nor again, has it to do with antinatalism. Think of better arguments.
Dude, saying "Well they did it get over" can be inserted against any claim against an ethical rule. Someone murders someone or steals.. "Well get over it" is not an answer to whether it was ethical to murder or steal. You don't get that?
Quoting Vaskane
So this is just an ad hominem. Why even try?
That doesn't make sense and you are just arguing to argue now. Do you have an actual argument or is that it? Because I already said why that can be said about anything, and it can, so what specifically do you have other than hyperbole and ad hominem?
I wonder if you can think of something interesting to say without taking either my words or Nietzsche's out of context.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/726159
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/772934
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/808366
:death: :flower:
Quoting Vaskane
I've neither claimed or implied otherwise. Obviously, as an existential fact, suffering is not avoidable; morally, however, suffering is a reducible exigency, the reason, in fact, for flourishing (i.e. overcoming) by non-reciprocally non-instrumentally helping others to reduce, not "avoid", suffering. Of "all great things", human flourishing comes first and last, otherwise the rest (including "great things") are merely decadent detritus. Easy sleep is not proposed by me as a "virtue" but as the daily reward for and restorative of strivings to flourish even as a measure of good health: eine Ja-sagen zu Leiben. :fire:
The eternally recurring choice: blue pill (passivity) or red pill (actively affirming there is no ultimate choice: amor fati what Spinoza calls blessedness) ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/726159
Unless you have insomnia :snicker:.
But then, this belies the very point that one even should be in a place where they should be overcoming. One is simply descriptive. Every day is a sort of overcoming of death, if nothing else. But to force others to conform to this system of overcoming- the problem of initiating (this whole system OF) harms on others, is the one at hand.
Someone ELSE deemed it, that this is "good" (and God said "it was good"). People want to be gods in their decisions that others should even BE overcoming.
But more likely, people don't think that grandiosely. Rather, if they are benevolent (and not just capricious or cruel), they are thinking of some positive outcomes, usually selfish vision of future familial X. If it is for someone else's "sake" (the future person born), it might be simply thinking of the good things that might occur. The negatives get downplayed. At worst, it is used as an excuse as it is seen as necessary for the good. Even if we were to say that is a true statement, "That good comes from struggle", that belies the question of whether one should force others to endure the struggle. That will always recenter the question, and not let the issue at hand slip away.
Might be worth allowing it to pass.
If this was applied to antinatalism, imagine a prospective parent/society is behind the veil of ignorance. They would not know what position any potential child will occupy, what their quality of life will be, their potential for suffering or happiness, or their genetic/biological predispositions.
Rawls' Veil of Ignorance (aka Original Position) asks us to consider the full range of possible lives a new person could lead. This includes the best possible scenarios as well as the worst- thus extreme suffering, disabilities, mental illness, or life in poverty and conflict, amongst a whole host of other negatively balanced lives.
Since behind the veil, individuals do not know if their offspring will be born into a life of mostly joy or mostly suffering, they must weigh the potential risks of severe harm and suffering against potential benefits of a good life.
Combining this with Benatar's asymmetry, it may be rational to view the prevention of harm as a greater moral priority than the creation of happiness, especially when consent cannot be obtained.
Thus, under the veil of ignorance, where the outcomes of a new life are unknown, the ethical priority of avoiding potential harm and respecting the impossibility of obtaining consent presents a strong argument against procreation.
An inversion is occurring where consent becomes more fundamental than life. A similar inversion occurs where the justification of society displaces Rawls' question of how best to order society. The problem is that life is the precondition for consent, and is therefore prior to consent. Making consent the summum bonum is therefore misguided from the start. Either God or Nature proves that consent does not deserve the highest place, for it simply does not occupy the highest place. These sorts of arguments look to be a critique of reality, and are incompatible with an acceptance of reality. I suppose one could argue that consent should precede life, but at the end of the day the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't.
The variant on Rawls' argument is somewhat interesting: negative utilitarianism in the service of antinatalism. "I should not have a child if they will suffer much." Meh. I don't think life is ultimately about the avoidance of suffering any more than I think life is ultimately about consent, and I have found that those who are excessively focused on such things tend to lead impoverished lives. I'd say life is bigger than suffering or consent.
I never understand these kind of criticisms. It reminds me of "If a tree falls in the woods.." arguments. One can say this about ANY moral claim. For example, if no humans were around, there would be no need for morality regarding murder. THUS, how can murder be wrong (whether through consent, rights, dignity of the human, or other normative ethic) if the norms behind "Murder is wrong" do not exist prior to the existence of humans?
Obviously this is fallacious thinking. Rather, we can simply say that "Once humans DO exist, then 'Murder is wrong' comes into play". The same with procreation. Once humans DO exist, then "Procreation is wrong" comes into play. I don't see it being more complicated than that. ALL moral claims presuppose "life" (people) exist(!) in the first place.
Quoting Leontiskos
Same critique so I am moving on.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think this is throwing out a lot of important values we hold in other arenas. For example, if as a consenting adult I force you into a game you don't want to play because I think the game is bigger than any one individual's refusal, that seems mighty suspicious. And I am talking personal ethics here, which procreation (should) fall under. I do believe there is a discontinuity with the State/political ethics, but that is a different argument, which I can bring in if you want to make the category error of using laws like the draft, education compliance, and inoculations.
I also think it is a bit of a red herring to compare it to parental care of children under a certain age (often 18 yo). That is because usually the care is about preventing more harm in the future for that child, where this very specific/unique kind of decision is creating all of the potential harm in the first place. These are two different types of decisions regarding consent. At this point since someone DOES exist, it would be more harmful NOT to take care of them, as now you are not recognizing the rights of the child who does exist already, to be cared for, being that they have not fully developed into fully functioning adults yet, and had no say to be born in the first place. Presumably babies and children have a right not to be abandoned, neglected, or abused, for example, which is a different (positive/must do ethics) consideration rather than the (negative/NOT doing) ethics of simply not causing harm in the first place. One is palliative (as someone already exists and is exposed to great harms), and one is preventative (in the absolutist terms).
This doesn't make sense. How could I have a child without knowing the social conditions into which it would be born? If I were the King of Philosophy, I would outlaw thought experiments.
Just curious, do you know of Rawls' Veil of Ignorance regarding justice and rights? If so, can you see how there can be a direct analogy between the use in the equality sense for a moderate social democracy to understanding that a person's life could be of any condition?
Also, just factually speaking, no person's life can be predicted through simply contemplating it, or taking one's own circumstance as the template for how other people will live.
Imagine if I were to predict all sorts of things based on my understanding of what I think you would like.. But I forced it on you forever lest you kill yourself. Such an odd position to defend. But you will say the same for mine, simply because it is not widely considered or understood, not because it isn't sound.
I've heard of it only in the quote and link you provided. As described there, as I noted, it does not apply to antinatalism, since when I choose to have a child I do know the kind of life it is likely to live. My wife and I wouldn't have had children if we didn't think we could give them a good life.
As I said earlier, it is just factually the case you can never know the kind of life your child will have accurately. That is epitome of hubristic thinking. Any number of factors including health issues, accidents, societal/environmental changes can effect a person negatively and was not accounted for in the prediction. It has been well-documented how when we are in our "happiest states" (which is often the case of young couples who start developing a long-term relationship, or simply sexual relations leading to accidental pregnancy), we are often at our worst state of predicting all the negative things that can occur (Pollyannaism).
Also, personal decision-making process of a single couple is presented here as a rebuttal to a broader philosophical position. This is a case of confirmation bias and overconfidence in predictive ability of a complex situation (every single experience of a lifetime's worth of experiences of a person).
If life is ever good enough to allow one to ponder whether to have a child, life must be good enough for the child just the same.
If life is so bad to ponder whether to have a child, dont have a child. But should no one be allowed to have a child? Death is still coming for all so what does it matter if you do or do not have a child? No one, not even your children (if you have any) are going to be there long enough to justify any judgment of it.
I believe I just answered this objection:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Fire Ologist
How does that logic follow? What happens if life was really bad but one still pondered whether to have a child.. Someone in a terrible circumstance let's say. It is simply false that all circumstances thinking of procreation entails one is in a good place. Also, even if one was in a good place whilst thinking about procreation, why would that effect the morality of the decision of creating suffering for another person?
Quoting Fire Ologist
That makes no sense. For example, if someone is suffering in agony, that person isn't going have such a carefree outlook. However, one doesn't even need to go to the worst outcomes, just the fact that you are making a decision for someone else who will live out the burdens, is enough to give pause.
Having a child, feeding a child, etc. are as much making a decision for someone else as deciding not to have a child, or aborting a child.
If it is good to have no children because life is suffering, than life isnt all bad since we get to make this good decision to have no children. Arent we brave and honest and considerate. Such wonderful compassion for the suffering of future generations - we should build ourselves some statues for thinking so compassionately and reasonably so that all future generations will remember our sacrifices. Oh wait.
I see your attempt at irony. Nice, I like irony. But since it really doesn't have an impact on the argument, I don't have much more to say to it. If no one was around to gain the benefits of non-existence, shall we create sufferers so that they can see how they would have benefited from non-existence? That would also be ironically wrong.
Then why not have kids. Life is good too.
Because causing suffering is more important than not promoting good.
From a more practical standpoint, if a prospective parent is either 1) so depressed that they (incorrectly) view their life (since they have no true knowledge of the subjective assessment of life by others) as pure suffering or 2) their is actually so materially terrible that it is in reality pure suffering, then neither of those situations is optimal for childrearing, thus that individual or couple definitely should not have children. However, that individual's situation is absolutely not a reason for anyone else to not have children.
That's very different from a "Veil of Ignorance." If it only means that the we can't predict the future perfectly accurately, then it's kind of a useless concept.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, it's not just a single couple. It's reasonable to say that any prospective parent can know their future child's ethnicity, social status, and their idea of how to lead a good life with reasonable accuracy.
To be clear, I'm not arguing against anti-natalism here, although you know I find the idea repugnant. I'm only arguing that your logic is flawed.
No, that's not what I am saying. Your premise is
Antinatalism reminds me of Gnosticism, where nature and the material world were created by an evil god and one is thus supposed to escape this entire order of being. Or in modern terms, something like The Matrix. The true god is represented by Consent, and in the alternative, non-evil universe, Consent reigns. Given our gnostic situation, the best we can do is escape the material order by ceasing all procreation. Historically gnostics really did tend to eschew procreation.
(Edit: I now see you have authored a thread, "If there is a god, is he more evil than not?" :razz:)
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think consent has a place, but not the highest place. It does not trump everything else.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But I never made that comparison...?
No, it means that from a position of ignorance we should do the LEAST amount of harm. And our disagreement is over how ignorant we truly are over a complex situation like a person's psychological, physical, interpersonal, and emotional well-being over the course of a lifetime.
Quoting T Clark
It is true that many decisions are made based on prevailing social norms, but this does not elevate these norms to the status of ethical imperatives. The is/ought problem remains central here: the fact that something is commonly done does not mean it ought to be done. The ethical implications of bringing a child into the world must be scrutinized independently of societal conventions, and this scrutiny reveals the inadequacy of current norms in addressing the potential for harm and suffering.
Quoting T Clark
When it comes to making decisions for another person, procreation is unlike any other decision. It imposes an irreversible existence and all its accompanying burdens onto another being without their consent. This is different from other decisions we might make for someone elses perceived benefit, as those typically allow for some form of redress or agency by the affected individual. Comparing it to a gift is illustrative: a gift can be accepted, rejected, or discarded with minimal consequence. Procreation, however, imposes life, with all its inherent suffering and challenges, making it a decision of an entirely different kind AND magnitude.
We are not ignorant that suffering will occur- but we are ignorant as to the manner it will take shape.
Hubris is a source of a lot of well-intentioned but misguided ideas.
But that's not what I am saying. Rather, if a human exists, then consent towards other humans is on the table.
Quoting Leontiskos
This all follows from a faulty view of my premise.
Quoting Leontiskos
I kind of like this notion, though I don't hold "Consent" to be independent of humans, simply entailed in humanity. If there is no humanity, consent disappears as well.
Also, this particular argument is a bit different than just consent. Rather, it is saying that since we are IGNORANT as to how any person's life truly will play out in the course of their lifetime, AND we cannot get consent otherwise, we should do the option that is with the intention of the LEAST harm, which is of course, not even procreating that person who will be harmed to X degree.
That they will be harmed is generally not questioned. To what extent, and by what right is what is at stake here.
Quoting Leontiskos
Ha, well, look at my profile for a better understanding of my overall philosophical position. And Gnosticism is mentioned, but as an analogy to Philosophical Pessimism, not, obviously, as a belief in it as a wholesale mystical/ontological belief system.
Quoting Leontiskos
But this also relies on what "the good" is, and defines it in "negative" terms (what not to do). Suffering is weighted more heavily in this conception such that, causing negative/suffering unnecessarily on someone else's behalf is weighted as a bigger moral consideration than any of the positives that result from causing the suffering. Not causing great distress to someone is a bigger ethical consideration than say, buying them cake.
There's another argument here to be made from this, but I am not making that case right now. Though all of it basically can be tied together to make for a compelling set of arguments from various angles contra procreation.
You didn't respond to my argument. The argument you make here is your usual one and has nothing to do with a veil of ignorance. No reason to take this any further.
What isnt answering your supposed objection of my use of VOI?
Okay.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Okay, so maybe something like this?
Thus consent functions as an exception to the prohibition on suffering, but does not apply in the case of procreation.
I would appeal to a similar "inversion" argument to the one I already gave, but focusing on suffering rather than consent. Just as consent does not constitute an absolute principle, neither does suffering-avoidance. "I'd say life is bigger than suffering or consent."
The key here is that birth/existence is qualitatively different from, and ontologically prior to, consent and/or suffering. More directly: life is more than the avoidance of suffering, and therefore the desire to avoid suffering is not a sufficient reason to nix life.
Regarding the moral maxim of (1), I think it would apply to procreation in a very dire apocalyptic scenario, but I don't think it applies more generally throughout history. I don't know... There are a lot of different ways one could go with this.
ChatGPT is pretty impressive:
[hide="Reveal"]Can you think of any counterexamples to the maxim "Do not cause suffering, absent consent"
ChatGPT
The maxim "Do not cause suffering, absent consent" is a foundational principle in ethics and moral philosophy, often associated with the concept of autonomy and the importance of respecting individuals' rights and choices. However, there are situations where this maxim may face challenges or counterexamples:
Emergency Situations: In cases of emergency where immediate action is necessary to prevent harm, such as administering medical treatment to an unconscious person, causing temporary suffering without explicit consent may be justified to save their life or prevent further harm.
Parental Authority: Parents often make decisions on behalf of their children, such as vaccinations or medical procedures, without their explicit consent. While parents are expected to act in their child's best interest, these actions may cause temporary suffering.
Paternalism: In some cases, individuals may act in what they perceive as the best interest of others, even if it causes temporary suffering, without obtaining explicit consent. This concept, known as paternalism, can be controversial as it overrides individual autonomy.
Legal Punishment: In the context of legal punishment, individuals may experience suffering as a consequence of their actions, such as imprisonment or fines, without their explicit consent. This raises questions about the balance between justice and the prevention of suffering.
Animal Welfare: The maxim primarily focuses on human suffering but may not directly address the suffering of non-human animals. Actions that cause suffering to animals for purposes such as scientific research or food production may occur without their consent.[/hide]
The question is then whether these exceptions to (1) apply to the case of procreation. For example, we can cause suffering absent consent when punishment is due, but is punishment due in the case of procreation?
Quoting Leontiskos
Says it all for me on this question.
Anti-natalism doesnt save anyone in particular from suffering. We are not doing anyone any good by not procreating. There has to be a someone to prevent someone from suffering. Life is ontologically prior as Leontiskos said.
It depends on what kind of life you expect your kid to have. If there's a 99% chance your child will die an excruciating death by the time they're ten, then you probably have a duty not to have a kid.
So the case is really best exemplified by David Benatar's asymmetry argument that is now more widely known than when I used to discuss it.
However, I don't want to get caught in the weeds of that particular version of the argument. I think it is best reformulated clearly as this:
Preventing happiness is less a moral obligation than preventing suffering. All things being equal, in the case of non-consent, and ignorance (like this Veil of Ignorance argument is saying), it is always best to prevent suffering, even on the behest of preventing happiness.
The fact is, this is from the perspective of the decision-maker. That SOMEONE exists who can understand what will result is all that matters, not that the subject of the action exists.
But I think I answered that objection from @Leontiskos. That is to say, all that matters is that humans exist for this to take place. No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle. The principle doesn't come first. IF humanity exists, the morality of being human applies. IF people exist, and the decision is about making another suffer or preventing it, then this applies.
Also as indicated, and I went into more detail here on...
Quoting schopenhauer1
See about the difference between palliative and preventative ethics. Procreation is in the realm of preventative ethics, not palliative. AND it would be wrong to make a preventative situation turn purposefully into a palliative one.. I can prevent harm, but I cause it, so that you now need to mitigate it.. That isn't right...
But if the reason to promote antinatalism now while there is humanity is that It is the ethical thing, and its goal is no humans, then No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle.
Meaning, what is the point of being ethical towards beings that arent born yet, if ethics itself is not to be? Why would we humans uphold any ethics above upholding the procreation of more humans, if upholding that ethics means that humans and ethics both equally should no longer be?
Antinatalism is just as much an anti-ethicalism.
This doesn't make any sense to me. We are not living for ethics. Ethics is present because humans are around.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Ethics simply is entailed if humans exist. We aren't living to carry out ethics, ethics is carried out because we are living. It is actually precisely CONTRA a notion that we are obligated in some "positive" (must do) sense. That is to say, there is more obligation to prevent suffering (a negative ethic), than to promote happiness or any X "other" beholden reason. That is to say, if there was a case whereby my action results in an unknown amount of suffering, and I can't get consent beforehand, and the effect is not only trivial, but major (though this part is not even necessary to state), that is more relevant than the unknown amount of happiness that might result as well from this action.
**excuse my constant affect/effect errors.
I think Benatar's argument avoids the question of whether life or existence is good.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There persists the conflation between the ontological and the "moral" (in the modern sense). It is the difference between preventing something and preventing the potential/potency for that something. To prevent the potential for X will also prevent X, but it is not the same thing as simply preventing X. One could prevent their child from getting smallpox by having no children or by vaccinating the children they do have, but these two options are not parallel. The obligations with respect to each are somewhat different.
Is Thanos from The Avengers a good example of an antinatalist? Specifically, a Thanos who snaps his fingers and everyone disappears without pain, not just half of them? No suffering + no potential for suffering = perfection. The theological gnosticism crops up its head again here, for the gist is that it would have been better for nothing at all to exist. I don't think the theological or metaphysical shift is avoidable given that your argument pertains to ontological realities and sheer potencies, rather than only to mere "moral" realities. To weigh suffering against life or existence will go beyond the "moral" insofar as evaluations of life and existence do not fall within the "moral" (in the modern sense).
But the Christian and Platonist traditions have been saying that being and goodness are convertible for thousands of years, and given that the argument does not recognize this seems to imply that it is weighed down by a specifically modern context. Yet to make an argument against life per se or existence per se is to move beyond that modern context.
I am not sure what this is supposed to translate to, ethically speaking. It becomes irrelevant given the considerations of suffering prevention being more ethically an obligation than happiness promotion, all things being equal. In fact, if what you are implying here is correct, it is your notion that has some template that people must adhere to assumed to be there prior to birth "The Good". But I am not sure completely what you are implying, so I'd hold judgement. "Life is good" seems a theological statement of some sort.
Quoting Leontiskos
So as with TClark, this will be a case of how we parse the facts of life. That is to say, I believe it to be the case that it is empirically evident that life has X amount of suffering. Charmed lives don't exist, except in perhaps imagination or thought experiments. And with this particular argument, it is precisely because we are ignorant of what that X entails that we take the route of causing minimum suffering.
I also see the thread about fate and determinism there is discussion of agency. Clearly, the child did not have to experience any suffering. And this is why Is ay that it is never good to turn a preventative into a palliative purposefully. I don't cause (the conditions for) suffering so that you can take X, Y, Z palliative actions from it. And then I don't gaslight the situation and say that "It is what it is", or that "This is just not a growth mindset". We know that at least certain amounts of suffering, often well-known can and do occur.
Quoting Leontiskos
So you are conflating two arguments into one here. It is precisely because people cannot be consented that this Thanos argument is wrong. Also, once people exist, taking their existence away, is not the same question as bringing people into existence, so should probably be thrown out as some sort of counterpoint. There's too many differences.
As to the Christian/Platonist idea of being and goodness, or nothingness and perfection, I do find it intriguing. This is actually touching upon Schopenhauer's notion that we are NOT actually "being" in some rested/Platonic way, but because we are in the world of Maya, we are in the world of "becoming" which by default is always in some way "suffering" as it is a world of dissatisfaction, or lack, or "what we do not have presently and fades away", a world of "vanity", and all such notions. Indeed, there is an argument is precisely this world that we experience that is NOT goodness in any Platonic/completed/perfected sense. And interestingly, mysticism tries to work around this problem by saying that we are trying to "perfect" the world by giving it value and moral meaning (usually by way of enacting various commandments or divine actions upon the world).
However, though I am glad to discuss these notions, it is tangential to the argument itself which doesn't need the world to have any inherent value per se. Rather, as long as there is suffering (in any sense of that word), and the decision is there, that the moral weight is to prevent suffering more than any other one, including promoting (what one believes to be) good experiences for a person. It creates a baseline set of boundaries, as what people can end up doing is any such harm to a person and justify it in the name of X positive value that they think will result. Rather, if people have inherent dignity and worth, that respect for this boundary would seem to be necessary, otherwise people are perpetual pawns that are to be treated as such.
Being human (or maybe any being with senses) entails suffering.
Human beings are inherently ethical beings - the beings whereby ethics exist in the universe.
And in order for human beings to act according to this ethics that they are, one thing they cannot do is inflict suffering without consent.
Since we cannot get consent from the unborn, and being born human entails suffering, we should be, we ought to be, anti-natalist. As a result of us currently living, suffering, ethical beings acting as ethical anti-natalists, there will be no more humans, but also no more human suffering inflicted unethically, without consent.
Am I with you so far?
However, with no more humans, there will be no more ethics either. As you said ethics is present because humans are present. So humans not present (unless some other beings are ethical) means ethics is not present. With anti-natalism, we not only avoid inflicting suffering without consent, we void the ethics that told us such inflictions are wrong.
So the anti-natalist is saying, in order to abide by the ethical rule now, we must create the conditions where this ethical rule will no longer exist, since humans are the presence of ethics and no more humans will be present. The anti-natalist is saying we should eliminate the existence of the ethical rule for the sake of following the ethical rule. Just like they are saying we should eliminate the possibility of human procreation (end all future humans) for the sake of abiding by an ethical rule that is only found in existing humans. The anti-natalist gets to be the last ethical man standing, and the last instance of ethical behavior anywhere in the known universe.
The anti-natalist must admit weve evolved to a point where we humans inherently posit should and ought only to take this power and say I should not have evolved at all because my consent to suffer was not obtained. And since ethics comes to be only through me, a human, ethics ought not to have evolved in the universe either. But then if ethics didnt exist until I did, how could it have been unethical for me to be born?
The fact that the ethics summarized as anti-natalism arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained.
(Its not quite a paradox because it holds is together with ought not, as opposed to paradoxically joining is to is not or ought to ought not, but it is certainly absurd.)
Anti-natalism is either a self-defeating way of saying, because of human suffering, it would have been better if humans never existed. Or it is simply passing judgment on God, saying God, a being whose mere existence entails ethics (like humans) was wrong to create humans and inflict suffering on them without their consent.
Absurd or Satanic. Better to rule without humans or their ethics in hell, than to consent posthumously to suffering in heaven.
Why should it matter if the ethical rule disappears though? What needs to preserve the ethical rule? The rule comes into play when more than one human is around, and the potential to procreate is there. If there is no potential to procreate, it no longer applies. Why would it matter that the rule gets rid of the application of itself? I don't see the problem.
Water by itself has no value. But when an animal relies on it, water then obtains some "value" for that creature. If there are no humans, there is no ethics. If there are no humans, there is no thirst either. Thirst exists because humans exist, we don't exist because thirst would cease without humans. That makes no sense.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I don't get what you are saying. A lot of people believe honor killing is ethical. Does that mean the first person to question this was wrong because it was a novel idea? Also, before you were born, there was the potential for you to be born. You didn't need to be born for the ethics to be relevant, just the potential for "someone" to be born.
Quoting Fire Ologist
But it isn't absurd. You are already finding out that your own objection seems to have no impetus. All this is saying is humans can self-reflect which is different than other animals.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I have no idea what you're getting at. If humans don't exist, there are simply no people, not some hell. Also, I don't think anyone has called existence "heaven" in any non-ironic way. So, not sure what that's getting at. If you have some unspoken religious biases that you would like to bring up, go ahead.. Your notions start becoming clearer to me if you have some theological reasoning, but it doesn't become more accurate, just explains your frustration perhaps. The "Existence must exist so that we can fulfill whatever X mission" explains some of your implicit confusions and objections and it turns into the old debate of the problem of evil.
Interesting enough, antinatalism SOLVES a Christian problem by bypassing it. Souls cannot be sent to hell if you do not bear them into existence in the first place. If you didn't do this, of course, you would violate the "be fruitful and multiply", but let's say it was carried out to its logical conclusion and no one existed.. Would more people just be created like Adam and Eve so that they go through this game? Why have the game? What is important about the game? Doesn't it seem a bit anthropocentric? If aliens exist, would their religion reflect a god that has them as the main characters in their own Moral Play? Perhaps they have a similar but not quite the same salvation mythology.. One that precludes humans? :chin:
But I think ethics is either irrelevant, or is not being applied far enough. From my perspective, if a person, or a generation, is even grossly unethical, the organism and species should not be punished. Antinatalism is unethical itself; a patent example of the arrogance that our constructions have led "us" to. That we are considering sterilization of a living organism, because we can't seem to simply change our ways. Many even blame the body for that: craving, drive, aggression. As if much of the animal kingdom isn't basically variations of us. Our condition; our immoral condition, if that's what we're settled at, is not because our organism is naturally immoral. We constructed immoral in that uniquely human condition, Mind. And we can deconstruct it. We don't have to end an entire species to do so.
The fact that the ethics, summarized as anti-natalism, [only] arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained, [must both be true and ethical, is absurd.]
Fire Ologist
The two sides of the AND above defeat each other. So we must exist in order to not exist, by enacting a rule that must not exist unless I exist. This is impossible to live by. I am making a rule that says I should not be making rules.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Because it undermines its enactment in the first place when it results in no ethical beings.
If humans disappear because all humans follow the rule, and with humans the rule disappears, then such humans would be being ethical for sake of a world without ethics.
Maybe it is because of my own limitations that I am suffering to make my point and why I cant logically show why antinatalist ethics is absurd, but that is because this really boils down to the amount and depth of suffering in the world. If we all thought life was only suffering, and unfulfillable, longing desire, without any satiation or anything else, we would be inventing ethical rules to justify not only antinatalism, but mass suicide, after wars to enforce the ethical rule once and for all (if we werent too incapacitated by suffering to act at all).
But life is not only suffering. We generally dont think that. At least most of us. Often.
And some suffering is good (like right now Im starving and soon I will be eating). Hunger is the best sauce. The poor always eat well. - Sancho Panza, Don Quixote.
It boils down to whether it is absolute that inflicting suffering without consent is always and only wrong. Life is not only the suffering of being wronged, it is also forgiveness. You really can suffer and move away from suffering. There really are both. I will be done eating today. You can give consent after the fact, after youve suffered without consent and say oh well, life goes on. Because there is not only suffering.
And it is worth some suffering to force a new life to be hungry once in a while, to work hard once in a while, to struggle and fail, in order to also have bread and achieve success, or just sit down and relax.
Most real suffering is self-inflicted. We break our own rules all of the time, and shoot ourselves in the foot, just so we can say see, life is only suffering to ourselves, regardless of those around us.
But some of us can sometimes just live life, accepting the suffering, forgiving the inflicters, and see that inflicting this life on another without consent is like giving them a gift, an unexpected, un-consented gift.
I just disagree it is moral or ethical that we should only focus on the suffering when deciding what world is better for any other people, such as any future generation. We need to see what is good in life just as well before we make out ethics and enact it.
Antinatalism upholds ethics high above the life and suffering of the human beings it is designed to promote, and this is absurd to me. If there is to be some grandiose place for any such high and mighty ethical laws, such as thou shalt not inflict suffering without consent, then there must be humans there to uphold it in that place. Ending humans ends any good ethical laws protect.
Following our disappearing ethical laws isnt the only good that is done in the world; life has its own goods just as well.
Why I don't see the problem. "What" is being undermined if there are no ethical beings? You are making it as if ethical beings are necessary to exist in the first place.
Quoting Fire Ologist
And the problem is?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Quoting Fire Ologist
I can say that the potential of suffering is always on the table, but that the world isn't constant suffering might be a different standard for things like suicide. Rather, the case isn't being born and leaving, but putting other people into the situation in the first place. I think the AN argument has presented a cogent case against this decision.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yeah, but this indeed highlights the underlying tension between positive and negative ethics. It would be wrong of me to make you suffer just to overcome the suffering. Rather, it was better you didn't suffer at all. And then when you inevitably tell me, "But the suffering is where the meaning is!" Then I would say that this is misguided. If meaning entails suffering, there are a few things going on:
1) YOU should not be the arbiter of the suffering. Even if suffering is supposedly "good", it is not ethically encumbent on someone to take it upon themselves to be the executioner of the suffering onto someone else, violating the dignity, consent, autonomy, of a person, and violating the basic principle of "non-malfeasance" towards fellow humans.
2) Perhaps a world where "meaning" entails suffering, isn't one where it is best to bring someone into in the first place.
2a) Even more salient, and related to this Veil of Ignorance, we don't even KNOW how much suffering one's life might entail. Let's say you think that 22 is the threshold of suffering any average life should have to endure, because that is the number for "growing".. Well, if someone lives a 47 life, you can never predict that, where the suffering has now exceeded the amount necessary for a balanced, happy life. It is now excessive.
3) It is aggressively paternalistic to assume for someone else that THEY need to suffer because YOU think there is some "good" to it. Again, it's the ugly side of "positive ethics". We MUST save blank from certain death is a different situation than we MUST create beings that MIGHT experience happy lives. And you add to this that the cost of this is a lifetime of negative experiences, in unknown quantities, enacted without consent, this simply does not have much merit for its assumptions.
Quoting Fire Ologist
The problem again is with preventative and palliative ethics. In almost every other situation in life, it is a palliative measure.. You temporarily cause discomfort for a child because they need to learn to survive. But not procreating is simply preventing all suffering, period. All things being considered, not causing harm is the ethic that has no need to be violated. There is no one that needs "palliative harm". Rather you are CREATING THE VERY NEED for palliative harm. This is now in the realm of preventative ethics.
Quoting Fire Ologist
The point is we need not put other people in this situation in the first place. I don't throw you into a game and say "Tough luck, bitch" and then gaslight you by saying, "Hey it's your fault. I tried to give you tools!". It is actually quite manipulative, what you are suggesting.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Actually, no we don't. Let's say for the sake of argument that both absolute hellish lives and absolute charmed lives are not really existent (though there is way more evidence for more hellish lives).. Even if there was some mix, the "happiness creating" aspect has no bearing if that happiness is also coming with the "gift" of unknown amounts of burdens. There is no amount of paternalistic ethics that can be justified for such hubris.
Quoting Fire Ologist
You keep claiming this, but for no good reason. Why must there be humans there to uphold it in place?
Because as you said Ethics is present because humans are around.
Your argument is something like this:
"If there are no humans, the ethic cannot be followed".
My point is, "Correct".
And you see a problem there, but I don't see where.
No. My argument is if there are no humans around there are no ethics around. Your argument is if the ethics is antinatalism, there would be no humans around. You just just dont see the absurdity of keeping the ethics in place without the humans to place it there.
Correct...
Quoting Fire Ologist
Huh? I am not following.
If there is no potential for procreation, there is no need for the ethic. Similarly, if there is only one person in existence, there is no need for ethics against murder.
I think that what is primarily at stake is a "theological" question, namely the question of whether life itself is good or bad, and therefore my response here would be "tu quoque." Your position passes beyond the mere ethical when it comes to depend upon the proposition
Now it seems to me that you are committed to the proposition
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is a good example of the ethical/theological or act/potency equivocation. The more precise statement is, "Clearly the child did not have to exist, and therefore did not need to experience suffering." To conflate the situation where the child does not have to experience suffering with the situation where the child does not have to experience suffering because there is no existing child to suffer is part of the problematic equivocation. You are not merely proposing removing suffering from a child, you are proposing removing the existence of the child as a means to avoiding that suffering.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, not at all, for you have already denied that consent plays a central role in your argument. The Thanos example is apparently apropos. If suffering is the real problem, and life has no intrinsic value, then if Thanos can remove suffering by removing lifewithout causing suffering in the processthen on your principles he should do so. You relegated consent to a caveat, <1. Do not cause suffering, absent consent>. Because Thanos is not causing suffering consent cannot be relevant. If you reject the Thanos comparison then consent must play a more central role than your defensive argument permits.
Coming at this from a different angle, if Thanos attempted to obtain consent before snapping each individual out of existence, do you think this attempt would be rationally sound? Does it follow from your argument that consensual euthanization of the entire race is the ideal and rational solution?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Okay, interesting. I will leave this to the side for the sake of time, but it is worth noting that Platonist and Christian schemes allow for a fallen world of cave-shadows.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So again, your argument here is bound up with the claim that the world has inherent negative value. More precisely, it is bound up with the claim that human existence has negative value (i.e. is evil). This is in no way tangential. If we remove that premise then your argument disintegrates, does it not?
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's not at all clear to me that your position is the one that favors inherent dignity and worth. To nix life on account of suffering seems to be contrary to notions of inherent dignity. If humans have inherent dignity, then they have it regardless of negative attributes or accidents such as suffering, disability, etc. That is basically the heart of what we mean by dignity, "Even in spite of your inadequacies, your life still has intrinsic value." Suffering is merely one form of inadequacy.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There is the danger here of an argument which proves far too much. Imagine a world where every person suffers a pinprick but no more, and the remainder of their life is pure happiness. Why wouldn't your or Benatar's argument also prohibit procreation in this world? The pinprick of suffering seems to fuel your arguments just as well as extreme suffering. Benatar's asymmetry holds just as well in that case.
This seems to be the same problem as Fire Ologist, but a variation. The ethic is on the part of the person enacting the suffering onto the other. At this point, it is not about the "other".
Let me walk you through some situations. Will you grant me that instead of an existing "person", I can instead use an existing "state of affairs"?
If you allow me that, we can use the following analogy...
There is a state of affairs whereby I can put someone in harms way by X action (it need not be procreation).
The state of affairs does not exist yet, however. You can always say, "How can you prevent a state of affairs that is not existent! That situation has not come about yet.. In fact, we don't even KNOW which person might be harmed by the situation, but we know that in all likelihood, a person WILL be harmed, if YOU (the person who is doing the action) does X".
In this state of affairs scenario, it is doubtful you will find this thinking absurd. That is to say, just because there isn't a particular person that this state of affairs will affect, doesn't mean we are not incumbent to prevent the situation. All the more so, the more important the harm that will occur, that it can be prevented reasonably easily, etc. etc. So no, I don't see this situation applying.
Quoting Leontiskos
I didn't say consent was ONLY necessary when doing harm to someone. In fact, I didn't even mention whether ONCE ALREADY EXISTING, non-existence is or is not considered a harm. You cannot put the genie back. Where as with birth, there is no one that can get consent, NOW someone exists.. The very basis for this kind of deontological basis of ethics (respect, dignity, autonomy, etc.) now applies to a person.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, now you've changed it. If he asked, and everyone consented, ethically speaking, this isn't violating an ethic. Whether this is the right "solution", I don't know, because I don't believe already-existing to be symmetrical for never-existing. In modal thinking, never-existing is simply the potential of something to exist, and the already-existing is the factuality of someone's actual existence. Can it be that once existing, different priorities are considered in regards to harms and goods? Perhaps. For example, I wouldn't recommend forcing X upon someone. But once someone has X done upon them, if it means that they have abc experiences, and they value them, I see no need to get rid of them, unless indeed they thought they were were worthless. So perhaps nothing should have been done to that person, but once it's done, it doesn't take away the value they might have gotten. They do not have to be mutually exclusive. This is a trap many anti-AN arguments fall under. If there is good from a bad, then the bad must not be that bad. That is faulty logic.
I think also what you are struggling with is that antinatalism tends to be void of a positive value that we must live for. You can try putting in the value of "not suffering", but that doesn't get at it. Rather, we are NOT LIVING for that value, but rather, preventing that negative state of affairs from befalling someone. On the flip side, any other reason to have a child that is not purely a selfish reason by the parent, is one whereby you want the child to LIVE FOR some value, thus violating the non-harm prevention SO THAT they can live out this value. And it would indeed be on the anti-AN to prove that this violation is fine and dandy without just resorting to "It has always been done this way and thus appeal to tradition, yadayada".
Quoting Leontiskos
No, because you don't need to view the world as evil for this argument, just that preventing suffering is a priority. Tangentially, the world might have inherently suffering, adding to the evidence FOR the suffering of the world though. I refrain from using "evil" though as it sounds like the world is "out to get you", when it could just be an inherent factor of our condition.
Quoting Leontiskos
So whilst I agree with what you have said there, the point is that paternalistically making a decision on behalf of someone to not prevent them from suffering, and thus basically forcing the conditions of suffering onto them, would not be respecting the dignity, as this becomes aggressive paternalism. You can probably think of your own scenarios where aggressive paternalism would be violating this dignity, other than procreation.
Quoting Leontiskos
My point was that empirically-speaking, in the real world, there are no such charmed lives, so it is de facto out of the question other than a thought experiment. Supposing only a pin-prick was the suffering, I guess the scenario could be reconsidered. But I just want you to know, every single ethical consideration can be reconfigured if you change the conditions for which ethics plays out... So for example.. What if when you stab someone, they reanimate every time you do it instantly.. would that be wrong? I don't know, but that's not the world we generally live in..
But ok, let me take your bait for taking the strongest position just for the sake of argument..
Benatar thinks indeed, being that no one being deprived of this "almost charmed life", there is no foul. No person harmed, no foul. Rather, the violation still takes place in this scenario. It's not like the child is being "saved" from non-existence, so this isn't a palliative situation either.
Leontiskos methodically demonstrates that antinatalism turns on the premise that, if there is any human suffering, there is enough suffering to justify ending the human race.
When thinking ahead for the unborn-yet-to-be-procreated persons, the potential ones antinatalism is trying be ethical toward, couldnt we just as easily instead think of those unborn persons and make the rule one cannot deprive someone of happiness without their consent.
Is there no happiness in the world?
If that is our new rule, it becomes ethical to ask everyone to procreate as much as possible. Which would also be absurd as it would tend to deprive everyone of happiness if everyone was cranking out and trying to manage babies all of the time.
This highlights something else. There is not really any duty one way or the other to non-existing potential people. Antinatalism is good for potential people who will by design never exist. Ethics arises between two existing, actualized people. We can act today thinking of its impact on future people, but until those future people are actual, our present actions cant be seen as ethical, or not ethical. The ethics of the actions only arises where the people arise, actually.
Also highlighted and not addressed in antinatalism, the world isnt just suffering, or even enough suffering to contemplate a need to end all human beings. Its just not compelling.
We dont need to solve the problem of any suffering. We will want to solve the problem of the individual actual person who is actually suffering greatly. But because of that persons existence, and because other people experience happiness at times, we dont need to end all people.
This is different than the theoretical potential person that is discussed pre-procreation. In the above scenario, not knowing the identity of the particular person who will be put in harms way doesnt mean the present existing state of affairs does not include already existing people who are actually putting people in harms way and actually going to be harmed.
The above is just not helpful here.
No because that's the point, that in matters of ethics, preventing suffering is weighted more important than promoting happiness. And indeed, causing suffering in the hopes that one promotes happiness would thus be a violation therewith.
Quoting Fire Ologist
But you point out the absurdity indeed of defending certain forms of utilitarianism. In fact, you have stumbled on the repugnant conclusion.
Quoting Fire Ologist
No, not at all. As I said here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Fire Ologist
How is it not compelling to prevent suffering when one can?
Quoting Fire Ologist
But this is exactly the misguided thinking I explain between the tension of preventative and palliative ethics. You don't CREATE the situation of palliative ethics by bypassing the preventative part. I don't CREATE your suffering so that I can help you fix it.
That is not absolute. Im not a utilitarian for instance. And antinatalism isnt tailored to preventing suffering, it prevents everything, including weighting the importance of suffering over happiness.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I dont see this as analogous here, because you are dealing here with existing people who are put in specific harms way and existing people who are putting them there. Antinstalism is dealing with existing people who are potentially putting people in harms way, and non-existing potential people. The scenarios are too far apart. Its not close enough of an analogy to be instructive.
Quoting schopenhauer1
In a world of suffering and happiness, it is not compelling to prevent suffering by eliminating all people and all happiness as well. We dont all agree that in matters of ethics, preventing suffering is weighted more important.
Many would agree that disallowing procreation would cause great suffering in existing people. Some people are born moms and dads and they know it. Is their suffering as they live our antinatalism worth the good of a future world without humans to you? Antinatalism also causes suffering of existing people now who want kids and whose kids will love them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You dont prevent MY suffering if I never exist either.
It is ethical to prevent actual suffering in actual beings. It is wishful thinking to prevent potential suffering in non-existing beings. You might also be preventing the evolution of bliss and paradise on earth. You will never know if antinatalism was the right prescription for suffering, because they will be no one who could thank you for your ethics.
So now I have three problems with antinatalism.
1. There is no ethical way to treat non-existing people, so an ethics that is called good for its treatment of non-existing people is misguided at best if not non-ethics. Its resource management policy - not enough happiness to go around so lets eliminate the number of suffering people.
2. Suffering is not enough a reason to eliminate all humanity. My guess is the vast majority of people suffer 33% of their conscious time. The vast majority would rather live this life than no life at all. The suffering in the world still isnt enough to justify ending the world.
3. Antinatalism is not directed at preventing suffering, as it prevents everything. Its an over broad solution to a narrower problem
Imagine you have a magic wand that allows you to prevent procreation. People In two neighboring villages are constantly inflicting suffering on each other. You cant solve so many disputes and you see that the suffering will never end, so instead you make it so those people cant procreate and just let them live out their lives suffering. Soon there will be no more suffering inflicting going on in those villages because there will be no more people there. In another two neighboring villages, the people are always stealing from each other and bullying each other. There are times when the people are back in their homes laughing and relaxing, but at some point, everyone is stealing and bullying so at some point everyone is a victim of theft and bullying. No way to address the stealing and bullying, so you wave the wand and solve the problem eventually.
Antinatalism isnt tailored to the specific problem it is trying to prevent, and is way overboard of a response to just suffering.
The ethics are to do with our actions now. Not unborn people. The potential suffering itself is not hte moral crux. The action that (on the balance of probabilities) will make it come about, are. This is a gross oversimplication (or, overcomplexification, depending where you stand) of the point of antinatalism. That said, this is just another notch in my belt of Emotivism. Only your emotional response to that potential suffering could inform any decision around it. There is no ethical, normative principle which could entail either having, or not having children in the strict sense of those statements.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is, again, an emotive position. To some people it is. There isn't a way to argue for one or the other, really, other than Benatar's clearly apt a-symmetry argument. Accept, or don't.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is a non sequitur. It prevents the imposition of human life and nought else. The suffering goes with it. I can't quite grasp why you'd make such a wildly overt overstatement of the position. Another below..
Quoting Fire Ologist
-------------------
Quoting Fire Ologist
Then it would stand to reason you are an anti-abortionist? Someone who would not look twice pulling out in the road? Wouldn't remove broken glass from a playground? These are all potential harms to no one in particular (the A-symmetry argument beats this anyway). A starker example is, why keep NICU's sterile? Hehehe.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Benatar, particularly, addresses this issue. It is far more likely the figure is closer to 80% (this is interpolation based on my thoughts along with his arguments around it). Polly-Anna syndrome is rife. Most people are genuinely mistaken about how often they suffer. That said, I'm unsure this is a particularly strong anti-natalist argument anyway. I don't care what living people think about their lives. The vast majority of anti-natalists hold that the living have a deep interest in continuing to live. Perhaps there are situations in whcih this isn't the case, but overall, its hard to find examples of that.
Your earlier two objections are to stronger arguments, and I think your objections are just your taste. They aren't logic objections or reasonable ways around the claims made. They just illustrate that you do not accept htem, prima facie. That's fine. None of that has to do with the strength or weakness of hte anti-natalist position other than how it strikes you (weakly, it seems).
Quoting Fire Ologist
It is a 1:1 match with its aim. That you're averse to non-existence is expected, but not relevant.
The argument holds that human life is evil (or bad) on account of suffering, and therefore we should not further human life by procreation. The proposition that
Quoting schopenhauer1
We force a decision upon them either way. I don't see how only one direction is paternalistic.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The problem is that your argument is a form of metabasis,
Our obligation is to prevent the suffering of persons, not to prevent persons for the sake of suffering. Our primary suffering-obligation is to prevent existing persons from suffering. Additional argument is required to show that this means that we should prevent persons from existing. Your aversion to suffering is overwhelming, and out of sync with common intuitions. Common intuitions merely say that suffering should be mitigated, not expunged at all costs. ...but maybe I would be better off directly addressing Benatar's argument... (and I do so at the end)
Quoting schopenhauer1
Why not? Does existence suddenly become a non-harm once someone is born? Is life bad before we are born and good after we are born? So that we must avoid it before we are born and embrace it after we are born?
Let's move to the consensual variant, which seems to me more fruitful:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, why are they not symmetrical? I am guessing that unhappy people correlate to antinatalism and happy people correlate to "pronatalism," because there is symmetricity. Again, the whole thing is based on the question of whether life is good or bad, and that determination should hold steady. So if you really think life is bad then you should think that other people should think that life is bad, and that other people should consent to painless euthanization. If euthanization is not the rational choice for living persons, then why would you promote antinatalism? (Note that when I talk about the "rational position," what I mean is that this is the choice that the rational person ought to freely choose for themselves.")
Quoting schopenhauer1
If X doesn't want to be euthanized because they find life beautiful and valuable, then either they are irrational or else the antinatalism thesis suffers a blow. That person would literally resent your antinatalism, because it sought to "paternalistically" prevent their fulfilling life. These two realities are directly opposed. It is not faulty logic.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It seems to me like a rationalization of pusillanimity: fear of life for fear of suffering. The antinatalist would apparently counsel the unborn to opt out of life for fear of suffering.
Do you agree that, one way or another, we must make a choice for the unborn? That to give birth is to choose life for them, and that to abstain from procreation is to choose non-existence for them? (Really "them," as I am now swimming in the metabasis). I don't accept the purported neutrality of the antinatalist position, as if so-called "paternalism" is not inevitable.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Reconsidered on what basis? I am offering a reductio, and if your argument succumbs then the argument itself is problematic, as it "proves too much."
Quoting schopenhauer1
It wouldn't be wrong in the same way as it is now. But your theoretical does not function as a reductio to any argument that I have offered, and that is the primary difference.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The problem occurs if this is a valid argument:
Are you starting to see the reductio? The reductio has force because we know that any (2) that can get you from (1) to (3) is faulty argumentation.
But, true, Im not just building analytic proofs here.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
Schop said, and I agree, that ethics only exist where people and exist, and in particular, where more than one person exists. The ethical rule at issue is: it is always wrong to inflict suffering on others and/or to do so without consent. And the ethical solution is to stop making people.
While I disagree with the rule (and I dont thereby think inflicting suffering is good, just that it is not universally always wrong to inflict any suffering without consent), leaving the rule as is anyway, there is a distinction between an ethical rule that prevents harm to people you dont know in particular, and a rule that prevents harm in people people that dont exist.
It is true that, if all suffering infliction is wrong, the unethical behavior is to do with our actions now and the unethical person is the one who exists, inflicting the suffering. But in all of the above scenarios, in your quote, there are already existing victims of the harm. The antinatalist isnt looking out for the fetus who will be a person; the antinatalist is urging no one gets pregnant. There is no person existing that is the one towards whom the ethical act is directed. There is only the antinatalist claiming ethical treatment of the beneficiaries of that ethical treatment, namely beings (I guess you can call them human beings) that never come to be. There is not only no particular subject of the antinatalists actions, there is no potential ethical subject.
Too leave the glass on the playground is potentially inflicting harm (not necessarily, whereas necessary suffering is part of the antinatalist solution) on anyone who plays there. The people who might or might not play there actually exist while I consider whether or not to remove the glass. The non-procreated are not beings at all. So if two ethical beings must exist for there to be an ethics between them, those beings exist in the playground scenario but do not exist in the antinatalist world. We cant prevent suffering in someone until someone exists, at least any reason we would have to prevent further existence is not a matter of ethics towards that further existing being, because there is no one or thing there to be ethical towards.
If I use the playground analogy, the antinatalist reasoning to me would lead to solutions like there should be no playgrounds or because children at play can cut themselves on glass, there should be no children.
Truth is antinatalism solves every math problem, every philosophical conundrum, every imperfection - all of gone to history. Problem is, people like playgrounds, despite the glass. All ethics and logic and suffering be damned when there is good sliding board around.
Totally
Quoting Fire Ologist
And, if you don't mind, add: and, a response directed at the wrong party. If you want to end suffering, end mind's constructions, and attachments thereto. Why end a species?
Yep
Quoting AmadeusD
Yep/.. I am not sure why @Fire Ologist isn't quite getting this.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yep.
All of these are basically my points as well.
Again, you ignore what it means to cause suffering and back-filling the justification after-the-fact with palliative ethics. You don't intentionally cause the situation for which you think you then have the remedy. And since you really ignored my argument, and simply show your distaste, I don't know what else to say other than you have failed to show any meaningful objections other than indeed your distaste for the logic.
No, causing happiness is not an obligation in the way NOT causing harm is. Causing pain in order for them to also have happiness is still a violation of non-malfeasance.
Happiness-promoting is not obligatory, and especially so if to promote happiness you knowingly create the conditions for someone else to be harmed. Procreation creates the very need for palliative measures to mitigate suffering. Preventing harm by not procreating avoids creating this need altogether.
Quoting ENOAH
See, that reads to me like a breath of new air in the conversation. Sort of procreates some breathing space.
Reminds me that we are talking about making a rule that must guide my actions. Its not just an analytic exercise with suffering and ethical rules as its parts. The argument for antinatalism is also about my response, like where you said it was a response directed at the wrong people.
After were done with the logical analysis, antinatalism is a call to action. It says if we work hard enough together, maybe in a few generations, we will finally all do the ethical thing and choose to be antinatalists, then, the human species will be gone, and with it, gone is all suffering, and those last people can say we, now the most ethical generation, the ones who have inflicted the least suffering on others, we bid to those who discovered antinatalism our humble gratitude for showing us the ethic, and bid everyone else, including ourselves, I guess, good riddance.
While I think we mean different things when you say end minds constructions and attachments thereto, I would use those same words to point to the fact that all ethics is in our heads. Ethics is about what we physically do when we interact with other people in the world, but the ethical parts of those actions exist only in my head, in our heads. We must construct all of this, and together for it to be ethics. I would also instead use some of your words to say, while we are always attaching and detaching from constructions, to be ethical is to take care of what you attach to and detach from.
But we need both the analytic approach, and this raw, more contextual (aware of aware-ing) view to find an ethical norm.
My attempt at the analytic syllogism:
[b]Life is suffering.
No one should intentionally cause suffering.
Procreating is intentional infliction of suffering
Therefore, antinatalism.
Negatively put, we should not inflict suffering, so we should not procreate. Or more positively put, it is right not to procreate, or else you would intentionally cause suffering.[/b]
Weve constructed out of suffering this new ethic. (It had to be new because people had to be here first to construct it, it is newer than us at least.)
Now of course antimatalism is more that. And granting the premises, its a sound argument. That may be enough for many intuitions.
But what can we know and say about this syllogism?
P1: Life is suffering.
Maybe. Maybe because of life, we have something to compare suffering with in order to identify that life includes suffering. Without something good in life to compare to, how would we recognize suffering. We had to have a happy finger first before we could say that on prick was suffering. But then, does that mean the good and happy finger is a cause of the suffering too?
But maybe life is living. And living is many things, with the many things we live with. One of them is suffering. One of them is ecstasy. One of them is sleeping. One of them is a pin-prick, or reading. Life is reading, right now.
Also, this premise is where we assume a sub premise suffering is only bad. Suffering is bad, but it is not only bad. Some suffering is called work. Some called really hard work. Some called loving. Some called longing. Some longing is suffering deeply. Some longing is not.
I think many are willing to say there is enough suffering assured in life that its not worth breaking it down into how much or how little there is that it would start to change the calculus of the syllogism. Many would argue life pivots from suffering too much to suffering enough, and therefore Life is suffering is a valid premise, period, end of discussion.
So well move on, under protest.
P2: No one should intentionally cause suffering.
Sounds like a nice sentiment from the start. But it depends on your view of what suffering is from P1 if you would make this an absolute. If all suffering is bad, then yeah, absolutely no one should inflict it on anyone else. But many of us have had suffering inflicted upon us without our consent, at great cost, causing deep suffering, only to later count the experience as a a good one. Thats the constant life of a child. Some suffering can lead to tremendous things that would not have been what they are without the suffering. So if not all suffering is bad, what is wrong with causing it in another?
So this premise only works if all suffering is bad. So my protest from P1 is rearing its head.
That means to me I should try to tailor P2 to keep the argument flowing.
How about new P2: No one should intentionally harm or injure another for the sole purpose of causing them to suffer.
Sounds stronger, and accounts for the good of inflicting valuable suffering, but this will be a problem when it comes time to choose whether to procreate. Now with new premise 2 we have to have a baby already born who we can physically harm and injure before we might unethically do so for the sole purpose of causing them to suffer.
I just disagree that intentionally causing suffering, the heart of this ethical rule, is necessarily something that should never be done, its not clearly a universal. Its not self-evident.
It needs work, as does my argument against it, but lets press on.
P3: Procreating is intentional infliction of suffering.
This conflates begetting, or giving new life, with infliction on a subject. When we inflict, we inflict upon. There must be an object that we inflict something specific like suffering upon. But that object is missing in the syllogism. Take the antinatalist negative approach and flip it, and you see the hole, the missing object when one tries to inflict something onto the unborn, the non-existent.
If we do not procreate we will not inflict suffering upon ..who? (I get it, the answer is: on the possible child that would have been had you gotten pregnant.). But really, who benefits when I do not have a kid so I can not inflict suffering? Can I say I benefited 10 babies because I was going to have at least 10 kids, but now since Im an antinatalist, I benefited 10 people? That seems really odd. But if making up some number of never-existing people as beneficiaries of my good antinatalist deeds is odd at all, so is saying I benefitted one person. There is no one person who benefits if you conflate the Infliction of suffering with procreation and respond by not procreating. Im just procreating. There is no one there to enjoy my mon-procreation with, as there is no one to say thanks for not inflicting suffering on me because I didnt create any such life.
Secondly, there is a bias in the word inflict. We dont inflict levity and happiness. We inflict pain and suffering. To procreate need not be an infliction of anything at all. Maybe it is another place to reword the premise better.
But thirdly, premise three is kind of premise 1 reworded. To say procreation is inflicting suffering is like saying life is suffering. Life, the tug and pull of being and becoming, or just the becoming of being, or just the ing of suffering. If life is suffering procreating is building new suffering or inflicting suffering.
This just goes back to the arguments against premise 1, that life cant only be suffering for suffering to be distinguishable as a feature of life at all - life is more than suffering, and more than enough good to enable appropriate attachment to other features of life besides suffering. And suffering isnt so bad that you must never cause it in another.
But, Conclusion: Antinatalism.
Logically flows from the premises as they are meant by the antinatalist. Suffering is truly excruciating and life is suffering, so since procreating makes new lives of suffering, we should not procreate. Certinly uses logic.
But only compelling if you think suffering is so bad, that suffering is the definer of becoming a human being, that we cant see any good in suffering, that we cant see other things besides suffering more valuable to us, that we cant use our suffering to construct other things, and that if we inflict suffering it is never for good, it is always an unethical act. I just disagree with all of those observations. Together they mean an end to procreation is wildly inappropriate a response. Its an emotional response to suffering, not something clear enough to construct an ethical norm.
Its a slap in the face of the Dionysian. Mother Nature inflicted humanity on the universe, why would we judge her so harshly and end her creation, for the sake of each other not having each other?
I dont see wisdom in turning against life itself because of suffering.
We should turn against the suffering, not the life that begets it or not even the ones who inflict it.
The law should be, because life involves suffering, we should give relief and kinship, so that others can know life with less suffering, but others can know life.
My arguments dont seem compelling enough yet either. But that just means I need to keep searching for the words, suffering through the birth of better words, constructing something to attach to that accounts for more than the last attachment.
Suffering is intrinsically negative and harmful regardless of comparative happiness. The existence of suffering is ethically significant on its own, as it involves harm and distress that should be prevented when possible.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Promoting happiness at the expense of causing harm violates the principle of non-malfeasance by justifying harmful actions for potential positive outcomes. It involves using individuals as means to an end, imposing projects on them without their consent, and treating them as tools for achieving broader goals. Ethical consistency requires prioritizing the avoidance of harm and respecting individuals' autonomy and dignity, rather than foisting known and unknown conditions of harm upon them, for the sake of some positive-ethical external objectives.
Quoting Fire Ologist
While some people argue that suffering isn't all bad and can lead to growth, this idea falls short when you look at the bigger picture. First off, suffering is inherently harmful. Even if it might lead to some positive outcomes, the immediate distress and pain it causes shouldn't be ignored or justified. The principle of "do no harm" should always come first, and causing suffering to potentially promote happiness just doesn't cut it ethically. Plus, making someone else suffer because you believe it's good for them totally disregards their right to make their own choices. It's like deciding for them that the end justifies the means, which is a huge overstep.
Treating people as tools for achieving a goal (like personal growth through suffering) is another major issue. People arent just instruments for projects we believe in. Everyone has different ways of dealing with and understanding suffering. What might be a meaningful struggle for one person could be devastating for another. This unpredictability means you can't assume suffering will lead to positive outcomes for everyone.
Respecting personal autonomy is crucial. Everyone should have the right to decide whether they want to endure suffering for a potential benefit. Foisting this decision on someone else is ethically wrong and incredibly paternalistic. Its like saying, "I know what's best for you," which often isn't the case. Growth and fulfillment can happen through positive experiences and challenges that don't involve suffering.
Finally, there's a big difference between preventing harm (preventative ethics) and trying to fix it after the fact (palliative ethics). Creating situations where suffering occurs and then trying to justify it with potential benefits is backwards. Its better to avoid causing harm in the first place. All in all, assuming that suffering is valuable and imposing it on others without their consent is unethical and dismissive of individual autonomy and well-being.
After reviewing your P2, that last response answers that as well, so moving on...
Quoting Fire Ologist
This principle doesn't need to be about a specific person who benefits or says thanks. It's about the ethical stance of the decision-maker to prevent harm. The decision not to have children because you want to avoid causing potential suffering is about maintaining an ethical standard. Saying "who benefits?" misses the point because its not about imaginary future people celebrating your decision. It's about your commitment to an ethical choice that avoids creating a scenario where suffering is possible. Its not about benefiting non-existent beings; its about making a responsible and ethical decision based on the understanding that creating life inevitably involves creating suffering, and the ethical imperative to avoid this suffering outweighs other considerations, and the recognition that not doing so, is a paternalistic overstep in foisting one's projects onto another, using them. So, this strawman argument oversimplifies and misrepresents (this particular) antinatalist position.
Is this not the long and the short of it?
With a Bricolage of logic and reasoning, a skilled artist can construct complex hypotheses to justify many things in ethics. As much as we like to think ethics transcends us, that thought too, emerged because it is functional to view ethics that way. Contra Descartes et. al., the only thing this organism can claim with certainty is that this organism is. Period. The same cannot be said of any of its constructions from "I" to "all life is Dukkha," to "thou shalt not x".
So does it not boil down to: life is living. We humans make the distinction suffering/no suffering. These, and like distinctions are how our world turns. But with antinatalism we are clearly going too far. People think asceticism a radical approach; how much more is extinction?
Even practically. If you can mobilize an entire species to eliminate one of the three strongest drives--to perpetuate living, and to bond with one's offspring--you might as well exhaust first, all other efforts to change the conditions. If the livestock are suffering under our current conditions, the solution is to change the conditions, not to sterilize the cattle.
As much as I have been turned on to Schopenhauer. This is the corrupted truth which emerges out of the insistence that the will is both the seat off the suffering and our essential human nature. The will constructs suffering. Our human nature may experience pain, the absence of pleasure, but it does not construct anything out of that; it responds to it, just as it responds to pleasure.
The so called will is the name we give to those dynamics of Mind. Difficult to escape, but actually malleable.
Because only when born is it paternalistic, as there is someone aggressed. The aggression only works one way.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, going back to the Kant thread, not preventing all counts of suffering BECAUSE (X reason that parent has), IS using as means to an ends, overlooking dignity. It is this crux of dignity that you are missing. It was unnecessary, other than promoting some cause.. That project is done on behalf of the child- hence aggressive paternalism.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, because again, one could have been prevented, one violated and justified with mitigation or because of X conflicting reason of the parent, to be carried out for the child, but can never be the child.. there was no child to begin with to even need happiness.. nor to need the suffering which ultimately comes along with it... And again, "merely" becomes a cover for everything. I merely let that thing hurt you because in the future, it could be in your interest. There is an reductio for ya.
Quoting Leontiskos
I've already answered and you conveniently ignored and cherry picked so I will present it again:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Leontiskos
Actually, if we want to use Benatar here, that matters not. If no ONE is deprived of the good, then the decision does no good or bad that "no benefits" took place for someone. The onus is on the creating the bad "for someone". I might even argue that creating bad "for no one" is not good or bad either. It can only be formulated as a maxim for someone making the decision.
And yes, the ethic assumes that creating suffering is more important ethically than promoting happiness. And hence why even the pinprick argument is a sort of shrug because due to the non-existing people to not care about it, it becomes moot. It's only YOU the person existing crying on the sidelines over non-existent spilt milk.
Quoting Leontiskos
No it's precisely this kind of formulation I am against. The only scenario where something would happen for/to them is the one where a person results, none of the others. At this point, it might be helpful to draw a table...
Quoting Leontiskos
No, not really. When you create a fantasy world and that changes the very terms of how existence works, I don't see that as proving anything. What if gravity didn't exist? How would that change ethics? What if time and space could be changed so that we can redo actions? Again, none of this is this world. We can argue facts, but then at least we are arguing what is the case, and not hypotheticals that change how ethics would work because circumstances of the very conditions for ethics have changed.
Quoting Leontiskos
It's to show an illustration of what is going on when you change things to a certain extent.
Er, I think antinatalism is dead in the water due to this argument:
What is your counter supposed to be? "No, because counterfactual analyses aren't allowed"? I would suggest reading about the fallacy of "proving too much." Benatar's argument cannot account for the fact that procreation is obviously permissible in an all but perfect world. Benatar would not allow procreation before removing that pinprick. That's crazy. Benatar is irrationally opposed to life, and he would be irrationally opposed to life even in the best of circumstances. Indeed, his irrational argument opposes life even in the best of circumstances!
For example, given that Benatars argument opposes the natural order, it cannot have been derived from the natural order. So if Benatar really thinks his argument holds good, then he must hold that his own mind and the knowledge it has come to know is super-natural, transcending nature. If we are limited to nature then we cannot contradict nature. Where does such a mind or such knowledge come from, if not from nature? Either the Gnostics are correct and it comes from the true god, or Christians are correct and it comes from demons. Or else it is just hopelessly mistaken and a product of merely human irrationality.
This is definitely the most arguable aspect of the whole thing. I actually do sometimes swing on this one, but as a living person it hits me as patent that I'm off the rails at that point. I am not important to my own considerations here. It is whether or not causing people to exist is ethical. If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking your life is, on balance, purposeful and happy, you will reject this premise and (whether erroneously or not) be fine with procreation. The other premises don't seem to be shakeable in this way.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is true, but where we are dealing with non-existent people this is not relevant other than to assign a position to oneself as a result of their emotional reaction to whatever proposition..
Quoting Fire Ologist
There are clearly not. There are potential victims. This is why the analogy holds, for the most part. And taking this straight to your conclusion of "no playgrounds", yes, that's right, but antinatalists don't confuse the issue:
No humans. Not not playgrounds. Let the people who exist use hte playground, for reasons your point out that would make the "no playgrounds" conclusion stupid as heck. That said, it seems fairly clear that's not hte intention. THe intention is to leave the playground (world)as is, and remove the potential sufferer as it is (on this account) an unavoidable consequence of being one. We're not trying to get rid of oceans to avoid drownings - we're trying to stop people swimming where drowning is a clearly likely consequence (very shaky analogy, but there you go - can refine later if needed).
Quoting ENOAH
Yes. But "many things" includes many things one would not trade non-existence in for, if the choice were at all a coherent one. If someone is "many things" but in there is psychopathic sexual deviant, we aren't inclined to let it roll.
Quoting Leontiskos
That isn't an argument.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Simply put, what? Total non sequitur. Sorry to say, but this just hits as red herring designed to impugn the logic of an argument on a naturalistic basis. Who gives a flying toss if its "against the natural order"? You'd need to establish what that is, and how it is derived (in light of hte extremely novel consciousness humans currently enjoy (see what i did there..)) in a way which could logically make Benatar's points untenable. You can't support these claims - only make them. I do smell the overwhelming aroma of religiosity coming through here... where did the evil bit come in?
Either, you have that knowledge, or his arguments are as good as yours. One for thee, one for me. Though, if you've simply been overzealous and mean only to posit that his arguments are inadequate and not that his position is wrong due to other arguments, sure. It reads as if you're trying to present a logical basis for rejecting his arguments. But, they literally boil down to your tastes regarding epistemology it seems. And I'd say your comments there are.. bizarre... That said, you'd very much enjoy prof. Tim Mulgan's Ananthropocentric Purposivism.
Antinatalism need not be synonymous with philosophical pessimism, though the two concepts are often related. Antinatalism only requires certain logical principles to be true. If we believe in a negative ethics where it's best not to cause suffering, harm, or use others, it is imperative not to overlook the consequences of procreation, even if motivated by a positive ethical cause, like promoting happiness.
Everything follows from this principle. There are no non-existent people who benefit from being born; rather, it is about preventing the suffering, harm, and violation of existing people, if they are born.
Gnostic-like elements can be used to justify why suffering is as bad or worse than people initially think. While these more theoretical notions of suffering can be indulged, antinatalism does not hinge on them. If we do take these aspects seriously, there is an argument, that it appears that once born, we are trapped in a cycle of unfulfilled desires with little chance for genuine repose. We can only mitigate this through psychological and physical means, such as fulfilling needs and wants or using mental exercises to manage angst, but this will never satiate, as Schopenhauer noted in detail.
Beyond the inherent suffering of existence, life imposes contingent suffering based on situations and circumstances beyond one's control. These include diseases, natural disasters, social injustices, and personal losses. The world subjects individuals to random and often severe hardships, from debilitating illnesses to the trauma of losing loved ones, and the cruelty of societal inequalities. Even small daily annoyanceseverything from traffic jams, minor illnesses, interpersonal conflictsaccumulate over time, adding to white noise baseline of human suffering. By choosing to procreate, we are subjecting new individuals to these unpredictable and uncontrollable harms. This contingent suffering exacerbates the moral issue of procreation, as it means bringing someone into a world where their well-being can be drastically compromised by forces they cannot influence or evade.
While there are inherent goods in life, claiming that these justify causing harm oversteps a deontological point. The inherent goods can be summarized as follows:
-Physical pleasure: The simple joys of sensory experiences.
-Human or animal connections: Friendships, romance, group activities, bonding, nurturing, etc.
-Flow states: Getting "caught up" in something challenging and engaging.
-Aesthetic pleasures: Enjoying art, humor, nature, music, literature, etc.
-Learning: Gaining new concepts or skills, engaging in hobbies.
-Achievement: Accomplishing goals and feeling a sense of accomplishment.
These goods add value to life. But to assert that these goods justify the creation of life, with its inevitable suffering and harm, oversteps a fundamental deontological principle. This principle maintains that we should not unnecessarily cause harm for people (i.e dont create circumstances of harm for someone that did not need existing harm reduced with a lesser harm)- this is regardless of potential positive outcomes. Procreation involves deciding that potential pleasure and meaning for new beings outweigh the certain suffering they will encounter, which is a significant and hubristic ethical assumption.
Humans are unique in their self-reflection. Unlike other animals that live in the moment, generally absent existential or moral considerations, humans do and can make self-consciously deliberate choices. Other animals exist within the simplicity of their instincts, unburdened by the weight of self-awareness. In contrast, humans have been metaphorically kicked out of paradise because we possess the knowledge of good and evil, the capacity for existential contemplation.
Choosing to bring someone into existence means deciding that they should live out the challenges and issues we deem meaningful. This is a profound choice, not a natural inevitability. People seek pleasure and meaning in various ways, but deciding for others what is meaningful or subjecting them to a lifetime of issues is something that is paternalistically assumed to be imposed for another.
You claim that the antinatalist is secretly religious, but even the most atheistic person promoting having kids is really the pseudo-religious because they see life as something necessary for someone to live out. Indeed the project of life becomes more important than the harms that that person would experience. It is this overlooking of suffering for the project of life that I am concerned with. It is this idea that is the crux of the dignity violation. Its no mere here, its full stop.
Yep :up:
Quoting AmadeusD
I agree. But the rest isnt fairly arguable?
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes.
But theres no reasonable quarrel with procreating is inflicting, and inflicting suffering because it inflicts life which is suffering? Seems subject to scrutiny, and potentially analogous to feeding is inflicting suffering, and opening a window to let in some fresh air is inflicting suffering, because all of these promote life, like procreation promotes life which is suffering. I might not only have to be an antinatalist, I might have to be an anti-hydrationist, because giving a thirsty person a glass of water, is like giving birth to a new person.
And no need to consider what other things we cause by not procreating? As long as we dont inflict suffering we will be doing good in this world, be good for this world - not arguable?
Quoting AmadeusD
Getting a little emotive here, which you criticized me for above. You mean, one person who would reject this would be someone satisfied with experiences of purpose and happiness instead of suffering. You can call this one person deluded. Maybe they are. But then who is anyone to judge someone elses self delusions and their effect on the balance of their own suffering? Must we stop the delusional thoughts of others with our own better thoughts? Like the wonderful thought of antinatalism?
And why are happiness and/or purpose, as you frame the delusion, the only counters to suffering? If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking life is, on balance, suffering, then you would reject anyone who viewed any life as on balance, not suffering. Screw purpose. Im enjoying just trying to argue with you here.
Maybe you are right that the suffering in life is the most arguable premise, but the other premises utterly rely on suffering and can be shown almost as anrguable even granting that life is suffering.
Quoting AmadeusD
Antinatalism analogized to, ironically, a life guard, keeping people out of the dangerous waters. Thats backwards. Antinatalism would eliminate the lives to guard, not merely keep lives on the land to live safely. A lifeguard would inflict a riddance of the ocean to those safely on land, not a riddance of living, like antinatalism would.
Living is simply different than suffering and cannot be summarized as only suffering.
Bottom line to me, in a raw, physicalist sense, life is prior to suffering, and life is more than this conversation about suffering and what to do about it. Procreating, consuming, growing, secreting, growing some more, always dying as newness is always born in each living moment - these are the experiences of living, not just suffering. And now life is thinking and writing or reading, not only suffering. Antinatalism isnt just a tidy little syllogism categorized as ethics. Its an act in the world, and an against life, which is procreative. Against suffering on paper, but inflicted upon all human life in action.
Antinatalism, might simply be something psychological, a justification for suicidal tendancy applied on a universal scale.
Mother Nature made use of suffering to fashion we species of ethical monkeys, only so that we could end the infliction of Her suffering on us and call it good ethics. Seems potentially delusional to have out smarted Mother Nature and her sufffering ways called life. With our ethics no less.
Quoting AmadeusD
Thats interesting.
Antinatalism promotes no more babies because making a baby is the infliction of suffering on that baby. No one wants to inflict suffering on a baby, because it is just wrong. If that is the right way to live, and someone gets pregnant, the pregnant couple would have done wrong and inflicted suffering on another (or be in the act of inflicting suffering on another growing into such person).
What can the antinatalist do with the new fetus? Can they abort it?
If they can abort it, it must not be a person, because I would think the rule is that it is not ethical to kill another innocent person. Thats worse than inflicting suffering.
But this is interesting. The antinataliat who doesnt think a fetus is a person and who supports abortion would have to agree with the following: it is unethical to cause a sperm and an egg to form a fetus because that would be inflicting suffering on another person, but is it ok to kill the fetus after it is formed because a newly conceived fetus isnt a person.
Doesnt an antinataliat have to be an anti-abortionist to lay out a consistent treatment of future people we do not want to inflict things upon?
You still havent paid attention to preventative vs mitigative. One youre already existing and now mitigation measures are appropriate. The other, you prevent the harm in the first place, as putting them in a situation in the first place which must be mitigated, is the ethical consideration in question. Hence, unique in moral choices.
Quoting Fire Ologist
In existential terms this is bad faith. You are assuming the role of arbiter of life. Rather this is simply something you chose to take on, it is not some robotic imperative. We are deliberative and can choose non life by choice, so prima facie, this appeal to the species or life is a false narrative.
Quoting Fire Ologist
But ethical monkeys like us have ideas of antinatalism and choosing no suffering for others. You are anthropomorphizing nature. Nature doesnt care whether the species dies or you or I fell off a cliff.
It get it, antinatalism is a preventative act in your mind. Analogies to mitigative acts dont impress you. These distinctions dont impress my view of antinatalism.
You still dont pay attention to much else Ive written as well.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Neither does nature care about any ethics at all, be it telling you to have 20 babies or 0. Neither does an unborn baby care what you inflict on it or not. Neither will anything care that there once were these ethical creatures who were so ethical they wouldnt wantonly inflict their ethicalness on life anymore.
I disagree that life is suffering. False premise.
I disagree that procreating is an act upon a person - we dont inflict anything when we participate willingly in the natural act of procreation. We arent acting for or against any particular human being when we procreate. The particular human being comes afterwards because life is prior to all of this ethical speak and life is prior to the harm of inflicting suffering by anyone or any process. Procreation is a choice to accept new life - not a choice to make nature do natures thing. Nature does the procreating - we accept it. We dont inflict it (even in vitro).
I disagree that it is always wrong to inflict suffering on another person. Just not a solid, clear, ethical basis to wipe out procreation. Inflicting suffering can be the most ethical thing to do.
It is wrong to take what you are given and squander it, waste it, hoard it, and wrong to not share it, to not give it freely to others.
Dont have children if you think life is so terrible that no one should be forced to exist.
Look down on people who do have children for their breaches of your ethics if you want.
But Antinatalism is unethical. It misses the point of ethics entirely, which is good human life.
So again, for another time, the point is about the act of the parent, not the child. Do YOU (the potential parent) want to prevent suffering for another, if you can? It doesn't matter one wit, whether the child exists to KNOW this. It is about what YOU should do as the already existing person with the agency and means to do so.
Now, the obvious response to this is something like what you are saying here:
Quoting Fire Ologist
But you will "inflict" something to "someone". It again, is a bad faith argument to understand what procreation is (leads to a new person), and then say that "because we don't know the exact person who will be born, that they don't exist yet, that the act has no affect/effect to someone". That is just patently false. Any future situation by definition, doesn't occur yet, that doesn't mean people don't have agency now that would lead to various known outcomes in the future. This is just rhetorically hollow argument, and a poor one that lands flat just on the face of it based on the nature of what procreation entails, what even the concept of "future" entails, and what human agency entails.
But let's have a mind-journey here...
Me: Once born, we know that people will die. Is this acceptable?
Interlocutor: "Yes, death isn't bad in and of itself. It's the price we should pay for life".
Me: Ok, some people think this is a harm, but let's grant that this is acceptable..
Me: Once born, we are exposed to all kinds of illnesses and unfortunate circumstances including but not limited to:
Now, you may say that this is contingent and we don't know what people will really endure. And I would say, that i correct, and why I would call them "contingent/circumstantial harms". And thus, the beginning of this particular argument was showing that the Veil of Ignorance applies here, because (contra other posters here like TClark), we do not have even imperfect knowledge of what types and degrees of harms people will endure once born.
Then you will tell me, "No we do know to some degree the amount of harms, based on what we've experienced". But then, I would say the crux of the issue regarding dignity pops up. That is to say, what are you willing to allow another person to be exposed to in your pursuit of X? In this case, it looks like your X is an impersonal idea of "Life" or "Mother Nature". None of these things are entities that deserve the category of ethical consideration. The only people that matter are the people that might be born who will be affected. Those are the loci of actual pain and suffering.
Then you can tell me that the "goods" outweigh the pain.. That "Mother Nature" and "Life" deserves such-and-such. Besides being an impersonal concept, and thus a category error for ethical consideration that deserves absolutely nothing, being "deserves" doesn't even apply to such impersonal concepts.. We have to understand what it is about suffering that makes it weighted as more important to prevent than promoting-good/happiness. This goes to the notion of aggressive paternalism.
Just as you say here:
Quoting Fire Ologist
Acknowledging that people have a right to their own estimation of things...
It is not just/fair to estimate for others, a whole lifetime of what various harms and suffering is acceptable. In fact, not considering suffering when they are not in a scenario where they need help (already exist), is purely using someone, because precisely because that person doesn't exist yet, any move to create that person, would always be one whereby one is inflicting that suffering upon them when it did not need to be inflicted so. Thus it is always the case that this is using someone as a means.
Adding Benatar's asymmetry (reformulated and tweaked a bit), this is no debate.
Preventing procreation prevents suffering and happiness. Preventing suffering is the obligation, preventing happiness matters not. And no "thing" will cry over spilt milk, not Mother Nature, not Life.
It is aggressively paternalistic to assume that your unhappiness for other people not experiencing X positive value, is the reason why people should thus suffer. And as I explained, certainly, Mother Nature and Life, abstract and reified ideas, have no say in the matter.
Wrong. YOU are still talking about the child too. You should be saying something like this: Do you, the potential parent want to be a person who inflicts suffering, do you want to walk around being an unethical person who inflicts suffering, or do you want to be be ethical? Takes the child out of the equation. If its not about the child then it is not about preventing suffering for another.
You cant make your arguments without committing the same error you accuse me of making.
Its not an error. You need two existing subjects before you can judge the actions of one upon the other as ethical or not. The best you can say is the present world would be a better place if it was filled with people who acted according to principle and and acted according to ethical principle. If one of those principles happens to mean all people will cease to exist, the world is still better today because all of us principled antinatalists inhabit it.
Thats your argument. But you said for another anyway.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Almost as hollow as thinking we humans, the sole source of ethics, came to be this way by a natural process that was unethical all along.
Dont you think there is as long a list of great things that happen to people as your laundry list of dirty laundry? You need the clean clothes first before you can get stuck with the dirty laundry. You need life first, apart from suffering, free from suffering, to later suffer anything.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What are you willing to take away from another person in your pursuit of your ethical ideals? Take away parenting? Take away loving your children. Take away pride in how those children endure and learn from suffering and are charitable with their sacrifices?
Life does include suffering. Everyday to some extent, for everyone and every creature who lives, there is suffering.
I also dont want to inflict any more suffering on anyone to make matters worse for them.
But, what is the point of being ethical when being ethical means there will no longer be beings being ethical?
Antinatalism is anti-ethics.
Which is why earlier I said antinatalism puts ethical principals above the people who are being ethical, and does so having the effect of there no longer being any people. So what is the point of being ethical when ethics itself is being used to destroy is, to harm the species, to inflict upon the world a world without any ethics (without people)?
Its all backwards and confused. Like murdering someone for their own good.
No, I am saying that antinatalism is non-naturalistic. I wrote out responses to all of your claims, but then I shelved that post because it was so long. Instead I focused on the simple argument () and the foundational Gnosticism ().
Regarding the simple argument, I will ask you a simple question: Is it true that we should not procreate in a world where everyone receives one pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness? Yes or no? Presumably some have ambitions of achieving such a world someday.
Here is an easier way to envision the foundational Gnosticism problem. The evolutionary naturalist says:
This argument is a microcosm of the anti-Gnosticism argument, for the Gnostic must reject naturalistic premises akin to (1). For the naturalist, antinatalism is by definition irrational, as it is directly contrary to nature. Your arguments are all dubious, but one of the fundamental reasons they are all dubious is because you are essentially importing knowledge from a different "god," a god that is foreign to our nature, culture, religions, etc. In denying moral naturalism you must necessarily be appealing to some form of supernaturalism. Think of it in terms of the microcosm: if your ethic is directly contrary to evolutionary survival, then it must be coming from something above and beyond evolutionary survival.
Don't look now, but you are making my arguments...
Yeah reformulate it to take the child out of the equation. It's about the parent.
However, I am not opposed to talking in "potentials" or "future children". What I AM opposed to is talking AS IF the future child will feel "deprived" of not existing. So I think it's fine to say, "You can prevent future suffering", because it is the NOT SUFFERING that matters. That someone DOES NOT exist to suffer is the ethically good outcome. That someone DOES NOT EXIST TO BE HAPPY matters not one wit..
Quoting Fire Ologist
Again, category error to input ANY ethical thing to nature. Humans are too plastic for this kind of thinking. Did nature intend us to have computers? No, nature intended nothing. Nature has nothing to say on nothing. Once you have degrees of freedom of deliberation, it is up to us to figure shit out and not go bad faith and say, "What did nature want?". As nature a) isn't something that can confer morality and b) nature doesn't tell us about morality. And any use of "appeal to nature" can be to justify anything because we are brutes and we do ethical things as well.. it is up to us to deliberate on what to sus out as the correct view and action. There is nothing to fall back on. Even if we did, it would be your interpretation of it. Or at best using descriptive ethics to justify normative ethics.
Quoting Fire Ologist
And that is my point, when not under mitigating circumstances, but preventative choices, mitigating circumstances don't matter. If you allow/inflict/not prevent suffering even with the intent on someone enjoying the good, but knowing you are allowing the bad, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a violation. Causing suffering that was not necessary to cause because you have an agenda is the height of paternalism and means-using.
Quoting Fire Ologist
None of these things are ethical. In Kantian terms, they are simply "inclinations" or ends that people might want to pursue. They aren't moral onto themselves like suffering prevention is.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That's good. But you are in the realm of mitigation now, since "not make worse", not prevention.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Because ethics is around because there are humans around, humans aren't around to keep ethics going, for the nth time. In fact, it would be immoral to keep people around to keep some ethical framework going, as that is exactly the reason it is unethical in the first place- it is discounting the causation of someone else's lifetime of suffering for the promotion of some X ethical project that you conceive of!
Quoting Fire Ologist
Actually, quite the opposite. Death comes from being born in the first place. All the sufferings of life, including being murdered come from one's choice to overlook suffering for one's project. And since no one is exists to feel the "deprivation" of good, go back to the spilt milk argument. Quoting Leontiskos
And I gave you my answer....
Also, about "someday", I wouldn't make people in the meantime become grist for this goal.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is not fact. Moral reasoning isn't necessarily evolved for from evolutionary reasons, but could be a secondary byproduct of other reasons. I do know that whole fields like evolutionary psychology exist, but it's often contested certain methodologies being it's near impossible to know the original environment conditions of our ancestors, and what particular traits were evolved for versus simply having large brains with a degree of plasticity. For examples, presumably making computers wasn't "evolved for", but perhaps basic numeracy was. It would be bad faith arguing to presume you are going to get from basic structures to complex ones without it being a "just so" story. And spare me any articles, I understand that these theories exist.. Doesn't mean they are hard facts.
Quoting Leontiskos
Evolutionary adaptation isn't "ordered" per se, but rather, is a shotgun approach of genetic variation against environmental factors. It prunes away variations not fit for the environment reproduction. The order is simply our way of organizing the "real time" of this happening in nature. The "order" is not like some "logos", just how we humans are understanding the variations that cause change in species fitting into environmental niches.
Quoting Leontiskos
Again, not necessarily the case. Moral reasoning might be even a more modern thing really. It could have been traditional understanding based on tribal traditions. I wouldn't call that reasoning as an appeal to tradition. For example, let us say there is a culture with a history of some heinous act, but the heinous act allowed them to survive. I wouldn't say this is "moral reasoning". There are blood feuds and slavery and honor killings, and all such things that have kept people in line. This doesn't mean it's moral. There may be stuff that helped to survive that is actually immoral.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is the same problem as Fire Ologist. Evolution has nothing to say about morality, and anything we glean from it is from post-facto reasoning, not because it is inbuilt. It is cultural, personal, existential, but not necessarily instinctual. There can arguments that basic empathy and fairness are seen in small children, but this is so general as to not be an actual ethical basis. I can say it is compassionate and fair to not procreate, and it just took being an adult with a certain amount of reasoning abilities to understand this, using my "evolutionary" traits of compassion and fairness.
Quoting Leontiskos
Again, as far as I am willing to entertain Gnosticism, it is as a metaphor that existence has some inherent suffering aspects to it merely by being something with becoming and is not fully being. I can go into it more, but it would be Schopenhauer's idea of boredom being a sort of proof of the negative nature of happiness, as a repose rather than something that actually satiates. It is the treadmill rather than the peace of fully being.. Schopenhauer might say that "higher realm" is some sort of non-willing peacefulness of nirvana. I don't necessarily believe that is possible. @Wayfarer has called this belief "nihilistic" because there is no soteriology whereby one can escape the cycle of suffering.
Let me bring you through a series of questions:
What are you intending a new person born to get out of life? Why must there be someone versus no one that isn't selfish from the start (remember, no person exists prior to you to care)?
Once born, let's say the thing you envision is some sort of happiness conceived of in whatever way (religious, social, personal, hedonistic, virtue, etc.). What if they fail on most of those ways?
If your answer is that "They just have to figure out a better way".. how is this not paternalistically assuming that people "must do" this project that you had for them? It's forcing a set of (de facto) choices that these new people will have to pursue. Once "in the game", there is no way out of having to make these choices, and sometimes they lead to no good outcome for the player. It is then quite gaslighting to blame the player for not following the plan well enough the way you want it, or to say that it didn't work out in their favor, or to say if they "just did this or they would be better". I can't emphasize enough the kind of hubristic paternalism necessary in deciding for another that this project is what needs to be played out be a person that is someone that is not you simply because you have the power to create that person.
Interesting point.
An attack from a different flank.
Ive been pointing out that if the ethic was indeed a product of nature, it would be nature developing an ethic that led to the demise of all ethic agents and so the demise of ethics itself; the ethic that was naturally born would then have to turn and destroy itself to be an antinatalist ethic. Ive been trying to show it is internally self-defeating - living things using their lives to end living things that use their lives ethically.
But destroying itself is not what life naturally does. Its just the opposite. Living things may devour their surroundings and destroy things, but life does so to live and to endure destructive forces from outside nature.
This all just further supports your argument that antinatalism is not natural.
I don't see this as a knock on his position. Birth control isn't natural, but it's not immoral.
This is two parts: 1. That SOMEONE does not exist. And 2. Exist to suffer.
You are talking about the child as if actual, not potential. You did a much worse job of making this about the parent. The ethically good outcome has to be about the parent, the ethical person acting ethically. Not someone else. Be they not exist as a potential child or exist to suffer as an actual child.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Dont really need to reply here. Im not talking about nature like its intentional. Its causal. Mother Nature is a metaphor for causality, or natural necessity. Like a biological function. Like procreation. Like, in the case of humans, ethics. Ethics came from humans and humans came from natural processes so ethics sits directly in nature in us humans. Antinatalism would be natures human ethics that requires by natural necessity humans unnaturally stop procreation, which ends the ethics that sits only in humans which formerly sat in nature. Total mess.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Suffering prevention. Is this the highest ethic, the only ethic, a foundational ethic to all that are built on it? Or just another ethic where someone might hold some other ethic higher while keeping suffering prevention close, just not central?
I think you have to say it is up there pretty close to your highest ethic. All other ethics might add some suffering to the world.
Antinatalism sort of is a one size solution fits all human immorality solution.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What a phrase.
And I know you dont care about this but it means ethics is as meaningless as your suffering, your life, and your precious preventative sentiments. Why be ethical? Its a different question, but antinatalism does not promote a good sense of meaning and purpose behind being ethical. It rids the world of the life out in place that would do the preventing of procreation.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Who knows? No one can influence what a person gets for themselves out of this life. Thats up to them to get out of it what they can. To the ones who are born to us we can only give them things out of life - it is up to them and their intentions to take these and get things out of life. All we can intend is the same thing we can physically provide - an opportunity. Its called procreation.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Theres nothing paternalistic by banning all babies? It is an ironic use of the term paternal but thou shalt prevent suffering and never have children. Just as wide open to derision for paternalism.
You never responded to this:
Quoting Fire Ologist
Well?
Its a more clear blow than my same point about it being unnatural. It just means you cant be a naturalist if you want to be an antinatalist. You couldnt have drawn the ethic from nature. Some other influence, like a god as an easy example whispered no more babies lest you cause all their suffering. If the antinatalist doesnt want to have a deity, fine then - but where did they get the idea of a universal morality that wipes out procreation was a good?
I still say it makes no sense to prevent suffering in another by eliminating the other (through never making the other). You never have the prevention if you never have the other to prevent from something.
No. Again, it IS from the perspective of the parent. You CAN project onto the future and see hypotheticals. Someone DID NOT SUFFER (that could have). There is no actual "someone", but from the perspective of the parent, this prevention was what was the ethical decision, and being a negative ethic, it is good that it DID NOT occur. And again, the ethic, being a negative ethic, was about NOT allowing the suffering. The asymmetry is when you project to the other way, "Happiness did NOT occur". This is not a violation; it's not obligatory to promote happiness, only prevent the situation where an ACTUAL someone would suffer. The ACTUAL someone did not suffer. Violation did not take place.
As an aside, you can certainly disagree with the formulation and reformulate it. That is fine. The nature of the ethic doesn't change, just the language used for hypothetical scenarios. But oddly enough, however you formulate the language, we actually agree it is from the perspective of the person making the decision.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Natural necessity? This is all bad faith arguing. You are arguing as if humans cannot deliberate for themselves, or that there are directives from nature that force us to decide a certain way. Calling your argument by another name "causality/natural necessity", doesn't change the incoherent nature of the argument, thus everything imputed on your idea of "Mother Nature" remains for this new term, that also matters not to moral decisions. There is no logos, no natural necessity to fall back on.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Indeed negative ethics, like not violating rights, or making people suffer unduly, would be pretty high up there, yes. The basis could be several things, but it is based on a deontology of not using people in this case. YOUR positive projects shouldn't be at the behest of SOMEONE ELSE'S negative violation. The right not to be used/rights violated/negative ethics violated is above someone else's notion of what is best to occur in the world.
Quoting Fire Ologist
No, I am not sure why this phrase or concept is so puzzling to you. Let's say instead of ethics, it was "Make plastic". Would it make sense that humans need to be around so plastic exists? That makes no sense. Nothing "needs to be around", including ethics. It's a byproduct of what humans face when making decisions. If there is no potential for ethical considerations (like procreation, murder, theft, etc.) to exist, then there are no need for ethics. It's not much more complicated than that.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Right..so this speaks to exactly my point about the intent versus reality, Veil of Ignorance, and creating projects for someone else. I know you don't see anything wrong here, and that is part of our miscommunication/disagreement. I at least want you to understand where the disagreement is, even if you disagree. I don't know if you see it here with your answers to these questions..
Quoting Fire Ologist
No, that would mean all ethics that say "Don't do X" is paternalistic. That would be absurd as any action that is an "ought" would be this, and we would be abusing language. "Don't murder" is not paternalistic. Rather, unlike the antinatalist ethic, which PREVENTS a paternalistic scenario from happening, procreation WILL cause another person to be affected, to be born for X reason/project. THAT is paternalistic to think another person should be allowed to suffer because you have a notion of X. No one is affected by anything by not procreating/antinatalist argument. So by definition and applying it to the outcome, antinatalism cannot be paternalistic like procreation would indeed be. Also, being that almost no antinatalist philosophies entail being "forced" to not have children, but rather provide an ethical reason not to, there is no problem here either. The person can freely choose what they think is right.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I didn't answer because it's a non-sequitur. This isn't a debate about abortion. An antinatalist is not entailed to believe anything regarding abortion, but certainly, one who believes that the fetus (qualified perhaps by a certain time period of gestation), is not a person yet, would think that abortion is permissible.
So an antinatalist can say it is impermissible to procreate, to create a new fetus, in order to prevent suffering, but it is ok to kill a human fetus.
Got it.
It's not new that overpopulation is a problem, and killing off billions of people is unacceptable, but Anti-natalism would solve that problem in only 50 years without anyone suffering.
Antinatalism can take many forms, but most antinatalism is not about preventing various environmental or population outcomes but due to not wanting to allow suffering for a future person. Indeed, a result would be a reduced people born, which would in fact reduce the population, but that is generally not the position of most philanthropic or misanthropic antinatalists. Once the population levels off to a "correct" level, the environmental/population "antinatalist" would no longer be so, and thus was a contingent natalist, really.
Interestingly, in the US, countries in Western Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia, and even China (even AFTER the one child policy restrictions) the population has gone to below replacement levels which makes economists and social conservatives uneasy. They need little units of labor to keep the pyramid scheme going, and this "lower than replacement level" gives them pause for alarm. Here are some recent stories on this:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/20/health/global-fertility-rates-lancet-study/index.html
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertility-has-collapsed-with-profound-economic-consequences?utm_content=section_content&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw7NmzBhBLEiwAxrHQ-Z7JGafAcUZiAufKxKdpfX4yzbiPVxb0FOEcHE1d1-oiBo7YEc6WLRoC7cwQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
https://www.vox.com/23971366/declining-birth-rate-fertility-babies-children
https://time.com/6836949/birth-rates-south-korea-japan-decline/
https://www.ft.com/content/008a1341-1882-4b98-83d4-0d7dc08a4134
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-fertility-rate-record-low-rcna100353
Now I'd love to think this worldwide decline in fertility rate is because everyone realizes that bringing more people into the world means bringing more suffering into the world, and they want to prevent this in a noble ethical way, as good antinatalists.. But that is not the reason. The reason of course is mainly due to the fact that the more educated a population, and higher the standard of living, the harder it is to raise a child. People also end up living more individualistic lifestyles that tend to skew child-free over family-type living. So it is more about lifestyle choice, the cost of raising a child, and a more individualistic, less traditional view of goals in life.
Of course in poorer, less educated (for women especially), and more traditional societies like the Middle East, parts of South America, Africa, and Asia, the fertility rate is still fairly high and so in those areas you will continue to see growth, and the overall growth will continue being that there's simply more people on the planet in general, but it will slow.
Either way, no, population decline is generally not the goal of antinatalists. Since population reduction is context dependent (as presumably it would be permissible to have children again once sustainable levels are reached) we maybe can call it "context-dependent antinatalism". I guess in theory as well, "misanthropic" antinatalism falls under this (rather than philanthropic ... or "to prevent suffering").. That is to say, people think that humans are ruining the environment, other animals, habitats, and the current living conditions and thus need to stop breeding until such time as these recover. Usually these people are simply for fewer children, not absolutely no children.
Well said, I have no counter arguments but will add to your comment that using this kind of antinatalism to reduce population would also create economic issues.
Most likely various adversary countries would see it (or already see it) as opportunity to expand population by settling low fertility areas or areas that would introduce such antinatalism.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is true, but where we are dealing with non-existent people this is not relevant other than to assign a position to oneself as a result of their emotional reaction to whatever proposition..
Quoting Fire Ologist
There are clearly not. There are potential victims. This is why the analogy holds, for the most part. And taking this straight to your conclusion of "no playgrounds", yes, that's right, but antinatalists don't confuse the issue:
No humans. Not not playgrounds. Let the people who exist use hte playground, for reasons your point out that would make the "no playgrounds" conclusion stupid as heck. That said, it seems fairly clear that's not hte intention. THe intention is to leave the playground (world)as is, and remove the potential sufferer as it is (on this account) an unavoidable consequence of being one.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Could be. But I found this to be the sore red thumb of the lot, so figure best to tackle this first.
Quoting Fire Ologist
While i understand the avenue you're taking here, it's not apt.
Procreating is not analogous to maintainence of life. If someone is alive, there's a consequence to doing nothing. Not so around procreation. There is a neutral, or a positive (i.e nothing, or a new person (capable of suffering)).
Quoting Fire Ologist
No. This isn't relevant in any way. We're starting at zero. If the position is that people must procreate I can only laugh. I don't see another conclusion there, if you want to establish a 'wrong' in not procreating.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Not at all. I would guess if it's making you uncomfortable, i could repeat those comments :P
The point here, is that most people are "wrong" about hte quality of their life. Do you seriously think that isn't a reasonable inference, ignoring emotionality?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Here's some meat. IFF I am deluded in that way, then yes I would. I, currently, have zero reason to think so and plenty of good reason to think the opposite. I can note all the happiness and purpose in my life without having to ignore what I think is a good, logical conclusion about my life. It is, overall, a waste of time.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That is not the analogy at all. The analogy would be to God if anything. God removing people because they suffer too much in the face of his arguably more important creation - the Ocean. But this is a little silly. An Antinatalist would call both analogies dumb and just say "Why can't you take the metaphor as the metaphor instead of reading other things into it?"
Quoting Fire Ologist
Antinatalists don't do so. Not quite sure how to respond, in this case.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I don't disagree. But it hasn't anything to say about antinatalism.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I really don't know what you could mean here. Life is plenty of things - overwhelmingly: suffering. It is not right to procreate in the face of that fact (on my account). It goes no deeper than that. All of the other fluff obviously exists. It has nothing to do with the arguments, as i see them.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This anthropomorphizing of nature seems delusional to me. I'm unsure how to approach it, given that take. There is no 'intention' behind nature. We're not acting 'against' anything by not having children. We have a choice, and to me, it's a clear one. To you, either not so, or the 'other' choice.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is very interesting and you've picked up on a couple of conceptual issues that I think probably sort of float around among antinatalists without any real answers. For me, the antinatalist can abort. Should abort. But this is in line with most other reasonable takes on abortion: Up to a point. I'm not willing to commit to a timeframe, but its obvious at some stage a fetus can 'experience' and prior to that, go for gold.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Few points here:
1. They would not have to agree. A zygote is not a person. The coming together of a sperm and an egg is not what leads to suffering. Though, most antinatalists probably would recommnd avoiding this.
2. To - some - degree, i get what you're saying. But 'future people' is a bit ambiguous here. A fetus which could survive outside the womb is probably already a person. Prior to that, you're still int he realm of "whether or not" in terms of making a choice, to my mind.
Mission accomplished.
Quoting AmadeusD
Really? You dont use metaphors to make the text more interesting? Ok if you think thats delusional of me how about simply:
Arising by the necessity of chemistry on earth, life began. This led to animals, which by the natural necessity of evolution led to animals on land, which by necessity led to humans, which by necessity led to logic and ethics, which by necessity led to antinatalism, which, if practiced well, necessarily leads to the end of all of this living necessity (at least of the ethical kind). The natural evolution of ethics in the world was necessary so that ethics could be ended by these ethical animals.
Basically, all the rest of the living things by necessity procreate, as procreation is part of the very life that has now spit out ethics, and our ethics is to end life itself, unlike every other natural, necessitated living thing. Seems like natural necessity gone astray because of our ethics. Or, justQuoting AmadeusD
seems like its based on a preoccupation with suffering too much maybe?
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
Can I use these statements too? In response to the other things you said? :razz:
Quoting AmadeusD
What?
Quoting AmadeusD
Wow. Philosopher king hath spoken to the little suffering people. Is anyone ever wrong when they judge what is right or wrong about the quality of OTHER PEOPLEs lives? Maybe wrong anbout some of the most people? Isnt it THEIR lives? Its none of my business to say your life is suffering, just like its none of your business to say my life is anything. Maybe most antinataliats are wrong about the quality of their lives. Possible? Killing off all procreation might be a little rash?
Quoting AmadeusD
So by procreation, you have to mean conceiving, growing the fetus, giving birth and feeding/caring for a new person. So it is wrong to procreate in this sense because only after some or all of these steps has suffering been inflicted on a person. Not just conception. This way, conceiving a fetus isnt yet procreating, and we can kill the fetus if we want, without inflicting suffering. But then, a man could have sex and conceive many fetuses and never brake the rule of antinatalism. It is only the woman alone who can complete the steps it takes to inflict the suffering of procreation. The man inflicts a fetus that can be killed on a woman (or maybe inflicts is harsh, but antinatalists know how to read inflicts between the lines), but only the woman chooses not to kill it and inflicts suffering on a new person, eventually. Right? To be consistent with the notion procreation inflicts suffering, much harder for men to break the antinatalist rules? If ever?
Don't know what the other person would say, but your use of "necessity" here is the problem. Necessity is being used in some ethical fashion. We aren't "necessitated" in an ethical way by any natural logos or impulse. Meta-ethically, we at least act as if we have the freedom of deliberation, so I am not sure your point. We have no fidelity to "evolution", "the chemistry on earth" or anything else. That is a weird reification to me.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Interesting enough, this is partly the basis for deontologically, why it would be wrong to decide for another that they should suffer. It isn't your business to determine that for someone else :D.
But besides this, empirically-speaking there is solid ground to stand on in regards to Pollyannaism. That is to say, we often have very unpleasant experiences in the present that we often smooth away later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the unpleasant experience. This leads to a false estimation of each event in the moment as opposed to the events in hindsight which throws off later reported evaluations of good and bad. Or, even worse, trying to compress all experiences in an evaluation later on, not pulling apart each individual events negative experience as lived.
Antinatalism is a weird reification of being ethical, of the good as in a good choice being choosing not to inflict life with its suffering.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Then we often have pleasant experiences in the present that we rough up later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the pleasant experience. Thats all psychology.
All of this interestingly points out that no one can judge anothers suffering, or that they are suffering at all.
It is false to say life is insufferable. Just way too much whining about the day you stubbed your toe. Way too much discounting of the day you saw someone you love happy and laughing, or laughter itself.
It is false to say we are never right to inflict suffering. Just not a tailored ethic anyone could ever follow. We can follow a rule to not steal. We can not lie or murder. But never inflict any suffering?? We would need to not ask anyone to ever do anything. We couldnt tell someone we loved them for fear this would burden them and increase their suffering. Teaching someone about antinatalism could inflict tremendous suffering on them - the meaning of life and all their plans dashed because they involved a family and kids. It is NOT true that Happiness is not obligatory, whereas preventing suffering is. Neither happiness nor preventing suffering are obligatory. You reify your ability to reduce suffering, and the ethical rule that tells you this is the highest good.
That's not reification. Reification is this:
In your case, you were treating nature/necessity as something which we need to have fidelity for.
In the case of AN, there is no necessity of nature being appealed to. The ethic itself isn't a reification, simply a weighted value (against causing suffering). You can question that value, but that is not reifying an abstract thing into something more concrete. Nature's evolutionary aspect has no ethical component to it, and to pretend it does, would be a reification. Similarly, if you said "good exists in the world like a chair exists in the world", some might accuse that kind of thinking as a "reification" of good. You are doing this to necessity.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Indeed it is psychology. Either way looks pretty poor for evaluation then. Interestingly enough, the negative biased people that have mild depression have been seen as "depressive realists".. That is to say they may have a more accurate view of things. This doesn't seem to be the norm as the average person doesn't have mild depression (aka dysthymia).
Quoting Fire Ologist
So again, for the nth time, the unique thing about procreation is it is completely preventative.. It prevents the cause of all suffering. Every other instance has an aspect of not only prevention but mediation. I see your other arguments as not mattering because of the difference between positive and negative ethics. As you yourself stated in the last post, just because YOU have a project you want to see carried out, that doesn't mean others need to be inflicted with suffering as a result of this. And being that no one is forcing antinatalism, no one is forcing you live out the AN ethic, if it pains you so. It is up to you whether you want to decide for another that they should suffer because you think that some X positive project overrides this consideration. That is the whole crux of the argument.. Is allowing the conditions for someone else's suffering with X positive ethical consideration you might have? The AN would always claim that no, it is not. No need to cause suffering, if it was unnecessary.
Like reifying an abstract good not to inflict in the physical act of procreation.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So we are allowed to inflict lots of suffering throughout our lives, but the rule not to inflict suffering is super important when looking to consent to the naturally produced function of procreation. Got it.
Its completely preventative of ethics too. No more ethics along with no more suffering that the ethical ones couldnt stomach inflicting on others (except they could stomach the risk of inflicting suffering by every other act they take besides procreation).
That's not reification. You are giving ethical powers to nature. Ethics are usually things that are in the realm of human decisions.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Are you willfully ignoring what I am saying between preventative and mitigative? Mitigating is only needed once you have to trade a greater harm for a lesser harm because there is no other way out of the harm. It is already happening.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yeah and again, no humans, no ethics needed. No problem.
Also, no one is saying one should try to inflict or to not prevent suffering other than procreation. Not sure where that comes from. I just said procreation is unique in terms of prevention. It doesn't mean anything else.
But humans came here naturally. So ethics, which tells you how to live good and rightly, came here naturally.
We kill all humans off, and ethics is gone, whos to say nature wont evolve a new species of sentient, ethical beings. By ending humans you are leaving the world empty of ethical beings who could have prevented nature from spitting out more sentient suffering. Totally irresponsible of you.
That premise is misguided or misleading in either one of two ways:
1) If humans came here naturally, then anything can be justified as it came about from humans, which came here naturally so anything we do is technically "from nature".. reductio.
and
2) Descriptive ethics is not normative ethics. There is no directive from nature. This is as existentialists say as "bad faith".. Or it is a smokescreen as you can say that "Nature tells us this", and I can say "Nature tells us that". "Nature tells us clearly that we need to procreate because animals procreate". That is literally the definition of the naturalistic fallacy.
So do antinatalists believe we humans came here UNnaturally? What did ethics come from then?
Look, I think we are talking past each other.
My wife was just scratching our dogs neck telling him how good he was with my daughters dog who he hates who just spent a few days over the house. Finally went home today and my dog is happier than ever. My dog of course had no idea what my wife was saying just that it sounded soothing as she massaged his neck and ears. All he knew was all of his suffering was gone, he was master of his house once again and feeling at peace staring into my wifes eyes as she gently petted him. That happy 30 seconds was worth hours of suffering (which of course it took to build), and was just a dogs life.
Happiness is so much more than suffering; moments are worth a lifetime of suffering. Moments of human happiness are worth millions of years of evolutionary struggle for survival.
We show this in our choices and lives all of the time. We dont suffer only because of life. We suffer because of what we want, we suffer on purpose when we work towards something we suffer to achieve, we struggle to realize, we wish we knew before but we know now and we are glad we at least know this at all. All for those fleeting moments where now is joyous, where our work is done, when weve achieved our goal, as we realize our vision and know enough to say good.
We all say good everyday. I defy you to get through one day without saying good.
Life is suffering? How could you know this if life was not good?
I agree that life includes suffering, but I dont agree suffering is bad.
Like the antinatalist just asserts as a given that life is suffering and suffering is bad, I simply assert life is a series of joyous moments and these things are good, and good enough, not at all like suffering, and not bad at all.
Dont you see that at all? If not, cant you let someone else wish that joy upon everyone, wish that they get to experience a moment of joy that would fill a hundred lives? Uou really think no one could feel this way in this life, this life is so bad?? Cant you let someone have that? Let them have their joy along with their suffering?
Now back to the syllogism.
If the suffeting in life is what counts most for you, then fine, find your ethics in the prohibition of suffering, and build your ethical behavior out of ceasing procreation.
But if suffering is just one of those things, a stumbling block to a lifetime understanding even the concept of bliss, where suffering is just a challenge youve beaten so many times by simply living, if you can make a trifle of all the suffering in the world when compared to the good life also brings, then the whole antinatalist argument fails. It is a syllogism in which life is suffering is the main premise, linking procreation with unethical failure to prevent suffering, so if you just dont care about lifes suffering to the point where its prevention is the highest good, the whole argument fails.
Thats my starting point - life is good. Suffering is a part of life, but so what? Life was good first and still good now that I suffer while living my life.
Even though without this first premise the antinatalist argument fails, I recognize that I havent proven that life is NOT suffering, or given you any reason to abandon your position that life is basically suffering. Thats up to you to prove your premise is valid. You also havent proven to me that life is NOT good, or its goodness cannot dwarf its suffering.
But now you know, if you want to convince me of the soundness and validity of the antinatalist argument, you should be convincing me that life sucks. Otherwise the rest of the argument will fail for me.
If you did convince me that life sucked so bad it was worth considering an ethic that held all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented in others, you would still have to convince me that preventing procreation is preventing suffering. Suffering only has a chance to be suffering after there is a person who suffers. The person in whom you might prevent suffering, therefore had to exist before one can prevent suffering, because suffering doesnt exist until after the person suffers. So never procreating is not preventing suffering, it is preventing a person. Period. Unless preventing a person is some other good ethic, nothing good is done by preventing a person from existing. They havent existed yet; you havent prevented suffering yet. You may have a rule all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented but you cant apply that rule to any actions that do not involve other existing beings who actually exist and therefore can actually suffer (if not prevented). Potential, future beings do not actually suffer; so if you prevent a potential future being from existing, you prevent no suffering at all, since there is no actual suffering that could possibly be prevented, as there is no actual person who could possibly suffer.
I know you dont like this argument but it sits in the bigger question: why would anyone even care to be ethical in their treatment of other people, if procreating other people is not a good? Who are we being ethical for? Ourselves? Will we suffer any less as we go on living? All that weve done if we stop procreating is we assert our judgment that the existence of people doesnt matter as much as the ethical rule all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented. But ethics is for people (which you have said), not people for ethics.
Lastly, even if you could convince me that the suffering outshines the joy as the essential feature of life, and even if you could convince me that by procreating, we are doing anything specific toward any specific person, let alone by not procreating we are preventing anything specific in any specific thing (like a person), you still could t convince me that the rule all suffering that can be prevented should be prevented.
Im not going to go into it again but suffering isnt what is bad in life to me. Evil and sin are. Unethical choices are. Suffering is a consequence, not a raw material, of life, but not always a consequence, and sometimes non-existent in life (for moments, many moments).
So there is no need to convince me that I am wrong. You can if you want, but then you would have to show me I dont really mind the suffering enough to justify discarding the joyousness.
I admit I have been focused on the logic to try to convince you that you are wrong. Beat up the premises to snap you out of the conclusions. But its up to you to see for yourself.
I cant make you see the good that is life and how suffering can be minimized and defeated. All I can ask is that you honestly answer this: if someone thought life was good, in fact amazing, would they be immoral to want to share this with as many people as they could, including by hoping for children and doing everything they could to raise children?
Or if someone thought ethics only applies between existing moral/ethical agents, that ethics cant apply to the dead or the uncreated, then wouldnt an ethical rule forbidding procreation because of its infliction of suffering be misapplied? Or Maybe even unethical in its ignorance towards actual people as opposed to potential people?
Or if someone thought suffering could be something so important in the shaping of who one actually is in this life, that suffering was sometimes good in itself as something not only to be accepted, but embraced and promoted at times, wouldnt a rule that ended all suffering by ending all people seem opposite of the good one sees in other people, in other lives, and in life itself?
If you grant me my premises, am I still wrong to think procreation is a great good?
And I think Ive said my peace. Antinatalism seems unneccesssry if it be based on simply suffering, seems anti-ethics while it puts ethics above ethical people, and simply ignores the joy in life.
And the boredom. Life is boredom - we should all kill each other in a final bloodbath just for sake of some excitement in these otherwise insufferably boring lives. Ridiculous? Not if life is only boredom.
Life is way more than suffering. Maybe only human beings can recognize this. Why kill ourselves off because of a little suffering?
It is a useful to consider antinatalism if you are planning to have children. The reason being it requires you to look at your inner motives and understand the kind of responsibility you are taking on.
Other than that, it is fairly limited in my view for the reasons you articulated (and many more).
Because the AN basically believes that not suffering trumps not existing. It is certainly a factual claim that if you do not exist you do not suffer. It is not a factual claim to state that something is better than something else. It is also not a factual claim that suffering is bad unless you have outlined some specific example of the kind of suffering being offered up for discussion.
The arguments for and against the AN position are dependent upon personal views, experiences and metaphysic (The non-identity of possible people is an example of the kind of metaphysics argument used by ANs).
I think it is fair to say that it is an extreme kind of negative utilitarianism if taken as universal law, as the end goal drives towards something like net zero suffering (so net zero existence).
In a more favourable light it is act utilitarianism hyper-focused on a specific aspect of the human experience.
But isn't it ironic the AN is only able to prevent said suffering, by in fact, making full use and utility of the alleged eventual path (or in their mind, cursed tool) that is existence?
Kind of a corundum in and of itself, no?
It is a moral preference. Of course, if said person believes in moral absolutes then the matter is quite different.
As a means of exploring the responsibility of being a parent I regard the AN position as worthy of serious attention.
Let's reframe the mindset here. Not ""against" anything, simply the acknowledgement (belief, rather) that creating human life is more likely to incur negative experience than positive and such should either be avoided altogether or at least such factual information or likelihood (whether true or not) should be made present in the minds of all men or women capable of childbirth?
Can we agree on that as being the anti natailist creed? Or do you have a different definition in mind?
To further say, there is a war (or framed binary belief or "footing") between so called "anti-natalists."
That life, regardless of change or possible omission of what is currently held in the antinatalist mindset as "suffering" or "negative", creation of new life either, is intrinsically a negative, whether that conviction is held based on the likelihood of even, say, a perfect utopia naturally always reverting to a negative state, or some other generally non-evidential belief.
That is to say there are two camps so to speak, whose divisions are defined not of anti-natality at all but greater reason itself: possibility of change and rigidity of current state of affairs. Is this not correct?
Existing = Suffering < Neutral < Pleasure
Not Existing = No Suffering/Neutral/ No Pleasure
Only the latter guarantees No Suffering.
Obviously because ANs exist they are prone to argue against bringing life into the world.
From this there is the argumentation of having the Right to bring people into existence. Then we enter into the non-identity problem and metaphysics.
Of course there is much more nuance to it than this but this is the basic frame work. Its proponents will vary depending on other moral stances (including items like moral absolutism, moral naturalism and logical positivism).
I think this more or less aligned with the Right of the living to bring life into existence.
Basically what makes the anti-natalist so sure? What specifically do they hold their ground on?
Is it, say as if one were a prisoner, who is given the option to father a child, knowing said child will also in turn become a prisoner and experience more suffering then pleasure? And is this the root of all AN argument: if more pleasure cannot be "guaranteed" prior to the creation of life, such action, which would apparently likely result in more negative than positive is to be avoided.
Is this not the AN dogma or decree? I apologize, for it is me who is now asking for you for information or clarity!
Hmmm. Seems to me if something doesnt exist then any reference to this non-existent thing makes the thing some theoretical thing. Its not a real thing (because it doesnt exist).
So the new ethics of AN demands we be ethical towards future potential beings who actually dont particularly exist; and in the meantime we suck at being ethical now (not for the future) towards actual human being who actually exist.
Or, I wonder if you do not exist, what do you do? Obviously you do nothing, nor can you do anything because you in the first place are a fiction, a possibility at best. Why would a fiction suffer or certainly not suffer, or do anything?
Its not a language game. Who or what is relieved of suffering but our imaginary friends who we spare from living in the first place?
If I, who now exist, died, it can be said that I do not suffer. Ill accept that (although there are various ways to dispute that as well, including my own argument against un-procreated beings). But you can say I dont eat chicken anymore either, or play music, or stub my toe, or have a toe. You can say lots of things about me that are over now. Thats because I existed, and knew suffering and had all of these things about me to lose with my life. There is an I from which things that go along with this I can be removed, like my suffering, or my toe.
But if there is no one there to exist, no you as in a you never existed, there is no one saved from suffering. No procreation ends human life, and no human life means no humans suffering (or playing tennis); but you cannot particularize this and say YOU or HE or even IT never suffered about a you who never existed.
Because you cannot particularize this prevention of suffering in a particular you who doesnt suffer, AN is acting ethical towards no one, no one who ever exists.
The AN view is asking what right anyone has to create life if they know it will suffer.
Below this isasymmetry argument. The absence of pain is Good whilst the absence of pleasure is Neutral.
You can guarantee less suffering by not bringing someone into the world. This is also underlined by the metaphysical problem of non-identity. Much like our responsibility for considering the kind of world we leave behind for future generations (which we speculate about quite often without arguing about their non-existence).
The problem of identity is a real problem, but if we admit this problem to the equation, then there may be no me who could fail to prevent suffering either.
We need to assume an agent, identify many agents, to build an ethic among them.
Thats not the issue, or we can never say anyone exists to suffer or more to the point, never say anyone exists to prevent suffering.
Well, not really because you exist.
I think we have to insist any AN statement adheres to their moral stance regarding nonidentity of possible future people, as well as their moral claim that no suffering is good and no pleasure is neutral.
It is a utilitarian position in essence, so when questioning the AN this should also be kept in mind and pointed out where we feel necessary.
I'm sure you're correct in most instances. Of course we have yet to meet or question an actual practicing anti-natalist (not counting the obvious resident one, joyous and pleasant to know him as he is..., of course, a bit or irony but that's beside the point, for now)
I fee it important to note the overwhelming drive in which spurred my recent response to you, was to assert, rather question, anti-natalist is poorly defined as is. That is to say, there are two (at minimum I argue) driving forms of rationale that define such an idea. With no shyness of immodesty, I believe one could ascertain the driving consistent ideology of anti-natalism is: life is more likely to incur negative outcome than positive, and so, in respect to culmination of man's efforts of reason, that which is likely to produce negative result, is best avoided. However, this may be true. All well and good. But there remains a blockage, a failure of inquiry, I believe. As to whether or not said belief is based on circumstance that is changeable, or remains a hopeless illusion of changeability. That is to say, in simple terms, yes, if something is likely to be negative, it is to be avoided. But whether or not this negativity can be changed, resolved, eliminated, defeated, or perhaps lessened by introduction of a greater dynamic thus making said negativity trivial, is my, question. Basically.
So. I believe there are two types of anti-natalists. Those who are such rationally, and those who are perhaps confused and only in such respective minds of thinking due to circumstance that is in fact, false.
That is to say, those who are truly not anti-natalists but consequentialists, or best said, the current state of being ie. the status quo produces adequate evidence procreation is more harmful than positive, as in, perhaps things could be changed, whether easily or throughout much if not impossible levels of difficulty, to alter such a reality. This is the divide I think is neglected in the majority. Hence me reason for replying.
So. Yes, ":the way things are, that can be changed, but do not seem likely to be changed, creates the factual inarguable reality that, creation of new life is more likely to incur suffering on the innocent then immediate and observable positive outcome and so, procreation is to be avoided"
Versus "No, even if everything were to be perfect, either eventually, or in some intrinsic yet unobservable way, creation of new life is likely, eventually, to be of worse outcome than not"
Essentially. There is a divide that those who fail to acknowledge simply refute the soundness of the anti-natalism argument. Is my suggestion.
I'm just watching as you all wildly miss the mark on antinatalism. I do love it when others try to argue it, but I also cringe at the misguided notions when they inevitably misunderstand it. It also seems no one pays attention to my previous arguments, so every time I argue something it is like all the arguments made previously are put on reset and wiped clean, and then people take other arguments that are not correct, and replace those as strawmen instead. I refer everyone to my last several posts and interactions in this thread, starting with the Veil of Ignorance as a starting point, and then once you have caught up to the relevant arguments, rather than misrepresenting them so as to knockdown poor strawmen, I can reenter the chat. Otherwise, please keep arguing misguided points for misguided notions.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/908702
What I said outlined a couple of the main points AN puts forwards. I said no more than that.
Theres a lot of AN positions so its easy to pick and choose strawmen. What general ones? Even Benatar, the most well known proponent, is misconstrued terribly.
I pointed to the issue of non-identity (about which there are many positions) and about asymmetry (about which there is more to say too in terms of its implications). Pointing out to those asking that looking at one without considering the other is kind of futile.
You can provide links for them if you wish. I have read, and listened, extensively to the AN position.
My position is that it is VERY useful to look at for anyone considering having children - but not because I believe it will, or should, stop them.
Again with the THE. It's not ONE position. The "gist" is not having children. The arguments are numerous and nuanced. To lump it in as "the" position would be misleading.
Quoting I like sushi
That's ok. I've written plenty if you want to search.
Quoting I like sushi
What you said there are very different things. Let's say Kant's CI or Aristotle's virtue ethics is correct, that wouldn't necessarily mean people "will" stop people from X, Y, Z or promote people to do X, Y, Z. The soundness on the argument doesn't rely on whether it affects a lot of people. I can try to show tens of millions of people that someone like Trump is a conman liar that doesn't have your interests in mind, and that doesn't mean it will affect them, even if there is plenty of evidence it is the case.
Right there are many positions, but you lump despite this. Anyways, the "non-identity" issue works AGAINST natalism. That is to say, if we believe in not violating dignity/autonomy etc. The violation only happens when someone is born, not when someone is not born.
If we had a set of beliefs about an event, even as big as "life itself", ranging from really like, disappointed with, frustrated by, not happy with, etc. None of that becomes so much a moral issue insofar as it is someone's own personal reaction. The minute that "I like X, so SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD LIKE X", it becomes a problem, as now someone ELSE will be affected by YOUR evaluation.
But again, this is my argument, not all of AN. So don't misconstrue that even though I am continuing the debate.
The main positions are:
- We have no right to bring life into existence (nonidentity issue involved here in part).
- No harm is better than no pleasure.
I have found nothing much outside of these primary ethical issues worthy of much attention (existential threats, state of society etc.,.) because all of them orbit the two positions I gave the gist of above.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I responded to people asking about the AN position is in general. I did that. What your personal position is is your business to explain.
Why do you state it like I don't understand this?
Quoting I like sushi
Replace "pleasure" though with happiness or "positives".
People were responding to my last comments generally, then you swooped in there like you owned the place.. Please.
We've discussed this before. We've discussed this before. Again, swipe clean. Last time you were tag-teaming my argument with some other poster.. I forget which of the handful of anti-antinatalists that like to join..but they'll probably pop in too. Your friend perhaps.
Also, I'd like to add to your 'No harm is better than no pleasure" summation that it's not as simple as that, as nothing is. It is also the fact that one is pursuing a positive ethic by breaking a negative ethic, or justifying breaking the negative ethic (don't harm), by pursuing a positive ethic (promote X, Y, Z outcome.. happiness or whatnot). One would have to get past this notion that one should force a new person into an intended goal by breaking the negative ethic of no-harm, no-autonomy, etc.
Yeah the non-identity thing is then thrown out like a poor defense because "Who is harmed?" "Who is violated?" And of course this is supposed to justify doing any number of things that could potentially harm a future person.. It's obvious that any number of other scenarios that might happen to a "potential child" would be considered wrong, even if a person isn't actually born yet. It's the weakest of the anti-AN defenses, and not even clever.
Because you were wrong. I will not interact with you any more. My post was directed at the others who failed to understand the AN position. I tried to guide them towards a better understanding that is all.
Bye
Wrong about what? Wrong about THE AN position..Right.
I truly think there are two widely and generally-held ideological "camps" as far as AN.
Perhaps it's an over-simplification or some misaligned understanding (which surely you could correct emphatically and with a smile), those two camps being:
Circumstantial:
Things (be it poverty, the state of the world, wars, overpopulation, prejudices, natural greed* [though that one gets interesting because it hints at an absolute, "unfixable" dynamic that will forever be present which belongs to the second camp]) as they are (and are foreseeable to be in either perpetuity or any reasonable foreseeable future) formulate a moral non-favorability towards procreation,
Intrinsic:
Due to Original Position, even if Earth was transformed into a Utopia, a hypothetical almost "alien world" where suffering is so rare and unheard of it now requires true and intense effort to create (versus the current dynamic where suffering seems to be the default and likely outcome without large [and for some non-accomplishable] levels of planning, effort, and perhaps luck), procreation is still responsible because a person did not choose to be born, and inevitably will face some restriction as a result, such restriction amounting to enslavement (ie. follow the moral laws, be a good neighbor, feed oneself, manage stress in a socially-acceptable way lest one be punished by physical incarceration, etc, etc. that one never "asked" or was even involved in being placed in). Something like that?
--
I take it to mean, in short, one is simply not true AN. True AN is, in a sentence, based on the truth one can never truly guarantee a net positive in performing an action (whether it's procreation, or even something more general such as ordering a dish at an unfamiliar restaurant or a new special at a familiar one, it should not be taken. That is to say, the reasons for avoidance are self-evident. Is this correct? Simply because we, rightfully so, consider creating new life more substantial and important than ordering food, doesn't change the underlying principle or truths of the comparative example, I think can be argued.
Yes. So, as you just pointed out, life has a limited set of choices. We tend to look at life as the degrees of freedom of choice, rather than the degrees of limitations. That is to say, you can't choose what is not available- a world or circumstance that cannot or does not exist, for example. THESE are the set you can choose from. But what if I don't want these set of choices? You are shit out of luck. Some people might have some mitigation, or even say to just go kill yourself you ungrateful bastard. But you see, there's something callously and unjustly wrong with this kind of response to the forced set of choices, once born. Once a person is born, there is only what life offers, with a brain that can understand there are undesirable things about life. And if you need to mitigate and change your mindset, or whatever else you're going to throw as a palliative, you have already conceded the original violation of forcing a limited set of choices.
Edit: And thus, why I say one should not violate the negative ethics of non-harm, forcing someone into YOUR project, for the positive ethic of X, Y, Z (usually along the lines of promoting happiness, a value of some sort, virtue, and then we can go down the litany of purely selfish personal projects).
If I value X, Y, Z about a project and think it is good, this does not mean I should affect other people to be forced to also be part of the project.
So, at the end of the day, it requires respect of life to allow one to be in a position to create, let's say a bomb, to end all intelligent life, on Earth? Since life will exist otherwise. And the AN argument is, this is pure suffering.
Where do we go from here? What about possibility of life on other planets? Should life be respected long enough to ensure our entire universe is destroyed or rather "made incapable" of supporting life in perpetuity? We're not at that state, currently. So surely, the irony or at least unacknowledged (at least at present) reality which requires such a truth to become actualized is ignored?
That is to say, life (the true AN equates with suffering?) will still exist until more life is created that allows greater potential to prevent itself? Do you understand this is what you're saying?
Huh? Why make strawmen? You don't "fix" a violation (non-harm, no autonomy) with another violation (non-autonomy at the least, and non-harm in certain forms of hedonism/utilitarianism).
Quoting Outlander
I don't understand what it is YOU'RE rambling on about. Killing people to "save" them is not what AN is saying. It is a ridiculous straw man.
Ironically, the only way death occurs is being born in the first place, so try again.
No one is an AN to that degree at all. That is not AN. I lost my 3000+ word essay on this subject unfortunately (not that I think you would have enjoyed reading it anyway!) :D
Made a brief summary here:
Antinatalism is based on a two main areas of contention. That is the philosophical problem of nonidentity and application metaphysical valuations.
NONIDENTITY
Firstly, the nonidentity problem is outlined quite simply in ethical terms as how and if we can claim to pass moral judgements that have consequences on persons who do not, as yet, exist. An instance of this would be akin to how we attend our environment with the thought to hand as to how it can effect future generations.
For instance, a culture that prioritises trees, viewing them as sacred perhaps, may also use them to build housing. This would disrupt future generations if they neglected the native forests by effectively destroying them all to build more houses or for use in other sacred ceremonies.
Here we can see a clear neglect of persons who do not yet exist (nonidentity). In contemporary terms this is often equated to how humans have damaged the natural world, thus leaving future generations with future problems to solve they had no direct hand in causing.
Here one antinatalist (AN) argument ensues. This is that we have no right to bring life into the world that will suffer due to none of its own doing. The new life is not responsible for its own coming into being, yet it does come into being. How can this be considered in light of those making the moral decision to have children? Is this morally irresponsible or not? If so to some degree each way, then to what degree and how can we rightly measure this?
Regardless of any personal analysis of this situation we can understand that given certain beliefs about this scenario we can come to see the reasoning behind someone siding with the AN argument.
Some will see justification in talking about the rights of nonidentity persons while others may find this too difficult, or impossible, to hold. The degree to which this can or cannot be justified is tied up in other initial ethics/moral stances (be this deontological, utilitarian, nihilistic, etc.,.).
THE METAPHYSIC OF ASYMMETRY
This perspective is an interesting one regarding moral axiology. Let us assume that measuring such values of human experience can be made in a meaningful way to begin with. This argument puts forward the proposition the probable chance of harm and benefit (let us use these terms as positive and negative aspects of human experience).
A) If someone (nonidentity) does not come into existence then there is No Harm and No Benefit.
B) If someone does come into existence then Harm is guaranteed (on some level) and so is Benefit (to some degree).
The argument goes as follows
For A, No Harm is Good and No Benefit is Not Bad.
For B, Harm is Bad and Benefit is Good.
Looking at instance A), not existing is Better than existing because there is an asymmetry between Harm and Benefit, where lack of harm is strove for and peaks in Good in its negation, lack of Benefit is Not Bad and so neutral. No Harm either way.
Looking at instance B), existing is guaranteed to cause Harms and Benefits are not guaranteed to outweigh Harms, even though in some cases they may.
Conclusion: Not existing guarantees No Harm caused. Existing guarantees Harm caused AND cannot guarantee Benefits outweighing guaranteed Harms.
If then the goal is to reduce Harm then it is effectively a gamble when we create new life. The nonidentity person may have a Good OR Bad life, whereas if such a person never came to be no more Harm will be caused to such a person for obvious reasons.
Now to return to the problem of nonidentity
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
The question is now how anyone has the moral right to procreate given a belief in reducing Harm following from the principle outlined in the argument of asymmetry?
No one asked to be born (obviously!), but someone did choose to bring life into the world. It is a solid argument for AN to say no to procreation here if they believe in the reduction of Harm as a priority. It is not faulty thinking following that particular line of reasoning with those particular views.
There are numerous other AN arguments that are basically little more than weighing the scales regarding future benefits and detriments to living being (and nonidentity potentials too) that add different themes to the argument. The common ones are Overpopulation, Dystopian World, Inequality, etc.,. These are more or less decoration to the core elements of the AN position I have laid out.
There is certainly weight to argument. Like every other ethical position though it does not present a convincing absolute moral law, but creates dilemmas for those serious about having children who wish to explore the ethical implications of doing so, for their child, other children, their community and surroundings, and all other manner of issues too.
NOTE: There was a another major point I had in the essay regarding ethics in general and Self-interest Vs Common good. Way more involved for that though so omitted it. Hopefully the above helps you see the weight, and use, of the argument presented by the AN position (whether you follow it or not).
Congrats :)
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is a bit sleight-of-handy. That's not what's happening here. They are informing the interpretation of the argument. That, to me, is bad form in the sense that you are in la-la land if you anthropomorphize nature to support a factual or logical argument because you think its relevant - and really not contacting the argument if you think it addresses it. I understand flowery language for engagement, but this isn't hte place.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Your use of 'necessity' in this paragraph is perplexing. None of it necessary. That invokes a (whats called) cosmic level of intent which simply doesn't exist. But, for the sake of discussion, let's grant it - why is this conclusion at all a problem? Things are cyclical as best we can tell and don't adhere to much in terms of form (over such long periods, that is).
Quoting Fire Ologist
I would say to some degree, this one gets a bit of traction. I think its worth discussing why Ethics even matters to this discussion beyond whether or not one feels that having children is ethical. I don't. I can explain why and see where other's are lets say not making sense, but if someone simply rejects that suffering is ethically relevant to whether or not life obtains I can't argue with that. That's their view, and IMO ethics its nothing but personal emotional response - if you're a fairly logical person, you can get further but that's all. But again, 'necessity' is not a good word here. These things didn't have to happen. The natural necessity you invoke didn't see the Dinosaur asteroid coming, that's for sure.
Quoting Fire Ologist
If you suffer too much, whether you're preoccupied with it isn't relevant. Those who aren't have the 'polly anna syndrome' and those who are are simply in touch with reality (this being a take - not my position on every human's psyche lol)
Quoting Fire Ologist
Hard to know what you're not getting. Swap humans for God. God's decision to remove the ocean. Human's decision not to procreate. They are diametrically opposed in the two stories we've told. If you can be clearer about what's not landing, I'd be happy to draw more parallels.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Sly digs aside, you have entirely misunderstood what is being said here. If someone tells me they have a good life, yet all they ever do is complain to me about their life.... *shrug*. I don't have to even explain why they are wrong there. They are lying to themselves. "quality of life" is subjective, where a count of suffering is not. Don't conflate the two. Quoting Fire Ologist
Possibly, for sure.. but i see absolutely no argument that gets anywhere near the realm of getting that off the ground. Antinatalists don't claim their lives are horrible, and you've got to stop insinuating there's some personal judgment going on. It's not relevant to me whether someone claims they have a good life individually - the argument is about lives to come. Those who are currently living aren't relevant, personally, but in aggregate. Most people are flat-out delusional about how good their life is because evolution has provided us with several incredible illusions to keep us procreating. Which is arbitrary, unnecessary and IMO bad for all involved. We do not need to procreate, other than to procreate, whcih is tautological crap. And even more importantly, most people are completely ignorant to the suffering of others. This is partially why polly-anna syndrome is so rife. Most people don't have a fucking clue how bad the majority of people's lives are - and this obviously a sliding scale. People are getting more ignorant about others over time, which the strict number of people suffering at the extremes comes down. But the number of people not majoratively suffering is vanishing. More slaves than ever, more concentrated wealth, authority and power than at most points in history (though, this is to do with population booms as much as form).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Accepting the over-simplification, yes. This does fall to women at some stage of hte analysis (careful of the alphabet soup). I see no issue there. That's just a fact of how humans procreate (the woman chooses, essentially, whether it comes to fruition). But, I think this is a bit dull of a version of the discussion. Whoever makes the choice is the culpable one. It's not all that interesting that at some stage the woman has the ultimate say (also, that's not always true anyway - men are larger and stronger on average and can physically force a woman to carry to term - which, obviously, is unethical already so we're fine heh).
Quoting Fire Ologist
We can. Yet, those alive will suffer for it, almost invariably. Yet another reason not to procreate - the possibility of having to go through an abortion.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Not in any way whatsoever, and I have to say I do not think your run up to this illustrated a support for this conclusion.
Men choose to have children. If men never chose to have children and women were surreptitiously getting pregnant, or carrying to term then this gets some truck, but hte fact is men choose to have children and in fact have been the prime drivers behind procreation for hte majority of history. Only in the last seventy years or so have women had any control over when to conceive, carry and birth children with any lets call it accuracy.
Men actually seem more likely to break antinatalist 'rules' by breaking several other deontological rules.
This all said, perhaps it would make more sense to make an evolutionary argument:
Evolution wants you procreate. It will delude you to this end. This doesn't make your life better. It is a parasitic kind of manipulation of you body by your genes, to have more, and less happy, children (that is biased, and its illustrative, to be clear - not trying to sneak it in). This functions the exact same way drug-seeking behaviour functions in addicts. You have to break the cycle to avoid the hurt.
But the argument is that the lives to come will be full of suffering, and the evidence that the lives to come will be full of suffering is gleaned from those living now, who are suffering. So the judgment: "my life and those of others, are full of suffering," IS relevant. The argument is made FOR lives to come (or for NO lives to come more precisely), but the personal experience of lives now is one of the premises of the argument.
Quoting AmadeusD
Seems like you are basically saying either you know your life is full of suffering, or you are living in LaLa land. I don't know why we would speak so generally about billions of lives in such simplistic terms, especially to support a logic that ends procreation as if it was just some other behavior.
Look, I agree that suffering is everywhere that there is a living conscious being. I disagree the suffering is all of the time for every living being. And I think the non-suffering is well worth the suffering, for the vast majority of living beings. So I would need to be tortured and watch my family tortured for a few days at least before I would throw away all of human history and its future. I know there are those who have been tortured for years. I know for many, anxiety and depression are worse than physical pain - mental illness may be the deepest and sharpest of all suffering there is (and it can be accompanied by physical pain and physical sickness).
But still, for most, much of the time, life is worth it. It's not LaLa land to take your suffering medicine like a badge of honor and greet each new day, each new birth, as something better, again, and again and again.
I agree, but I see that as entirely impersonal. Each individual arguing about the merits of their lives doesn't really touch the discussion too deeply. Its aggregation that matters because we're talking chances. And when speaking about this, in aggregate, that most people are wrong(or right) about how 'good' their lives are becomes highly relevant. A birds-eye could count up the good moments vs bad moments (by their own lights) and most people would come out in the negative yet claim the positive. This is unfortunately, true for myself and every person i've ever pressed on the subject.
I should say, I take this position, but its not "mine". This is an age-old position that I think some of the more recent antinatalists have just tried to quantify. I think it works. Its just hard to accept without becoming cynical, which i've not. It's an 'on average' claim, which results in a x chances in x that one would have a life balanced toward not suffering. That chance is vanishingly slim.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Not really, no. The chance of a particular kind of experience is relevant, and we can aggregate extant experiences to calculate chances of more or less of that kind of experience. Ones where suffering isn't the overall flavour are rare. I wouldn't even consider doing the vast majority of things with a risk of a lifetime of suffering, without a 75+% chance of that not being the outcome. And even then, i'd most likely not do it. This rises to 99.9999999% when it has to do with my children's experience, which is telling, and may give some insight into the antinatalist thinking.
Quoting Fire Ologist
in aggregate yes. Maybe 1/100,000 people would be right making the claim. Or living in lala land, yep.
Nought wrong with that other than that it blinds you to the fact you're deluding yourself and hey presto having kids looks good to you. *sigh*. If these people were not having children, and increasing the sheer number of sufferers on the planet, I don't think this argument would any weight as one's delusion becomes one's reality internally.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Same. Hadn't intimated this as best I can tell.
Quoting Fire Ologist
There are ways I can get to this position, but I can't only do so in light of a fully-conscious being at the level humans are making an informed decision. Inflicting this on those unborn is horrid.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This seems extremely, extremely selfish imo. Why is your experience the tell-all for humanity? (this being said while I fully get your point. This just seems a more fun way to take it).
Quoting Fire Ologist
I think they are deluded that this is hte case, for sure. For most people, evolution has provided a rather handy mechanism for dismissing the almost inevitable future of mostly suffering to allows to go forth and fuck, basically. I'm unsure this can be gotten around without some kind of spiritual invocation and I'm unsure what that would look like for you. Peterson'eqsue perhaps?
Its not. Im saying, to convince me of the premise that my life is mostly suffering, you will have to add some suffering to my life.
Im not fashioning any new law based on my experience of suffering or happiness, or my judgement of how other people should rationally balance the scales of suffering and joy in their experience, in their lives.
AN is fashioning a new law. AN says to me because your life is mostly suffering, you should not procreate. AN is the tell all.
Im just saying to Mr. AN enthusiast, procreate if you want or dont procreate if you dont want, but telling all of us, including me, not to procreate based on the fact that all life, including mine, is on balance over full of suffering, doesnt make sense to me at all. My kids love life too much. Ones a nurse (surrounded by suffering), one is a welder (gets burned everyday), and one is a struggling artist (who needs a job). They are all glad I inflicted life on them.
Quoting AmadeusD
There is no aggregate until there are individuals to pile up into that aggregate. An aggregate construction doesnt get off the ground without constructing all of its individual stories first.
Quoting AmadeusD
Two things: 1. I think most people overlook the positives and would errantly come out with mostly negatives. So I personally think most people would be wrong about their own lives too - if they said their lives were over full of pointless overwhelming suffering. But 2. What does it matter what anyone else thinks about anyone elses lives but their own? I cant tell you what pink looks like to you, or what hot feels like to you, and I cant tell you how much you should be suffering or how much you should think you are suffering, or what you are feeling when you suffer painful feelings. So unless we all of our own wills each agree that life is basically suffering none of us should be basing a law on this premise. Who is anyone to tell me or anyone else but themselves, how much they suffer - that is not possible.
What happens here is that, even if objectively speaking life is mostly suffering, we can only test that by asking each person, and the vast majority of people will say (as you said above), on balance, life is worth all of the suffering. Suffering, like the qualia of any experience, cant be determined or imposed from without, and the value of that suffering in developing laws like AN, should not be imposed either.
The AN position is not this. Some idiots may think they have an unshakable argument, but in truth it is just one of many arguments and has valid points to consider.
If anyone here is such an Extreme AN (to the point where they would enforce this by law) then they are not really understanding the point regular ANs make.
I summed up the main points someone trying to understand the AN position need to understand. The AN position is perfectly reasonable and does raise some intriguing questions about personal responsibility and how we measure the value of life (which is clearly quite a subjective matter!).
You're all missing the mark to some degree. The main argument is not about "How much suffering" per se. That can be a dimension, but only after the core of the argument is understood.
The argument relies on the asymmetry of preventing suffering and not preventing suffering. You already have to have as an ethic something "pinning" suffering to ethics. In my case, I am "pinning" via common notions of deontology about the dignity of people, and how they aren't to be used or "messed with". For example, non-harm, and autonomy seem to be pretty essential to the dignity of a person. All things that would be violated by having children. [It matters not that they "can't" be consented either, simply that they wouldn't be.]
Not preventing suffering via procreation, will lead to the violation of this ethic (non-harm, autonomy). Procreation leads to harm/suffering.
And again, if you want to parse out "suffering" and throw out categorical errors and strawman for examples, you can save it, as like in previous posts, I have provided the distinction between preventative actions (prevent the harm if possible, especially if it is unnecessary to let the harm happen in the first place!) versus remediative harm (the harm is already taking place, now a set of actions is needed to remediate it!).
It also becomes a problem of aggressive paternalism, as no procreation leads to no person being affected, and thus nothing caused to be affected ("forced" in shorthand colloquial speak), whereas procreation does lead to harm. Thus the aggressive paternalism only leads one way, that of the decision to procreate.
What do I mean by aggressive paternalism? That is what I was explaining in many of these posts, the simple idea that you shouldn't violate a negative ethic (such as non-harm, autonomy) to promote a positive ethic. That is to say, you should not force recruit people who will be harmed, and profoundly, because YOU deem the game necessary for someone else to play based on your personal estimation.
Now here is where perhaps we can discuss the dimension of: "HOW MUCH suffering?"- and I did bring up the Veil of Ignorance as we can never truly know, what the world beholds for someone else. But more than a primitive harm/benefit analysis, it is just a fact that the world has many known and unknown/unanticipated harms that will befall someone. That alone is enough to preclude life from being something one should "inflict" for another. Perhaps if we were indeed living in a parallel universe where there were very little suffering considerations, it would be more on the level of an ACTUAL gift. What do I mean here? I mean that (unlike life), an ACTUAL gift is something that would not impose an overriding set of inescapable BURDENS onto someone else, along with the "positives" of the gift being given. So even though this ethic doesn't need the dimension of "how much suffering", it still doesn't pass the test, even on this front.
Call me an idiot but I thought we were talking about ethics, a moral law.
If all the people who were thinking about procreating asked what ought I do? Whats the right thing to do? Should I procreate? The AN believer would say to everyone You shouldnt procreate because that would cause suffering.
No one is talking about enforcement of some criminal statute or something. Missed my point.
But a lot of people argue, oddly enough, passionately against AN as if it were being proposed as law. it seems to me, weirdly misplaced hostility. If its not worth consideration, you dont even have to think about it. But often being angry about something means there is something of consideration that you find worthy of having to be addressed. Its causing you a disturbance in some way that you cant let it go. Its not even popular enough that you can say its all over so you cant avoid it. Its a small minority position in philosophy, an already small subset.
Yes, but they are entitled to their opinions and it makes sense to listen to their arguments for what they are not you think they are.
It is not really all that complicated you just have to break it down and understand that they have particular views on responsibility to future beings. You may not hold these views but you can consider them as if you did to some degree and come to a reasonable understanding of them.
As something of a comparison let us assume we all agree that polluting rivers is a bad thing. If some factory manager dumped toxins into the river (il)legally knowing the potential effect on the offspring of people who happen to drink this water we would regard this as a pretty terrible thing. The AN extends this further, but at least you can begin to understand why we want to STOP the factory manager from doing what they did, yet we would not decide to BAN the construction of all factories that could potentially pollute the river.
Understanding the general direction of the argument does not mean you need to adhere to it nor agree with it. You can still follow the path and see what is of use.
People who talk about AN from a radical position are obviously radicals, and radicals tend not to listen. I do not really waste my time on them as they do a good enough job of pushing others away from themselves to the point I see no point in engaging directly.
NOTE: To anyone jumping down my throat saying I am misrepresenting AN. No, sorry. This is not what I am doing. I am, and have, broken it down to the CORE elements that those not familiar with AN need to understand. I have no intention of exhibiting every possibility because they ALL come down to no 'suffering' being good where no 'pleasure' is not bad (asymmetry argument and the surrounding issues of utilitarianism/consequentialism and metaphysical values) and nonidentity (surrounding items like individual rights, responsibility and in particular whether or not we can say we have a 'Right' to procreate regarding potential beings combined with inevitability of 'suffering').
So any degree of suffering is bad. I get that about your argument.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
I get it.
Dignity is preserved in the person who prevents suffering by not procreating.
I get it.
You dont get that Im still not persuaded by the logic.
If I go to Chicago, theres a chance I cause somebody in Chicago to suffer. So if I never go to Chicago I have prevented all of that possible, likely (because life is so full of suffering) suffering. Therefore, I should never go to Chicago.
These arent strawmen. These are individual lives living out their free moral choices, using logic and judgement. In the judgement of AN, all human procreation is worth ending balanced against all human suffering.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Suffering is close to the core of the argument. Very close. The AN person is not preventing happiness, or boredom, they are preventing suffering, and suffering caused by one person to another person is the thing that goes against human. Suffering is really bad, bad enough to prompt moral laws and new choices. According to the AN position.
Its not convincing to keep saying discussions about the suffering prong of the argument are strawman arguments.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So what if you come from a long line of procreators, all of your parents and grandparents were all procreators (weird how that works) and all you want to do is spread a little love and joy and hope for a better future around like your mother did .. Dont you think you will cause fresh new suffering to make this person doubt procreation? You are saying its for your own good, despite all the people on your family tree who love and admire, for your own ethical good you should not cause suffering, so you should not procreate. The rule itself as a thought causes suffering too, to someone who had long plans of a family and grandkids one day. Its nice that no one is talking about actually forcing people not to procreate, but thats not the point; even asking (most) people to reconsider any more procreation, is going to cause suffering. How do you answer that without being paternalistic, and without: Quoting schopenhauer1
The game in your estimation is never causing suffering. But you never entertain thoughts of suffering being not just tolerable, but able to be made part of our dignity.
Not causing suffering isnt strong enough of a moral code versus the chance at bringing about a human good through that suffering.
Suffering matters greatly to your argument and you take it for granted that everyone should know this suffering, and that no one could dignify this suffering, and instead call it a strawman.
I cant believe its even a small subset, because its illogical to me to promote an ethic that defeats the existence of all ethical subjects.
Im just talking to you. Im not trying to save the world. I know nature will never give AN much traction. Maybe its not a good thought, despite the goodness of trying not to cause harm. AN defeats its own good, which are ethical human beings.
No. That life is suffering, and no more needs to be said about this life we are each forced to live? No, I dont assume that.
Interesting. Maybe. But says nothing about whether its a good idea and a sound moral position to take.
The AN argument has weight to it. The utilitarian positions have weight to them too, So what? It is our pleasure to attend to them or not.
No one has explained how it is logical for an AN person to say thou shalt not procreate but, after a person breaks that rule and gets pregnant, how they can also say it is permissible to get an abortion. That would mean, it is wrong to create a newly conceived fetus, because that causes suffering, but once you create one, you can still kill it. Where is the internal logic there?
Unless ANs define procreation as bringing a baby to viability. In such case, another sub rule under the AN ethic is that if you are newly found pregnant, you should always get an abortion, or you will fail to prevent suffering. See, I answered it for the AN enthusiast. More abortions to save world from all those mothers and fathers who dont seem to care about all of the suffering they failed to prevent.
So if life only had a little bit of suffering in it, for everyone, the AN argument would fail? Thats not what Schop is saying. And it opens the whole AN argument up to attacks regarding the value of suffering.
Which to me shows its weakness.
If I leave my house tomorrow and go driving, Ill accidentally cut someone off, or miss a green light and cause someone to be late for work, or maybe hit someone, so in order to prevent suffering, shouldnt I never leave my house? Isnt that the same logic being applied to procreation?
This is precisely the kind of problem looked at in the issue of nonidentity. I do not know of any good argument as to when an abortion should or should not happen - but that is a separate but interesting comparison to consider when untangling the differences in such positions.
I am not going to put words in their mouth only give an honest reply to your point.
Quoting Fire Ologist
It would still not address the issue of nonidentity and your 'Right' to bring someone into the world who may or may not suffer to some larger or smaller degree.
This is because the valuation attached to existence put forward by the AN is that of 'asymmetry'. The absence of 'suffering' is GOOD while the absence of 'pleasure' is NOT BAD (rather than GOOD). It is a basic aggregation aligned with the unpredictability of how a human's life will be. This is why an AN may say 'Why gamble?' because to them it is a little like this scenario:
1) You do not care about money AT ALL.
2) You are given money and then have to gamble with it.
3) Two possible outcomes:
A) You GAIN more money.
OR
B) You LOSE the money.
All you then have to do is replace MONEY with 'Pain' and then 'Pleasure' to see how there is an imbalance. Not having either to begin with is more satisfactory than gambling.
If you could guarantee that every lived life would be basically full of 'pleasure' to an optimal level for everyone then I cannot see how an AN could argue against such a scenario. If there is LITERALLY no scenario they or you can present that is for procreation then they are stuck.
On the flip side can you imagine certain extreme scenarios where you would look more favorably on the AN position?
By favorably you mean see the logic, because AN is all gloom and doom about all of life and what is the best thing to do about it - doesnt do any of us any favors. But If this world was a living hell, I and all I could see around me was great suffering, and I knew my child would have it as bad or worse, with no hope for anything worth all the pain and suffering, then maybe.
You didnt answer my scenario about leaving the house being likely to cause additional suffering in the world. How am I any less immoral by having a baby or leaving the house? If I leave, I am likely to cause some suffering to some potential person, just like if I take steps to procreate I am likely to cause some suffering, therefore yo prevent suffering and be an ethical person, I shouldnt leave the house or procreate.
I believe such a person would do their best not to cause more harm either by leaving or not leaving their house. Once we exist it cannot be undone.
Again, the point of focus would be the nonidentity and what right you have to bring someone into the world in the first place.
You may as well ask something like why not wipe out the entire human race over night BUT that is not what AN is saying. They are concerned with the Rights of potential people and our justification for viewing having children as a human right in and of itself (without considering the rights of a human that never asked to exist in the first place).
Being born into an idealistic world still begs the question of why we do it and whether we really should. I imagine everyone has a number of reasons for having children and an even greater number of people never even really think about it at all.
What right do I have to make someone else late for work by driving too slow? What right do I have to cause a car accident? None. So if preventing suffering in some possible scenario is the highest ethical ideal, then I shouldnt leave the house.
You didnt answer the question.
I can have a baby and do my best not to cause any harm to that baby. So if merely having the baby sets up the conditions where I didnt prevent suffering, so does leaving the house and involving anyone else in my actions.
Nothing to do with AN.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I answered by saying if 'suffering' was not an issue there is still the issue of questioning the intrinsic right of of having a child (the nonidentity problem).
Do not get me wrong I understand the kind of comparison you are making, but it is not an AN position to argue about things such as the right to punch someone in the face, be late for an appointment or such items surrounding the usual ethical concerns of existing humans. It is about looking at the ethical issues surrounding the reasons, and 'human rights' involved in procreation.
The 'suffering' part is A factor not THE defining factor of the AN position. This is why I have stated multiple times that both need to be considered when viewing the AN position.
Its THE defining factor. Take out that life is suffering, you take out that procreation causes life which causes suffering, AND you take out the ethical ideal that it is wrong to inflict suffering and good to prevent suffering.
Take out Suffering, and the whole AN argument collapses.
So does life. There is no life without suffering so you would effectively be achieving nothing by making a claim that suffering is absent.
The 'suffering' is part of the argument involved with the presumed Right to bring life into the world going unquestioned. It is a very subtle part of the AN position but nevertheless essential to it - just like the Right to have an abortion for some women.
There is the claim to a Right to act in a certain manner (create/negate) potential life, and the issue of 'suffering' too (which is inevitable for any living creature).
To repeat, you have absolutely no need to agree with the AN argument only to understand the inner workings of it. The issue of nonidentity might not be much of an issue for you either, but it is for many. You just have to accept this and say "okay, but no thanks," and take what you can away from the discussion.
Just like someone believing in a god you have to listen to them, throw in some questions and then see if you can make some kind of sense of it all as best you can. Ultimately there is no conclusive answer as we cannot measure such things as yet.
There is a point in my mind where having an abortion is the right way to go and in my mind there is also the point where AN is the way to go. I have a far less murky picture of former than the latter.
In terms of nonidentity I have already shown how we can have care and concerns for future generations, so this is involved in the argumentation too.
That is it. If you understand this you understand the AN position and the problems it poses (regardless of its 'rightness' or 'wrongness').
Again, you have failed to interpret the arguments, by mischaritable reading or just outright failure to tackle what I am saying.
You are now wearing out my patience with this kind of thing. Either debate the points, or don't. But stop misconstruing and strawmanning it.
Let's look at your responses...
Quoting Fire Ologist
No, you don't get it then. It's NOT about the dignity of the PARENTS. Rather, it's about the dignity of the (future) child. Dignity is not violated by NOT allowing the suffering to carry forward (i.e. non-harm/non-autonomy principles are not violated). That is say, no person exists to be violated prior to procreation. The violation only takes place once procreation occurs.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Once born, the person is in remediation ethics. They have interests and goals, and these are weighed against other interests and goals. It would be indeed, an indignity to NOT allow people to pursue their goals within reason, once actually existing. This doesn't mean that they then get to FORCE others, unnecessarily into harmful projects of their personal preferences (as this would be unnecessary violation.. it didn't need to happen). Rather, it means you have to learn to live together and respect each other's rights. Needing to survive in a given context of a society means having to move about in public spaces- in the situatedness of a social sphere. This means, inevitably you will cause unintentional harm. You try to be careful to avoid violations, but it cannot be prevented (unlike in the case of procreation), and thus why it always falls under remediation whereas procreation falls under preventative. Positive ethics DOES matter in the sphere of existing to some extent, as long as it doesn't unnecessarily violate others. Remember the bridge argument? The fishermen want to catch the biggest fish of their life. It's blocking YOUR right to go to your car. Whatever pleasure they get from fishing and the collateral damage of causing your harm, it was unnecessary to "recruit" you into their project. This is different than being one car of many in traffic "recruiting" you into traffic. With the road situation, it is tacitly accepted that this is part of how roads worked. However, if a car wanted to stop traffic so they can look out the side of the road at some attraction, that is now falling into unnecessary "recruiting" territory.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Some people believe the world is flat. They are UNCONVINCED. Some people think Donald Trump doesn't pose a threat to the democratic order. They are UNCONVINCED. Some people think the world is 6,000 years old. They are UNCONVINCED. It's not my job to try to convince every Harry, Dick, and Jane of their intransigent, unsound beliefs. I can only present the argument faithfully and to the best of my ability and they can do whatever they want. They can handle snakes, pray to their god, say their holy Hosannas, spout out nonsense, red herring non-sequitors on an internet forum, do whatever.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is actually the thing I am saddest about when arguing the case. I am not a Spock-like figure. I think people can be great parents, and are good people, but that procreation is still wrong. The two can be separated out. No one is doubting that certain people are very good at parenting and raising kids and I feel for the idea that they feel they are missing out on something. But this is a classic case of "inclination" versus "moral". The inclination is to want to fulfill this desire to raise a child. The ethic is to not unnecessarily create more people that suffer, and to force people into a world based on one's own estimation of how much suffering is good (especially since the amount and kind of suffering for another is unknown as just a fact of the matter). It's then the inclination that must be re-educated, not the ethic.
Everything seems counterintuitive until it becomes the norm. How do you explain people who value being "child-free"? These people don't even have the inclination to have children. They rather live a non-child lifestyle. They don't want to raise them, some don't even like kids (though many do, they just don't want them). This isn't even a small segment of the population. Child-free people aren't antinatalists usually, but they are a growing trend in society, and it grows with each generation, leading to a decline in fertility rates in most developed and highly educated nations. These people simply don't have this "inclination". This is just one of many proofs that the desire for procreation (literally the desire to want kids) is not a function of "instinct" so much as nurture/personal preference. In traditional societies, families are seen as paramount. Religious/tribal notions often reinforce this familial pressure. Family, society, and tradition, reinforces it with enculturated expectations. Many times, especially in atomistic societies (such as this "modern" one), it's a function of existential angst. "What is my purpose without a family"? And it gives at least 20 or so years of solid "something" to pay attention and attend to for parents. It becomes its own reason for existing.. Why work? To help raise a family! Why go on vacation? To take your (or alternatively to get away from) family!. Why do anything? Because of family. It becomes its own built in purpose. But I am not giving justification for causing suffering, unnecessarily (because it gives YOU purpose), only providing some reasons for the procreation inclination. Again, I don't look down on or castigate parents, or people that want kids. They are generally good people, trying to do the right thing, generally. Though of course, there are also plenty of horrible parents as well, but all of this is besides the point. I am just addressing this idea that AN is cold-hearted or doesn't understand that perspective. Most thoughtful ANs do, they just don't think it is relevant in countering or addressing the issue at hand in the ethical consideration.
Quoting Fire Ologist
So this isn't quite true. It is more than just suffering. If it was just suffering, I would consider myself a hedonic utilitarian or some such. It is rather about not using people by force recruiting them into projects that will harm them. Suffering matters here, but it is the particular nature of preventing suffering absolutely in the case of procreation that makes it exceptionally different than already-existing scenarios, where we are simply remediating suffering (doing the best with what we have, trading greater with lesser harms, negotiating our interests, etc.). Raising a child, forcing education, etc. then can be justified due to remediation measures for preventing greater suffering later on, it is argued. The prevention is not in play anymore. Since someone is born, they DO have interests, goals, etc. It would be wise to trade long terms harms for short term harms in some cases.
Its not my job to demonstrate that the suffering that exists in life is only animating factor of ethics. Thats your job as an AN proponent. By simply avoiding the issue you sound like a flat-earther.
The earth isnt flat. I can argue that, point.
Life is waaay more than suffering. I argued that. You dont respond.
Preventing suffering is NOT the highest good of ethics. I argued that, you failed to respond.
If you are frustrated with me, I think its because you cherish suffering too much.
Life is suffering is your strawman.
Way to ignore my whole post for making this (weak) rhetorical flourish :roll:
Quoting Fire Ologist
I made a whole post, for the Nth TIME, laying out my case, in a pretty lengthy detailed way. This is so uncharitable and untrue as to be laughable at this point. This is the kind of thing where I can respond with a million different lengthy treatises, and you will just dismiss them (without actually addressing the points) so as to constantly make me repeat my points. It's a argumentative overextension. At some point, in debates like these, you acknowledge that the points have been addressed, and you either need to think more on it, or you simply disagree an lay out your counter-arguments.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That is a strawman because I never made that point! Keep using bad faith arguments though if you think that is "winning" you rhetorical points.
Quoting Fire Ologist
No I'm frustrated with you because you have not actually understood what I have written, you are uncharitable, and you are making straw man arguments of my points. I think that's pretty good reasons to be frustrated! You can stop arguing now, because it looks like this is just turning into bad faith ones. This last post has now proven it for me at least. You can say you're bad faith response to this, but that would just be proving it more now. I'll entertain good faith arguments, but in these last posts, I have now seen I am arguing with someone who doesn't care to actually debate, just antagonize, so good day.
Schop,
Im not trying to be uncharitable. Ive told you that anyone who wants to prevent suffering has their heart in the right place.
Answer me one question, is the fact that life is suffering a key premise to your argument or not?
Or better is the fact that some degree of suffering is entailed in every life a key premise to your argument or not?
Frankly dont know why this is antagonizing. Im trying to debate the logic of AN. Its all so clear to you that you think Im acting in bad faith because Im not just following along the path that follows from the premise life is suffering but ethics are good for people and preventing suffering is good ethics so never procreating is living ethically.
To me it seems you are saying there is enough suffering in every life that it is not debatable to evaluate that suffering as anything other than bad, harmful, fruitless, and unethical to inflict on another to any degree.
Im trying to debate that. You think thats bad faith for some reason.
When I was arguing that we cant be ethical towards a future person who does not exist, you went on and on about how it was not about the child. You said it was about the parent who was not inflicting suffering and preventing suffering and the non-presence of the child as recipient of the ethical behavior was irrelevant.
Now when I argue that (because there is no child) the human dignity AN ethics is trying to preserve has to exist in the living person who acts ethically (by preventing suffering and not procreating) you say its about the dignity of the future child.
I could level accusations of bad faith around too, but Im just trying to point out the logical inconsistencies and am open to reasonable opposing views.
For instance, instead of thinking I know how the never going to Chicago scenario is so different than the never having children scenario, why dont you lay it out? I think they are similar.
And instead of thinking I am fully aware of what Im saying and acting in bad faith, show me how what Im saying is not reasonable. Dont just say its bad, show me.
I dont think you are acting in bad faith towards me - I think you are being illogical and Im trying as many ways as I can to show you why its illogical. I could be wrong about what AN really is, or I could be wrong about how my arguments are unsound or invalid in themselves. But you havent shown me otherwise. And instead like calling me a bad faith straw man builder. Over and over.
Are you really going to leave this conversation without showing me MORE CLEARLY how I am wrong?
There is no need to. We are are discussing the logic of ending procreation to make the world more ethical and prevent future suffering.
There is a law that murder is wrong. The fact that I am never inclined to murder and likely never will be makes it easy for me to follow that law. Thats a different conversation than whether murder is wrong is a good law, is something universal everyone should follow, and something we should teach all to understand. Even if we logically showed murder is good I still wouldnt murder.
The question is only is AN sound ethics?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I am trying to use logic only. I never raised any of these non-sequitors. You did, which makes it a non-sequitor to the conversation Im having.
I only point this out to show you how much Im trying to avoid bad faith. Im sticking to the text and bringing up logical issues with it and new premises (like suffering is of less import and less valuable than the life of the one who suffers). Im not resorting to anything else but my observations and wits - no insulting references to religious practices.
Im not belittling the AN person - Im attacking the logic behind the conclusion that in order to be ethical, we should not procreate.
If AN is an issue of personal faith, like other holy hosannas and spouting out other nonsense, then I wouldnt be arguing the way I am. But its a logical, ethical stance. One that doesnt seem sound to me.
Because I had a long post and you ignored it. Yes it's about suffering. Duh. But it's not suffering "tout court" in this case. It's about what surrounds it. The context. In this case the context that occurs when deciding to procreate.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Nope, I am not saying that at all really because again, this is not my argument.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yeah I am ready to do just that because as with even this last post, you misconstrue it, make it into your own version of an argument (straw man), and then ask why I'm pissed.
Quoting Fire Ologist
But you're not.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I had a whole freakn' post with a bunch of detail you ignored.
Quoting Fire Ologist
No, I don't have to prove shit to you. It's time for you to actually do some work in understanding my argument.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Wow, you are so far from what the point of that was to prove. Try again.
Quoting Fire Ologist
You are barely sticking to the text. Try again.
Link to a post where you think Im not responding to you. The clear here is the AN argument and here is why it is the most logical ethic post or posts.
I dont see why you think the things Im saying are not relevant or in bad faith. Spell it out or give up.
I keep rephrasing what I think you are saying to show you clearly what I think you are saying, and then I post my objections.
Im playing as fair as I can despite your accusations.
You just respond to my objections by calling me names.
How about laying out your argument, or linking to something you already said the for Nth time.
Ill try it again anyway.
Is this AN??:
1. Living entails suffering.
2. Causing someone else to suffer (without their consent?) is bad (immoral, unethical), and preventing suffering or future suffering is good.
3. Procreation brings about new life, and the suffering entailed in that new life.
Therefore, procreation is a violation of the ethical rule stated in 2, procreation causes unconsented future suffering, and AN is the more ethical stance.
Is that AN? I am not sure whether consent is needed in the ethical rule of 2.
And instead of jabbing at wherever I have it wrong, show me where it is wrong, incomplete, unclear, but leave in the parts where it is right or clear (if any) so this can be a discussion that builds on prior assertions weve made. Lay it out so that I say Wow, I did sound like I was in bad faith. I did have it all wrong. Or really the point of any conversation, show me so I say Schop was right, AN makes sense.
Work in the asymmetry. Im sure I would screw that up if I tried. Maybe its not essential to sure up the argument.
Work in the fact that specific future people do not matter to take the AN ethical stance towards them (as you said to correct me), but that the dignity of future people is the point of AN (as you said to correct me). And maybe address the issue of these two seeming (to me) to be incompatible.
Suffering itself is a physical, mental lived experience.
The context around suffering, to me, would be the body and its environment, or the psychology - both interacting between the suffering subject.
The deciding to procreate doesnt make sense to me as the context surrounding the suffering. You need to be more precise.
Do you mean some suffering is neutral, not good or bad, but other suffering, like future suffering cause by procreating is good or bad, and in the CAE of AN, bad?
Dont follow needing to think of the context of suffering to understand the arguments.
Right, somewhat fair. In this case, I think it would take that accounting exercise though. Again, in the individual circumstance your delusion(Trademark - lol) is a + for your experience but I'm unsure why this matters. I also suffer the above-noted delusion but I'm still aware of all the suffering outside myself - with the addition of my being relatively sure I'm wrong about my own life. The former aspect is far more important than the suffering I actually acknowledge in my own life, as I see it. Forgive the somewhat combative nature of that approach too - it was tongue-in-cheek.
Quoting Fire Ologist
No, no. Let me be clear. This is wrong. I have struck through the erroneous word that I think is doing a lot of lifting. Without that word, it becomes as described in the first response paragraph in this post. Its actually pretty damn key to remember that zooming in on a specific life is the wrong method here, and I just don't see it as relevant in the wider discussion because of the potential that you're just simply wrong about your quality of life - despite that wrongness improving your quality of life hehe (though, noting that almost no antinatalists think suicide is a reasonable response to any of life, once it gets going).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Because they are alive. You're doing the wrong calculation. Suffice to say, your point here stands but your reasons for it are simply not at all relevant to coming to conclusions on whether to have more children versus what you think about your existing children, or what they think of you. They are already alive. Not in the discussion, as individuals.
Quoting Fire Ologist
And yet, the individual stories aren't relevant and the aggregates are. *shrug*. Not an uncommon reality.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I think you're wrong and I can't find any intuition as to how your reversed version could be reasonable as an assumption.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That wasn't really asserted. I've been very clear that what I think about any particular life isn't relevant (nor is what you think, for that matter). I'm unsure how better to explain that?
Your position seems to result in the notion that it is never permissible to require behaviours from people who are ignorant of the harm those behaviours cause, because they don't report the harm. IF you're consistent in that, I can't really fault your reasoning But i think you're wrong about the states of affairs. If we all accept that life is on balance, a shit experience, having kids would be morally wrong ipso facto - no law needed. Having kids at 80 (males) is in this box. No one thinks Al Pacino isn't all hunky dory for being a father to his newborn at his age. Most agree it's wrong.
Quoting I like sushi
This is somewhat false. Many antinatalists would prefer there were restrictions on procreation on ethical grounds. Otherwise, your description is good.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm not.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not quite. This is what supports it. It relies on the state of affairs being that suffering is the overwhelming mode of experience for humans.
The a-symmetry simply supports the ethical solution of not procreating. Not the position itself.
Quoting Fire Ologist
We were - i tried to take your posts as this. I've responded to the additional comment above as-if. I didn't take you to be insinuating common law.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is why I have a semi-constant smirk on. Every time I've been pressed on this by non-philosophers they get quite angry at their inability to find fault. I think people assume i'm telling them their choice to have children makes them worse people in my eyes
Quoting Fire Ologist
I think this is wrong. If the goal is to reduce suffering in humans, eliminating humans is its ultimate good. The fact that Ethics then cease to exists doesn't say anything about it. No humans is a success.
A further comment on the a-symmetry being leaned on here: It is a crucial part of hte position, but you can actually jettison this and still hold AN views. This is why you can see it supports the action rather htan the position. A lot of people will say "Ok, but why would that mean I shouldn't have kids?" and the a-symmetry comes in.
But this also, and it needs to be clearly understood, makes it obvious that the AN accepts that nearly every living person should continue living as death causes a large proportion of the suffering being calculated.
The individual stories arent relevant individually, but in order for the aggregate to display more or less suffering, you cant gather individual stories about wood-working - you need individual stories that provide some insight into suffering levels.
Quoting AmadeusD
This sounds more pragmatic or utilitarian. Which may be the best spin on AN. If we treat humans like any other animal and for whatever reason want to reduce the suffering of humans, we could end procreation and let it all fade out.
Im just saying if we humans think our ethics and morals are so important that we must live by them and uphold them above our own instincts and choose not to procreate for the sake of being moral and good, then we are defeating the seat of ethics in the world along with the lives that could have otherwise recognized and lived ethically; because it is wrong to inflict suffering is an ethic, and if this ethic is the reason we act, and our actions are to never procreate, then we are not only removing all of the suffering humans from the universe, but the ethics that inspired their removal in the first place.
I missed this, so will give my response here, and then add responses to your most recent below:
Ah, but this is entirely fine and there's nothing wrong with those two positions. It is wrong to bring a fetus to term because thence begins suffering. Being pregnant, per se, isn't an issue. If you were 100% sure to miscarry every child you ever had implanted in your womb - go for gold, but get a therapist.
An abortion prevents the human life entering the pool of suffering. There's no failure in logic that i can see unless there's some underlying imports i'm not grasping.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I agree, and in the process of getting to the 'data set' these are meaningful, just not to antinatalism. It's the contour of the aggregation that's used in this discussion, rather than the fine-grain you're at(or were before).
Quoting Fire Ologist
I think, in a poetic sense, this is more or less where most antinatalists lie. Just don't do anything to increase the number of people. The rest can take care of itself, if we dodge an asteroid in the meantime. Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes. I see no issue, though. The ethic which leads us to remove bigotry would be defeated by a defeat (removal) of all bigotry in the world. This is an oddity of most ethical views, but they are about how to act. If we can't act, its not up for consideration I think.
Read this more carefully. Then re-read it. Make sure you can summarize the main points to yourself. Then when you answer, probably best to go paragraph by paragraph and ask a question if you don't understand, or raise an objection to discrete points, but don't lose track of the bigger picture each point is trying to paint. Here it is again:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/915425
So the initial asymmetry is presented by Benatar as the following:
3 the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone;
4. the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.
So I further explain this asymmetry by reformulating it a bit. The reason is because people often think that 3 runs into the "non-identity" issue because it is an impersonal "good". In other words, "Who" is benefiting from the absence of pain? And if no one, then how is it in any sense "good"?
Now, I think this is easily defeated in modal understanding of future conditionals. That is to say, we just say "It is a good state of affairs" that no one was harmed, WHEN THERE VERY WELL COULD HAVE BEEN SOMEONE HARMED. That's all that is needed to defeat this point.
However, even if someone had a weird metaphysics that denies future conditional states of affairs, you can rephrase the asymmetry as this:
1) Having a person will cause the harm/cause the breaking of some principle. This is a bad situation.
2) Not having a person will not cause the harm/cause the breaking of some principle. This can be either good or neutral situation, it doesn't matter.
All that matters in this is 1 (the bad situation) doesn't obtain.
Explain what kind of "restrictions" you are talking about here. You might be correct as a great many of people with a shallow understanding of the principles involved would encourage this quite strongly (people who watched a youtube video and decided it sounded about right). Anyone with a more thorough understanding in favour of enforcing such ideas by law are extreme radicals and should probably be treated with contempt by everyone else (they will be by me for sure).
Quoting schopenhauer1
You told me to read it carefully and read it again and parse it out with questions. I dont suppose you meant me to do that with the above.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Ok, the violation occurs when procreation happens. But you didnt say the rule thats violated (and Im not going to dare to assume anything). The violation of what rule specifically in your words for me to parse out?
But I got this rule is violated once procreation occurs.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That sounds like a rule in there. The rule seems to be to prevent harm when possible, especially when unnecessary. Then, once procreation happens and the rule has been violated, you move to a different rule where, if there is harm already done a set of actions is needed to remediate it.
I think you said before AN has nothing to do with remediative actions. Which makes sense since AN is a pre-procreation moral guidance.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This seems to be about a wider moral position, and has stepped outside of a narrow focus on AN. The above all talks about how to treat other currently living people. In this context, and if I got the rule right, the rule being: prevent harm when possible, especially when unnecessary, in the wider context of other living people we still must try to prevent harm, especially when unnecessary, but there can be harmed caused that is unintentional harm. And any step we take is towards remediation, not prevention first.
[Could negligent behavior blur the line between preventative and remediative acts? Is there a duty to try to prevent negligence, and while some acts are purely unintentional, others are wanton and grossly negligent sorts that we all have a duty to prevent? This is a tangent - forget the question.]
Quoting schopenhauer1
I sum this up as making the point that what is wrong about procreation is that we are recruiting a future person into a life of suffering, and failing to prevent obviously unnecessary suffering.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think you are making me do all the work and judging by your abilities you could do it way better, and tighter. You just dont want to waste your time on a bad faith opponent - well youre judging me harshly. Im doing my best too.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I get its a tough moral choice to make. That was in The Revealers too.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You said especially since the amount of suffering is unknown. That adds an interesting element. Amount of suffering as a concept, plus this amount being unknown.
I dont think the amount of suffering matters, and I dont think the fact of suffering is unknown. We know every time we procreate we are recruiting someone into suffering. Period. Right?
As far as the re-education, I agree it would be in the face of inclinations and old habits. But Im still trying to parse out the content of the education. That is a 2.0 discussion about inclinations and where they come from and why someone might resist AN. Im just sticking to what AN is.
You even said yourself after talking about people who arent inclined to have kids, about religion and family as urging kids, as existential need for purpose.. Though of course, there are also plenty of horrible parents as well, but all of this is besides the point.
So I dont think I need to parse that part out yet to focus on what AN is.
Im not intending to mischaracterize anything you are trying to explain, so if I do, that wasnt my intent, so dont accuse me of bad faith anymore, please. (If something is wrong, clarify it for me. Nothing wrong with wiping the blackboard clean and laying out a tight argument from the top again.)
Then you said this:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So it is more about not forcing someone to be born at all, regardless of any suffering; it is about how recruiting them into projects is wrong. The fact that it is a project that will harm them makes it all the worse, but it is more than just suffering. [ ] It is rather about not using people by force.
This is why you dont like my arguments about the amount of suffering. Suffering in life is a part of what is wrong about procreation, but it is the involuntary recruitment that might be the real heart of the rule that is violated.
So I had the rule as (trying to quote you) prevent the harm if possible, especially if it is unnecessary to let the harm happen in the first place. But there is a second rule or complication to the rule (again that I hope you will clarify) something like (as tight as I can make to build less room for misinterpretation): do not impose harm, especially when it can be avoided.
So this confuses prevent with not impose. But I am seeing AN as more saying do not impose in order to get the involuntary recruitment aspect into it.
But that undermines all of the time spent parsing out prevent from remediate. That wasnt really the issue. And that issue was related to the suffering, where first you must prevent suffering, but then once procreation happens and you are with the currently living you are following a rule relating to remediating suffering. But we also said that the suffering isnt the heart of the issue.
So I think all of the arguments over prevent versus remediate and suffering and amounts of suffering, were off the mark (or at least my objections and rebuttals to those aspects of the arguments were off the mark). Because that wasnt the real heart of the problem. Thats why it can be ok to cause some suffering in living people, because they can consent to that suffering.
The mark for AN has to do with the lack of consent to live at all.
It is wrong to force a being into existence when no such being could give its consent, therefore one should not procreate.
Is this right?
Quoting schopenhauer1
It is right. It sounds right to me. I still dont think Im mischaracterizing anything you are saying.
And I also still think it can all be summed up in a tighter argument where every word counts better than Ive done here. Im not sure if the best formulation of the rule involved ( prevent harm or not imposing harm).
There are holes that I cant seem to fill, and that Im afraid to fill for fear of strawmanning!!
There is an apparent vacillation on the place of the future non-existing baby that is both prevented from existing (as a future possible baby), and in which suffering is prevented from existing. I know that the baby never exists when the rule is followed and no violation occurs. But the rule itself seems to invoke the existence of a baby that cannot give its consent, to whom life is being imposed involuntarily; theres a tension there that you (not me) introduce into the text. The existence of the baby seems to matter (actual) and not matter (potential) to the world this ethic describes.
And I still see a hole in the value of suffering to the AN argument. Something needs further clarity here. Does AN hold its ground regardless of any suffering or not?
But Ive gone too far astray from the text.
Before you respond to all of the things I got wrong, can you at least admit how far I DO seem to understand it? Most of this whole post was me trying to restate you without causing any cringing.
Yes, thank you for actually trying to analyze and parse out the arguments. I appreciate that, and now we can have a much more interesting discussion :clap: because we are not talking so past each other, but seriously engaged in the content. This was actually very good, along the lines I was looking for.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Correct.
Quoting Fire Ologist
:up:
Quoting Fire Ologist
Correct
Quoting Fire Ologist
Absolutely, but as further down it discusses that once born, "positive ethics" does come into play (people's interests, goals), complete avoidance of harm, and to what point negligence matters is a sticky situation. But correct, at this point tangential so can be tabled for another thread/discussion. AN does not matter for these cases being that it's still remediation, and then a matter of "To what degree?"
Quoting Fire Ologist
Correct. There are multiple violations here having to do with violating someone's dignity, encapsulated with "Don't harm" and Don't violate people's autonomy" (both of them being further grouped as types of the principle "Don't use/mess with people", but I'll explain that later).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Correct, but with a caveat. The non-harm/autonomy principles were violated, and it was unnecessary (no remediative reason for it), so in an absolute sense, always wrong. However, I don't discount that the extent of suffering is in play. But it is in play to the detriment of the pro-natalist argument, not the other way around. Whereas, if no one was born, literally no one would be deprived (non-identity issue) of the goods of life, once born there will be suffering/harm as a fact. And it is empirically true that this world holds a great deal of it in known and unknown quantities. That adds to the antinatalist case. It also leads into the idea that if we distill down the (six or so to my estimation) goods of life, causing people suffering so they can experience the goods is problematic itself in breaking the ethic of "not using people" (by unnecessarily harming them, and "messing" with them/violating other people's autonomy).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes, my point to bring that in the discussion was many people, and I believe earlier you did as well, try to invoke some procreative/natural "necessity" into the human psyche. But I am encountering with empirical evidence that humans don't even work that way. Rather, we are very much learned/cultural/existential/deliberative creatures, and less so "instinctual". This gets into a lot of side avenues of discussion but generally what I was getting at is that "Wanting to procreate" or "Wanting to have kids" is not an instinct but a (very culturally weighted) preference. Childfree-people and their GROWTH as societies get more educated (that is, away from familial and tribal and religious pressures), they tend to become more individualistic, and PREFER to procreate less over time. That to me indicates that "wanting kids" is not instinctual but very much contingent on social and existential pressures. I also mentioned that it's simply a personal preference one takes on because for many, it seems like an ultimate "purpose" because it is so all-encompassing. Also, I am acknowledging that this is a hard decision and a powerful "inclination" for many people. I am explaining possible origins, but also disregarding that any of it is relevant to the moral considerations at hand. Thus it's a classic case of "inclination" vs. "morality". You feel a "loss", but what if I told you that this feeling of "loss" can be transferred to any number of things that one might miss out on? (trips, experiences, rights of passage, etc.). This is a bit outlandish, but imagine a young Spartan who was all prepared to do all sorts of horrible things to their helot slaves. It was a right of passage they were looking forward to, but Athens takes over Sparta (this didn't happen) and forces Sparta to stop the practice of killing helots as a right of passage. Does the young Spartan have a right to feel a sense of loss? That's all he's ever known or looked forward to. Obviously, I recognize procreation is so integral to society as to be a matter of course and thus deemed as irrevocably different than the "obvious" example of inclination and preference I provided. But isn't this the point of these debates on this topic? That perhaps our normative understanding IS incorrect, and we must re-evaluate?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes good catch on the two themes/points of violation here. Roughly they correspond to non-harm principle violation (don't unnecessarily cause harm), and autonomy principle (don't unnecessarily mess with people/ violate their autonomy). And thus, as you state, the extent of suffering is not the crux of the position, but it can inform it. Why? Because part of the "non-harm" principle entails two things:
1) Known harm
2) Unknown harm
So the violation happens because you know there is harm, but you choose to impose it anyways. And you know that you cannot know "unknown harm" that might befall someone- so you are gambling with other people (again all these are principles of using someone.. harm/autonomy, etc.).
And this brings me to another point, that of the notion of "aggressive paternalism". This is the stance one takes when they deem that it is OK to violate these deontological principles of non-harm/autonomy (to use people). That is where this notion of "Your positive ethics does NOT justify violating someone else's negative ethics".
Quoting Fire Ologist
Nice takeaway, and good example of walking through the dialectic and how it relates to the arguments and seeing where some errors could be on initial interpretations and arguments.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes, but I don't think the rule relies solely on consent. There is definitely the principle of non-harm, so you can combine it with what you were getting at earlier, "One should not cause unnecessary harm, or violate someone's autonomy (consent)" This is an example of the more basic principle of "Do not use people". And to violate this would be to take a stance of "aggressive paternalism" where you deem "Ok to violate other people's negative ethics for the cause of one's own positive ethics". In other words, "You deem what is best for others, even if that brings with it harms/suffering for others."
Quoting Fire Ologist
:up:
Quoting Fire Ologist
Indeed, I also wonder this because, as you stated, they both convey different but related ideas. You are preventing harm AND imposing harm. In the negative sense, you are not violating non-harm. In the positive sense, you WILL be imposing harm, presumably for some positive ethic. You are IMPOSING a project, creating unnecessary harm (aggressive paternalism- feelings that one has the right to violate negative ethics for one's own estimation of what should be/positive ethics).
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is why I reformulate the general "asymmetry" here. Even though I might say that a potential child not born is "good" for not suffering. You might say that it is neutral. And I am willing to say that I am okay with this. We can say in fact, that prior to procreation, no ethical thing is happening good or bad. It is only one way that it is bad, the scenario of procreation. There may not be an equivalent "good", just "not bad".
Quoting Fire Ologist
This is indeed a whole discussion in itself. But to be brief, this is answered by being contra the "aggressive paternalism" stance. That is to say, it is hubris to assume for others that there is a certain amount of suffering that is acceptable or even "good for someone" to take place, even if it doesn't have to. You are indeed violating someone's dignity (using them) because you deem a certain set of positive principles as above and beyond the violation of someone else's negative principles.
Thank you for taking the time to do this "close/charitable" read! Now we can have productive conversations around the same set of ideas rather than talking past each other. Even if we disagree, we are at least doing it on the correct set of ideas, or at least near close to it (I'm sure we will still talk past each other).
So you are introducing a bunch of strawman scenarios into the AN argument, as it looks like you are not understanding the domain of antinatalism. Antinatalism is purely about the decision to procreate a person. In the current world we live in, this is by the usual biological methods, though with fertilization technology I guess it can involve several participants. But the question for antinatalism is strictly "Is it okay to procreate someone who will be harmed/suffer once they are born?". The antinatalist answer is an emphatic "NO!".
The same ethic that wants to prevent future suffering of a person might also be at work in various other ethical applications, but that wouldn't be the domain of antinatalism- this includes the upbringing of a child once already born.
There may be several possible normative ethical foundations for a person's particular version of antinatalism. For example, mine might include the idea that procreation violates negative ethics (the non-harm/autonomy principles), and even if there is a positive project you might want from it (meaning in your life, heritage, legacy, etc.), that positive project doesn't override another person's negative right not to be harmed unnecessarily.
I have seen discussions where I've leant toward this not being the case. I.e not being sufficient to support the position entirely. The non-identity problem does get its day, essentially. But I think it can be defeated, regardless. I would have to revisit those discussions (i believe one was on an Antinatalist podcast with a very irking woman presenting, tbh, but Benatar as guest) to get to it, though, so feel free to disregard that.
I think its not entirely wrong to require that a lack of harm is pursuant to an individual. But, if its true for *insert any considered future person* then it is true for every other considered future person. These are, to the degree it matters here, individuals in consideration. So, you can take an individual who does not exist, yet is on the other side of the Yes/No choice being made (determinists shhh) - it's clearly wrong to create something which will primarily suffer.
But this actually gives us an even clearer formulation - "Inducing suffering is wrong".
Quoting I like sushi
(to be clear, I personally don't really think these restrictions are apt responses to the AN position, but other ethical considerations to be discussed elsewhere). One possible route would be licensing for parentage. Another would be restrictions on how many children can be part of any given (defined) genetic circle. Quoting I like sushi
I'm unsure contempt would be my response, as opposed to incredulity.
All of your points have to do with individuals already living, and so are irrelevant.
I feel my post you quoted from sufficiently goes over reasons why the non-identity issue is a red herring. It's an abuse of language to reason that future conditionals are not in moral considerations. Also I gave some restatements of the Benatarian asymmetry that can change it to "states of affairs" language. The state of affairs of suffering can obtain (BAD), or it does not (good or at least NOT BAD). Obviously select the NOT BAD over BAD.
I do not feel you post does what you've described. It's possible you missed that your arguments support action, while what I'm outlining supports the position. Maybe?
I really don't know what you're getting at here about action and position in regards to the non-identity issue.
I have mentioned this before. That is not exactly something I would favour but it falls far away from the kind of of extreme I was talking about - an essential ban on procreation - which is not really what AN is about.
Quoting AmadeusD
I have a feeling this is parallel to something I have tried to mention before on the subject of AN.
Often what is ethical is used synonymously with what is moral. With AN we are really talking about a 'moral' view (individual conscience) whereas as an 'ethical' view (general rule for society) it is something quite different.
The lack of common distinction with these terms causes discussions about AN to become fractious. This is why you see so many people believing that others are condoning the extinction of the human species - they see the 'ethical' stance as saying this is better for society (the destruction of society is better for society).
How did you derive this from position and action? Am I not understanding the common usage of those words?
I am not saying I understood what they said just that it made me think of this. Whether they can apply it or not we will see.
Agreed.
Quoting I like sushi
ANs do believe in the extinction of society being the ethically correct outcome of hte near-middle future. But, not by genocide. Not it's better 'for society'. It 'is better'. Full stop.
This is as regards the Asymmetry. The asymmetry supports acting to prevent more people. Not the position that more people is an unethical course of action. One pre, one proscriptive.
I'd give a slight rebuttal to this that it depends if you are a utilitarian or a deontologist about it. A utilitarian would say that it is about the outcome of suffering that needs to be prevented (negative utilitarianism), the deontologist would say it is the principle of not causing harm.
No they do not. Only if they proclaim AN as an 'ethical' paradigm that must be followed by others. When it comes to believing that it should be followed the same would not apply if should is framed as a suggestion rather than am order based on irrefutable reasoning.
You are a believer in AN? If so I am curious what your views are. I know already know well enough what Schopenhauer believes what about you? Even if you are one of those I said I would have 'contempt' for I would still like to try and understand why you think what you think :)
My views are odd - because I am conceptually in line with AN entirely (including the above prescriptive thinking and hte delineation between living and potential persons) but I don't take anything seriously enough to think this is a view I could enforce. And nor would I want to. I have better things to do. Thsi is an intellectual position that I do believe in, but as with all of my positions, I think they apply to me. I can simply think one has their reasoning wrong without impugning htem intellectually.
Hell, I have two kids. That doesn't mean I don't feel guilt every moment of my life for that.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is directly in line with what I outlined as 'moral' and almost entirely opposed to the 'ethical'. Do you agree that what you say here aligns with what I stated as being a 'moral' stance rather than what I stated as an 'ethical' stance? If not why? (Note: I used these terms fairly loosely so there is wiggle room).
As an aside, based on @AmadeusD's position, he doesn't want to do the following:
1) Impose antinatalism
2) Impugn others who don't believe in the rightness of antinatalism
Number 1 is simply a given being that antinatalism is properly an ethic and not a political policy. One can make it into one perhaps, but then that is antinatalist policy, not antinatalist ethics, which for all intents and purposes is what people generally refer to when they say "antinatalism". Generally antinatalists do not advocate imposing/forcing others to follow antinatalism. This is similar to veganism.
Number 2 seems a non-sequitur or self-refuting. Simply don't debate it on a philosophy forum then if you don't want to "impugn" others' stances. If he meant that in public life he doesn't do this, that is one thing. Most antinatalists don't usually go around advocating for it, though there are some that do this. It is not incumbent to be a missionary for antinatalism. However, being on a philosophy forum, and defending the position, would in a minor way be "impugning" those who are objecting, if one engages with it. So I am not sure if this is sort of tu quoque fallacy Amadeus is unintentionally making on himself by even arguing anything related to AN, given 2.
Not quite, no. I do think it would be better if people were ANs to the point that I believe people should not have children. This is proscriptive, and is an ethical position.
Perhaps I need to be clearer: I have ethical positions I never intend to enforce on others. If you look at all the arguments and conclude "Not good enough", fine, but I'll think you're wrong and would try to persuade you otherwise. I do not have to commit myself to arguing with everyone who has kids to hold an ethical position such as AN. Practically speaking, what is the point in that? Just Stop Oil are a joke for a reason.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Wrong. Enforce. I would impose the reasoning on anyone who would listen. Enforcement is a step too far to my mind.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Impugn "intellectually". Very different to impugning their ethics in my view. I think other people should not have children. Would I purposefully insinuate this to people? No. I'd prefer to suffer in silence on this issue unless asked. I wouldn't assert someone's mind was wrong (in terms of some kind of retardation(in the strict sense)) for not agreeing with my ethical position. Please keep in mind, though, I am an emotivist to the degree that i have an actual Ethical view.
I don't believe my ethical framework can be enforced. It should should be followed by me. No, this is not morality, but it is a bit of a get-out-of-jail card because it basically is a meta-ethical theory that asserts there is no objective morality. Moral theories in general don't make any sense in this light.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not at all. Possibly the exact way you worded it, it would be, but not once you've read the above paragraph.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not intellectually. I think you are morally deficient if you're intent on having children, though.
You do this actively or only when questioned about your AN beliefs?
I do think it can be quite problematic to argue about moral positions unless you adhere to some kind of moral realism. I am assuming you are a moral realist? If not how does this fit into your views on AN?
Thanks
A sideline to this: it seems to me that most antinatalist arguments apply to animals as well (possibly even more strongly, given the amount of suffering).
If you're unwilling to enforce your framework or even really convince people, what about animals? Would you spay/neuter as many animals as possible, given the chance? Perhaps avoid their procreation in other ways?
1. My current understanding of (most) animal psychology is either not good enough to assume, or leads me to believe that hte relevant animals do not 'suffer' the way humans do, but experience an aversion; and
2. I don't think we will ever have a very clear understanding of the above issue outside of some higher animals and fish.
If I could clearly understand 1. above to indicate that animals, on the whole, suffer the same way humans do, I would probably assent to your point.
Quoting I like sushi
Not always directly on-point to AN stuff, but whereever it seems applicable to the discussion (several versions of a vague 'ethical' discussion would do this and hten, yes) and whenever I'm specifically prodded on the issue.
Quoting I like sushi
I am a pretty staunch moral antirealist (hence noting I am an Emotivist, to the degree that I will commit to an existing label). I don't think this has any affect or effect on my AN positions beyond noting that they are 'my' ethical beliefs. My meta-ethical position doesn't really give me any room to pretend i'm the arbiter of truth, no matter how sure I am that I have the 'right' idea.
You deem 'suffering' as 'bad' (or rather "Boo!") knowing it is your subjective emotions talking.
How then can you state, in any serious way, that something is 'right' or 'wrong'. The whole point of AN is to state that natalism is wrong. But you seem to be saying "it is 'wrong' (boo!) for me" not that it is out and out wrong (Boo!) for everyone or that there is anything dictating what is objectively viewed as 'right; or 'wrong' other than commonality of emotional expressions.
It is interesting how this, in part, appears similar to moral naturalism rather than moral scepticism.
Following this lien of questioning I find myself framing you as what I previously expressed as harbouring a 'Moral' stance of AN rather than an 'Ethical' stance of AN. I made this particular distinction in an essay I wrote on AN to highlight the flaw in some who make claims to both 'Moral' and 'Ethical' stances on AN as to do so is to hold contradictory positions.
Anyway, thanks for your replies. I think we could argue back and forth a bit more but it may be mostly a semantic issue given that emotivism is hard to articulate (a serious flaw of emotivism).
It's hard to commit to a formulation of this part, but I think this is a bullet to bite, in terms of its vagueness. Yes.
Quoting I like sushi
I don't see a problem. I'm an Emotivist. That's what 'right' and 'wrong' mean.
Quoting I like sushi
A lot here.
It is wrong for anyone(currently, anyhow) as far as I am concerned. Enforcement of that policy can only apply to me based on my ethical views.
(my view is that..)There is nothing that could even begin to dictate what is objectively right or wrong (in the meta-ethical sense of the term "objective"). Those words don't have objective bases.
The basis is necessarily one's emotional disposition (maybe predisposition? This could in a very weird and unsatisfying way open the door to a more-objective ethic) as there is nothing else which could inform us.
The commonality of emotional expression is probably hte best way (:optimal) to work toward policy. I don't take this to indicate anything truly ethical. But it does indicate the overall moral vibe of a society/culture.
Quoting I like sushi
Could you expand? My understanding of Moral Naturalism is that it more or less indicates that morals are evolutionarily-required aspects of human development, which I don't agree with.
Quoting I like sushi
Hmm. Pretty hard disagree. I think in these exchanges I have navigated through that suggestion pretty well. The fact that I don't think I should be forcing other people to adopt my view doesn't make it less ethically-driven. Not doing much about it is a dispositional fact of my mind or, to be a bit more sanguine, a practical necessity to not hating my life and hte world I live in.
I disagree that Emotivism is either hard to articulate, or flawed in any meaningful way (beyond causing discomfort, that is - but that's baked into the position so LOL). But that would make sense if it's my position, so just noting this for thoroughness.
Quoting AmadeusD
In common parse, yes. In the framing I made for 'Moral' and 'Ethical' I am satisfied with how you have responded. If you had said some other things then I would have pulled you up about them. This is because AN only makes rational sense if it is either 'Moral' OR 'Ethical' in the way I framed those terms.
Quoting AmadeusD
It just seemed that you were framing emotional dispositions as the grounding for moral choices rather than there being no moral choices. I made the leap from biological necessity to emotional dispositions. That is clearly not what you meant though.
What is Right For You (Emotivism) is not deemed Objectively Right. Ergo, your claim is Subjectively Led not Objectively Led - for emphasis this is what I meant in my distinction between Moral (Right for Your Perspective) and Ethical (The Right Objective Implementation).
Oh, okay, I see what you mean. That might be a language issue - Emotional dispositions are the only possible grounding for moral choices. But that lives within the vagueries of "moral decision" so probably cannot be adequately defined (in either direction).
Quoting I like sushi
But this misses that Emotivism is a meta-ethical position. It says that human Ethics are dispositional. That framing Ethics as something objective, under which we must argue for our chosen source (God, Ayn Rand, deontology, utilitarian calc etc...) is wrong ethically. Ethics inform morals - so this ethical position means that all moral choices are in response to one's emotional state which is in turn in response to a moral proposition. You can't have a meta-moral system to explain this, because that's just ethics. And the "ethics" is that it is right to ascribe moral positions to their underlying emotional states. I'm unsure more needs to be said here, but feel free to pick it apart.
For what it's worth, I think people are ethically wrong to enforce their ethical position if their position entails an objective moral outcome. Strange, I know.
Thank you
Which is another way AN harms itself as a reasonable ethical system.
If the goal of ethics is to eliminate ethics, we could just ignore any pangs of morality now instead. Like ignoring pangs of procreation when trying to be an ethical AN.
If Its all pang manipulation, why base the manipulations on any ethics, let alone an ethics that seeks to undo its application anywhere?
Sure, pain and suffering suck and sex feels good and so does a cheeseburger when you are hungry, but using scales of ethics and motality to help decide ones way forward for sake of eliminating ethics is a bit like using math to show how numbers cant exist (or in this case shouldnt exist).
I'll try to sort out your comments below, but I do not see how that, in any way, harms itself. If the ethical goal is to no longer require ethical systems (because the world is perfectly ethical) then it is precisely, as an ethical system, that AN succeeds (obviously if you disagree with it then success is subjective, but I hope you get the sense in which I mean this).
Quoting Fire Ologist
I'm unsure this is the right description of the goal, but onward..
Quoting Fire Ologist
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but this seems to violate the former idea: If we're ignoring moral pangs (though, I couldn't give a shit what your moral pangs are. Show me the results of your behaviour) then ethics would say this is unethical, in some sense. You are not attended to ethics in this case. The case I'm, at least superficially, putting forward as a goal of AN would be that there are no ethics to attend. I think there is a clear distinction, myself, because you're right - the conception you've described here is inapt, and probably self-defeating.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I do not see this at all, unfortunately. They are not the same thing, or comparable. To be fair, morality would likely only pertain to the acts of hte living. Ethics are to do with the effect of those acts so there can be a difference between the two 'scales' being considered, I think - though, I ahve written this on the fly while editing a settlement statement so go easy LOL
Dont you mean because the world is perfectly non-ethical?
Quoting AmadeusD
LOL, Yes, I suppose so. May not non-ethical, but ethically bereft/empty/inapt. I hope you groked what I was getting at though... Simply that there is no need for ethical thinking (and no humans would be just that). In fact, it may be that it's not possible in that scenario. But probably that leads into some kind of exegesis which isn't my bag. I say that because, having re-read my passage it would require a "view from nowhere". Speculatively, I don't see an issue though - we're not in that world :P
Because there were too many.
Your observations are correct. I used to have posts that dealt with various aspects that are disparate enough to warrant their own topic.
I wonder, would it be possible to have a subforum within Ethics just for antinatalism topics? If not that, is there some middle ground whereby topics can be clearly delineated within the same thread? I think this category has enough demand to not confine it to the ghetto of a monolithic Antinatalism thread whereby individual topics are hard to discern on a broad and multifaceted issue.
Hear, hear!
1. Discuss amongst ourselves (i.e those holders of the view, or sympathetic to the view); or
2. Put up with people who clearly misunderstand hte position, can't put together coherent objections and consistently insult us on the basis of a view we're not forcing on them.
I would hazard a guess neither is actually worth the time. That said, 180 is a never-ending fountain of bad replies which certainly help to elucidate the wrongness of some objections, so maybe there's that.
Antinatalism is fringe. SO fringe the word is not even recognised by spellcheck yet :D
He showed an "Ethic" and "Moral" stance simultaneously (with the meanings I gave you some weeks back) and these are contrary.
It should also be stated that just because someone disagrees it does not mean that they do not understand. If that is the place you leap too maybe you should question your own understanding of what they are saying otherwise you are essentially claiming your position is correct and anyone who does not agree simply does not understand. Wrong. Either they do not understand you fully or you do not understand them fully; but most likely an admixture of the two.
Personally I am some kind of moral sceptic so the whole matter for me is pretty moot at its core. The AN position is Anti-Ethical as pointed out by the guy in the video if your position in in the sphere of what I coined "Ethic" rather than "Moral". As a Moral stance it has more apparent validity.
Quoting I like sushi
No, not at all. I think, again, you have seriously (and uncharitably) misunderstood the point. I do not care whether 180 agrees. He doesn't make any sense to me msot of the time, so why would i care? The point is his constant misrepresentation, trolling remarks, insults and pure ignorance of what's been put to him.
It is genuinely fun. But, do not get it twisted: "you don't understand", for me, has absoltely nothing to do with agreement or disagreement :)
You generalise and mention 180.
Quoting AmadeusD
Given this and the above you can see how they can coincide?
---
(from other thread)
At one point in our exchange you nearly stopped dodging my reductio. At that point you said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
And I replied:
Quoting Leontiskos
To recap paraphrastically:
The fact that you admitted to reconsideration shows that you do see the force of the reductio, but you failed to follow through and actually do the hard work of reconsidering Benatar's argument and your position.
From your perspectives maybe. Have you considered that what you see as 'trolling' others see as valid points that are not addressed by the argumentation.
Of course. This is now coming across as fairly bad faith (i know it isn't but please note what you're doing - telling me I'm not intellectually in the game, as it were). Assuming i've not considered the points adequately is a bit weird if you're getting at me for pointing out others have clearly not done the same (and even self-admitted they don't care to?) These are very different scenarios. Though, I don't fault you. You're doing roughly hte same as me.
Quoting I like sushi
Several people clearly don't, and yes, that's from my perspective. I have no other. All you can actually do is disagree with me, but it doesn't even seem that you're doing so.
Whether they(interlocutors) agree is a totally different issue - one which doesn't matter if they clearly don't understand my views. I would be the only person in a position to know whether you have understood them.
That said, in terms of the wider issue you're point out, given there are three or four usual suspects in this respect, I don't find an issue with my take. I accept lots of people wont like it, and lots of people wont agree or understand. That's how life works.
Thank you for the link. When my current assignment is over, it might be something to go over with you.
@Baden
Funny you defend this ghettoizing of the topic of antinatalism (something you vociferously disagree with), and yet you bring up a topic we discussed way back.. Something which I can't easily look up BECAUSE of this ghettoization whereby EVERYTHING related to antinatalism, no matter what thread/topic is squished into one long thread. So perhaps it is the limitations of PlushForums, but I am proposing a way to give people the ability to create new threads on the topic, so that conversations can be logically viewed.
Quoting Leontiskos
Oh fuck no, because I don't see this world as ever being just a pinprick. Did you find my response? It came right after:
Quoting schopenhauer1
It seems to be the case that general decorum for debate in this forum has long ago been deemed as unnecessary.. people like to pull out the roots rather than prune the branches. Robust debate is replaced with "getting one's goat". It's obnoxious and un-philosophical. It is certainly sophistic, but I thought philosophy was trying to veer away from such tactics and stick to substantial issues. This I guess is why philosophers snipe at each other's beliefs, not in real time, but over the course of many years in journal articles. We are playing speed chess, academic philosophy is playing a much longer game, so they can afford to "stick to the topics" more-or-less, in their paid positions to do so in ivory towers. But, this forum doesn't have to resort to gutter tactics. I simply do so when it's necessary to meet in kind, when I sense that people are dodging, uncharitable, rude, or strawmanning my position with sweeping generalizations that don't address the issues.
Use the link I already gave you, which makes it super easy to navigate the discussion. You can make such a search more precise by searching for "schopenhauer1" instead of "." In that case it will only display the posts of mine within this thread that include your username. You can also reverse the search to see a chronological list of your posts to me within this thread. Problem solved. :wink:
Quoting schopenhauer1
By burying your head in the sand in this way you prove yourself unserious.
Suppose we lived in that world. And suppose Benatar came along and gave the same argument you think is so great. What would you say to him? Would you "shh!" him and sweep him under the rug!? "Don't give that argument in this world! I like birth in this world! Arguments aren't about what's true, they are about what I want, and we don't talk about the arguments that don't suit what I want!"
You're doing the same basic thing when you bury your head in the sand. You recognize that the argument proves too much but you want to believe its conclusion so you refuse to address the objection. This is precisely the sort of irrational motive I spoke about in the other thread. It's like playing soccer with a guy who uses his hands whenever he starts losing. My solution is to find someone else, who is actually interested in playing soccer. Or find a game in which the person is not irrationally devoted to a predetermined outcome. For whatever reason you show yourself unable to play by the rules of rational argument when it comes to anti-natalism.
Nah, we can just do that for any topic right? The instant you make your 30th post on Kant, you should have its own thread to wade through in the Search. Let's do that with every topic:
Meaning of life
Plato
Kant
Aristotle
Systems Theory/Semiosis
Theoretical Physics etc. etc.
Let's ghettoize all the topics equally then and make it similarly as many unnecessary steps to search for it.
Quoting Leontiskos
So AGAIN, you ignore the answer I gave you? That is twice you ignored my answer. Why didn't you quote what I quoted you??
Quoting Leontiskos
What are you talking about? I would listen and see if he had a point that indeed, in that world even a pinprick is not worth it. In fact, if you ACTUALLY read his book (don't have it in front me, but if you want to do a chapter by chapter reading, I suppose we could), he DOES cover this. So, let's get at it then.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is rhetorical blather. First off, I DON"T EVEN USE Benatar wholesale. His asymmetry, if I do mention it, is a way to jump off but I have my own variations of it, which I have taken painstaking time to outline over the course of MANY threads over MANY years.. To have you pin me to one line of reasoning, like that is a subtle but malicious form of uncharitable reading.. But keep mistaking me for Benatar.
But the funny thing is, EVEN if I defend Benatar qua Benatar (not my variation of him), I STILL defended him sufficiently, and you IGNORED my actual response to make rhetorical blather.
True - I should probably remember the stark difference between this forum and in-class discussions I have.
Because your quote was a dodge. I asked you why you would reconsider in that world and you pulled the escape hatch and refused to answer, instead changing the subject. I answered your red herring in the thread:
Quoting Leontiskos
Here is the argument:
Quoting Leontiskos
What is your parallel supposed to be?
1a. Suppose one is reanimated whenever they are stabbed.
2a. [Insert anti-stabbing argument here].
3a. Therefore, we should not stab.
4a. (Any 2a that can get you from 1a to 3a is faulty argumentation.)
This fails because we have no reason to believe either 3a or 4a. There is no parity between these two approaches. It's an ad hoc dodge.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You are drawing up more escape hatches because you see your argument failing. You are the one who brought up Benatar, not me. It isn't courageous or rational to give your arguments conditionally, such that if they succeed then your position is vindicated but if they fail then you're none the worse for wear.
Now what you did not quote nor did you actually address was this:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Leontiskos
Yet I said here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
SO you are still arguing against your own arguments.. ones cleverly concocted to make you win an argument against yourself.. as they are YOUR contrived arguments (uninformed version of Benatar and my own individual philosophy), not mine.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not at all.. If one is reanimated when stabbed, that changes the very conditions of the world itself. Death is not really death. It's something else. Just as a pinprick world might not be the kind of suffering we are used to. This is the most uninteresting argument I've seen in a while. You haven't even incorporated Schopenhaueran suffering/pessimism in there, something that would come into play in my understanding of suffering (look at my profile if you need to understand that), but you reduced to some kind of hedonoistic/common version all in one swoop because you think you can win some rhetorical points -> NEXT!
Quoting Leontiskos
You mean where I said THIS???
Quoting schopenhauer1
Oh so where I even said right in your quote "reformulated as" and went into MY OWN version?
Why should I believe 3a or 4a?
The other problem here is that most 2a's presuppose the falsity of 1a, whereas 2 does not presuppose the falsity of 1. Or in other words, Benatar's argument contains no implicit logical clause, "...Unless the world is situated such that happiness far outweighs suffering for all." That's the very problem with his argument that is being highlighted.
Contrariwise, prohibitions against stabbing are premised on pain, injury, and mortality, and therefore the sort of world you suggest logically invalidates the prohibitions (and hence 3a). This is completely different from Benatar's argument, for the case I gave clearly does not invalidate his prohibition. That's why, in a fit of honesty, you told me that the question may need to be reconsidered in light of such new circumstances. So if you want to pull your head out of the sand you will answer the question: What would you say to Benatar in that scenario? Why trust an argument in our world that you would not trust in that world? The argument by its very nature cannot be invalidated by the minimization of suffering, and yet this is what you are committed to.
Well, right back at you. This is my point. If you are stating that you can only speak to people who understand and that anyone who does not is a waste of time that speaks volumes for the position you are favouring.
Of course, it may have just been poor wording. Nevertheless am I somehow acting in bad faith by pointing out how one-sided it sounded. I do not think so. We basically understood each other in a discussion here pretty well and it is quite clear to me that you are happy to disagree and you know I am.
Anyway, think we are sort of saying the same thing again and understand each other :D
I can, and maybe will, point out when I think you or anyone else has said something a little one-sided or poorly expressed AND I will consider the fault can be with me too in appreciation of what is said too. This is just me flexing my writing muscles now and hoping to improve so will shut up :D
Quoting AmadeusD
Well, the vast majority of the time this is probably true enough for everyone. I am well aware that we can easily hoodwink ourselves too. But yeah, probably, for the most part.
Quoting AmadeusD
I do not find an issue with it either as what you seem to say falls on what I coined the "Moral" for the most part. From what Schopenhauer has said in the past too I would say he does too (unless he has changed his views a little since then), so I have no issue with the positions you both hold. I do not agree with them though and neither has put forward a proof because a proof cannot be put forward, only expressed opinions - as is the nature of most of Ethics dealing with obligations.
Quoting AmadeusD
Sure, and same here regarding time limitations. Expanding my workload and loving it though, so should be able to pay decent attention to it :)
The strongest argument IMO for antinatalism (AN) seems to be the one from deontological ethics, i.e. that if we are not sure that life will be a good for the future human being, it's ethically questionable to 'take the risk', especially due to the impossibility of any consent from the future human being ('I cannot chose for others'...).
1) My first question is (especially for those who do not beleive in some 'objective ethics'): what is the foundation of ethics for an antinatalist? It seems that in AN there is a very strong ethical component but if 'ethics' is reduced to some kind of social contract or something 'natural', it seems that AN doens't have a strong justification to be 'better' than others.
2) Also, if one accepts that we also have a 'deontological duty' for others, for the whole human community and if one agrees that 'extinction' of humanity is bad for the whole community then it seems that what the 'deontological' argument for AN leads to is not AN itself but an 'ethical dilemma', i.e. we arrive at a situation where we have two contradictory duties, i.e. we shouldn't decide to 'give life' due to the ignorance/lack of certainty of what that will entail (if we assume that life might be bad in some cases) and the impossibility of consent and at the same time we should, among other things, continue to sustain the whole human community. If all of this is true, why antinatalists think that AN is the best choice?
The ethics are simple self-preservation.
Antinatalism spares you from a future in which you will be making hefty child-support payments for children that you barely see and over whom you have no authority anyway.
Consequently, antinatalism spares you from the absolutely most stupid hobby ever.
In that sense, antinatalism is a naturally emergent property of the country's legal system.
Antinatalism is the 3rd part of the "4 no's" policy as a reaction to the country's legal system:
No civil marriage, no cohabitation, no children, and preferably no sex.
The only way in which the individual can defeat antinatalism consists in physically moving to another jurisdiction. Otherwise, antinatalism is just common sense.
Last night I had a dream that I was back in elementary school and on this day we were taking standardized tests. There was an oppressive seriousness and nervousness about the whole thing, as if 5th graders were sitting for the SAT. On top of this, due to some sort of funding problem the test questions were poorly written and the test booklets included copy errors and print deficiencies, which added a deciphering element to the testing. In the grand scheme of things the whole endeavor was a bit ridiculous, and there was the sense that if one of the 5th graders had started giggling the whole room would have broken out in laughter, popping the bubble of faux seriousness.
This seems reflective of antinatalism. It is Harry Potter exorcising the Boggart with the charge, "Riddikulus!" That is the correct response to Benatar, and the reductio is meant to aid one in seeing it. The entire paradigm is warped and corrupted, and the argument is bizarrely indifferent to the very moral nuances that it ought to be self-consciously attentive to. Such an argument is like a necessitarian Magic 8-Ball with only one response, "Therefore, antinatalism," which response is given regardless of the circumstances.
A lot of this comes back to the wisdom of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. A key to unlocking that text is the idea that the foundation of practical ethics is identifying and emulating the virtuous man. Much of Aristotle text is just drawing out what we already know about the virtuous man, and part of this is the fact that the virtuous man possesses liberality or generousness. When we simply set the generous man alongside the stingy man we know indubitably that the generous man is to be emulated and the stingy man is ridiculous. The virtue of liberality has to do with one's fundamental orientation towards life, and this is inevitably related to one's fundamental orientation towards posterity.
When a child cuts their finger and collapses into hysteria the witty parent will take them in their lap, study the finger carefully and seriously, and then pronounce the judgment, "There's nothing for it. We need to amputate!" The child cannot help but laugh, and in laughing their whole demeanor is changed. The parent's playful humor makes the child generous and overcomes their stinginess and self-centered gravity.
In fact I was recently at my cousin's wedding, and the food at our table was extremely late, arriving about 90 minutes after dinner was supposed to begin. At about 30 minutes into the dinner my nephew received his kid's meal: chicken strips, mac and cheese, and cauliflower. Everyone was gratified to see that at least someone had received their meal, and it looked to be the ideal meal for a hungry toddler. But to everyone's surprise he lost his shit and had a complete meltdown. This caused the whole table to erupt in laughter and festivity. We later learned that his mother had been misinforming him for weeks that the wedding would be wonderful and he would have a delicious meal of chicken strips and French fries - oops! I don't know that he even prefers French fries to mac and cheese, but the expectation threw him. It was a teaching moment for him where he learned that life is bigger than his misplaced French fries, and in time he will learn that life is bigger than many other disappointments, too. As Eichendorff said, "Thou art He who gently breaks about our heads what we build, so that we can see the skytherefore I have no complaint." (The irony here is that children solve the problem of antinatalism, for it is hard to believe that anyone with the task of parenting a child could subscribe to antinatalism.)
It seems that all the opposed are agreed that antinatalism will not be cured by more of the overly serious, self-centered gravity of analytical argument. Such is not its cause and such is not its cure. What the antinatalist lacks is the subtle virtuous demeanor that Aristotle attempts to paint, and such a thing cannot be bought and sold with mere arguments. The cure for the ridiculousness of antinatalism is laughter, for like the child on the parent's lap we cannot help but laugh at the prognosis. You need only join in and we will be laughing with you and not at you. :wink:
You'd have to qualify "foundation" but there are MANY foundational ethical frameworks for which AN conclusions have been drawn or at least "fit into", such as deontological ones (which I hold). Many fall under a negative utilitarian variety. Others are vaguely consequential (environmental ones, probably ones least like the ones I hold). One can even argue for a virtue theory version, that can correspond with Schopenhauer's notion of compassion being THE only real moral sentiment (because it sees everyone as what they truly are.. fellow-sufferers). In this theory, anti-procreation would be a natural course of a virtuous (i.e. compassionate) person. They see what befalls man, and wants to prevent it. In this sense, AN can also be philosophical pessimistic in its foundation. That is to say, there is something INHERENTLY negative about existence that makes it fundamentally never redeemable through social, personal, or political actions. This goes to a vaguely existential understanding of the situation.
Quoting boundless
So deontology generally puts the locus of ethics at the individual level (not all the time, but most.. things like rights/duties). To me, the outcome doesn't matter. That is to say, we don't have a duty towards the outcome of "preserving humanity". Humanity isn't a subject for ethical concern. Rather, we have ethical considerations of individuals and their suffering, or right thereof not to be unnecessarily and non-consentingly caused the situations/conditions wherewith (ALL!) suffering takes place. That is not your right to confer for someone else. And there is no symmetrical duties/obligations for creating happiness, especially with understanding that there is no one who exists to be deprived of happiness you would not be thus conferring.
So this is why we shouldn't debate Benatar's full position here without actually having Benatar's full positions available to us. I am not going to defend Benatar with my vague memories of some ideas he had or piecing together from secondary sources. If you want, let's agree to actually obtain a copy of Better Never to Have Been, and we can start looking for how he defends it and critique from there. We would be foolish to make half truths about positions he may not even hold or already addressed and we are ignoring.
Quoting Leontiskos
Same as above. Let's see what Benatar says himself! I think his book actually goes over this and if I remember, he said that the asymmetry didn't necessarily hold on its own, but rather was bolstered by various other asymmetries that needed to also be true to support it, such as psychological phenomenon, etc.
If you want, there seems to be a preview of the audio version here.. I guess this is a good start, but still isn't enough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DuLJMhbzZM
I don't vociferously disagree with it actually. Depending on how "it" is presented. E.g. If someone said to me, "I don't want to have children because the world is a dangerous and corrupted place and I don't want them to suffer", I'd say "makes sense". But as we discussed before, you were creating literally dozens of threads on the same theme, and it is a niche topic, hence this is the solution.
This has a lot of unjustified assumptions.. such as, why should virtuous men matter? If you say that because the know how to live a "good life", AN always knows that starting a life for someone else means you have a project for them to follow. But here belies an actual UNVIRTUOUS thing- the forcing of someone else into the burdens of life to live out the project of X (the virtuous man!.. cue marble statue staring into the horizon clutching robe!!). It reeks of an aggressive paternalism and assumption (for someone else), that their negative rights should be violated (and that is indeed part of the debate, is it a violation), because you think "someone living out a virtuous life" is okay to go head and be aggressively paternalistic to allow for a deontological violation to take place.
The Lord of the Rings, obviously, an author and work who would be against my philosophy or antinatalism, however, does have themes that I am getting at. The Ring itself can represent the controlling nature of humans- the ability to want to control people, destiny, the world. Wanting to see X thing from another person, even if it means burdening them is perhaps one of these unconscious factors that we hold. The Ring seems to be a good idea.. it seems to have the answers, but in fact, it is simply the human desire to control things, to see their projects carried out by way of using other people, even their sufferings to make this happen. '
You will claim "NO! LOTR was talking about unrestrained control- like Sauron wanting to enslave everyone!". But there is indeed where the debate lies. "Does procreation represent an aggressive paternalism.. does this too go too far in how we want to control people, even violate ethical principles, to see our project carried out?". And I get the impulse to defend it.. It's the very basis for which our whole society has operated. But perhaps it isn't as unassailable as you might think. And for millennium, as long as there has been societies that had the abilities to reason beyond the tribal unit, there have been lifestyles of ascetics who eschewed the worldly projects. I am not necessarily advocating that, however, but just showing that this difference in notions of established familial traditions exist.
Quoting Leontiskos
Far be it from me to begrudge anyone laughter. But as I indicated with the Lord of the Rings analogy above, there is a bit of a weird aggressive paternalism in the notion that you need to teach someone, and see your project carried out... I have wants and desires, but do I have the right to unnecessarily and non-consentingly burden you with them? Well, no I don't have that right. But somehow a blind eye is seen in the case of procreation because of the romantic notions of learning and virtue of the philosophies you describe here. Don't get me wrong, go have fun.. don't be a dour asshole to your children, but my point is perhaps we may even question the impetus for control and wanting to see projects carried out from others, rather than assume that this is what is right. The doting grandfather laughing at his grandchildren in merriment as they work through the small problems of life gradually being raised to become productive members of society, etc. But what of this? I question this project, its motives, and what we are wanting from other people.
I get that, but how does one differentiate between all the threads of argument dealing with the subject?
That difficulty is the trade-off. 58 pages of continued effort to discuss the issue suggest, that while the context is not ideal, the results have not been fruitless.
Aging can help. I should leave each individual in my family a personal letter they can read when I die and hopefully keep to read again when they are old and enter the purgatory of old age. That time when our lives are behind us and all that is left is the memories and a need to make peace with our lives.
I appreciate my grandmother so much more today than when I was young and rushed away from home to have my own life. I kept in touch with family but lived far from family.
Loose one's memory, then each time is the first time and new things can be discovered. I just called old age purgatory but I am also enjoying, thinking, and rethinking things and noticing changes and new awareness. What really matters is if am enjoying the moment.
New people are constantly coming into the arguments and really can't we treat each day as a new day? It really sucks to be enjoying a thread and then reading the subject has already been covered and a grumpy demand that the discussion end. If someone doesn't want to cover the subject again, just stay out of the discussion but there is no reason to ruin everyone else's fun. Especially not a newcomer's first-time experience of the subject. We can not be a part of the past discussions, only the present ones.
That really bites! I usually avoid threads that are too long. I really don't care what all the important people here have to say about anything. If I want to participate in a discussion of something, I want that to be my experience, not your only spoken thoughts. My thoughts and your reaction to them is what makes being here fun. If all I want is knowledge, I will buy a book that is highly recommended and read that. I do not come to forums and look for subjects to read that were closed discussions 5 years ago. If any of you have written books I should read, let me know.
I do wish there was a middle ground whereby the AN topic can be cogently discussed in separate threads without "cluttering" the main forum. The only other way would be to banish it to The Lounge, but then that doesn't show up on the main feed, so I'm opposed to that too. I also think, as loathsome as it might be to some sensibilities, it is squarely philosophical (generally in the realm of ethics), and should be discussed robustly and openly in the main forum.
Whenever we are considering a position on TPF we are considering a determinate and static position. Thus "Benatar's position" within our conversation denotes the argument you attributed to Benatar early in our conversation (link). You used a Wikipedia article and a personal gloss to represent the argument. That is what I am referring to.
Now it seems that you recognize that his argument cannot meet my objection, and the logical thing for you to do is to say, "Okay, I see the problem. I will have to get back to you on this. Maybe I will look at my Benatar books and see if he has anything to say to this."
It is not a legitimate move to say, "No, that objection doesn't count because you haven't read his book(s) on the topic." If we had to read a book on TPF every time we made an argument there would only be a few posts each week. You presented a version of Benatar's argument, I responded to it, and now the onus is on you to respond in your own words. Take your time and review Benatar's books if you like, but don't say that my objection is null because I haven't read a book. Besides, the first you've spoken about his books addressing this objection was yesterday.
No bro, you haven't answered my objections and we seem to be at an impasse, as I have answered you about the stabbing that reanimates. That's my answer to it if we are talking about the "statistical approximation of Benatar" and not Benatar himself.
No you haven't. You haven't answered <the most recent post> on the so-called "stabbing counterargument." You just pointed to Benatar's book hopefully without engaging any of the points.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well it sounds like you were not talking about Benatar simpliciter and I was not talking about Benatar simpliciter. So we can stop talking about Benatar simpliciter and instead talk about the determinate and static argument that we have associated with him.
So I said way back that a world where pain was ONLY comprised of a pinprick is NOT OUR WORLD. That is an interesting one, but not this one. I present to you this world is the following, as taken from my profile:
With that being said, does Pinprick World have the necessary suffering in it? Is it the case that ALL contingent harms are reduced to a single pinprick at one instance in time? If so, none of that resembles the NATURE OF SUFFERING as it pertains to this world. Thus, how am I going to compare morality when it is centers on suffering in such a world where suffering is so redefined and the realities of the situation thus so radically different? This world would have no suffering due to feelings of dissatisfaction, lack, boredom. It would have no force social situations like doing tasks and work one would rather not do, or come into contact with anything negative whatsoever. How can I speak to such a world without all that is the reality of the situation when suffering is so redefined into one instance of a pinprick and nothing else?
So you have at last provided a shadow of a counter-argument. You are effectively claiming that an equivocation is occurring such that the "pinprick of pain" in premise (1) is an equivocation on the suffering in Benatar's (2). Your argument requires that the pinprick of pain is not a legitimate instance of Benatar's "presence of pain" or the "suffering" that you say one is morally obligated to prevent. You are saying, "Ah, but that pinprick isn't the sort of suffering that Benatar and I think need be prevented." Thus you deny that premises (1) and (2) imply conclusion (3).
Congratulations on finally making a counterargument, though I'm not sure it is a very good one. It certainly opens the can of worms as to which sorts of suffering need to be prevented and which sorts don't, and that is a can of worms that antinatalists take many precautions to keep closed.
---
For reference:
Quoting Leontiskos
I think this is more-or-less the discussion ANs have (and honestly, the one whcih is usually attempted cross-positionally). The type though doesn't seem that interesting - it's the balance (ironic, given apokrisis' objections in the other thrad) between suffering and other considerations. The position is that suffering always wins out
I can't remember who I have all spoken to about antinatalism on this forum (and therefore who has shaped my understanding of it), but I can say that schopenhauer1 has been my primary interlocutor, and that I have not seen him engaging in this discussion of balancing suffering with other considerations. Perhaps there are different approaches than his.
Quoting AmadeusD
Because I see @apokrisis' objections as apt I see it as inevitable that questions of balance must emerge.
Quoting AmadeusD
The position of antinatalism? If the position of antinatalism is that suffering always wins out then how could there ever be a balance between suffering and other considerations?
I can make another argument along the lines of @AmadeusD':
Quoting AmadeusD
That is to say, what is the asymmetry about? It's about the following:
That is to say, the thrust of the argument is the obligations we have towards adding happiness to the world versus adding suffering/harm/pain into the world in the case of non-existent but potential people (that is someone who could exist if X, Y, Z actions are taken). The antinatalist will always say that in the case of future people, we have no obligation to add happiness for them, but ALL the obligation to prevent the harm.
Thus, I generally make sure to qualify the notion that "One should not cause unnecessary suffering unto another if it can be prevented. Why do I add "unnecessary"? Because a "potential future person" (one in consideration of whether it should exist or not), would suffer without any need for this to happen to them. At least in the case of the "procreational decision", we are in a unique vantage point, where we can prevent ANY suffering for another person, by simply not doing something, full stop. After someone is already born into the world, then we must play the game of "mitigation ethics" whereby we now start dealing not in digital but analog whereby we cannot avoid suffering, and in some cases it might be incumbent to cause it to prevent greater harm (e.g. raising children, education, inoculations, all sorts of learning experiences and enculturation). But the idea that one should cause suffering SUCH THAT we can THEN LATER MITIGATE IT (i.e. favoring OUR positive projects over SOMEONE ELSE'S negative ethics), is what is the violation going on here.
Yes, and because of this the "balancing suffering with other considerations" evaporates into thin air and you are placed into the same quandary where you began. If the pinprick is acceptable for posterity in the pinprick world then it cannot be true that one has "all the obligation to prevent the (future) harm," for if one had "all the obligation" in this sense then there could be no balance between suffering and other considerations for posterity.
I think you're overlooking the simple fact that premise (1) was already about posterity. If mitigation and balancing considerations can only be applied to the current generation and not to posterity, then Benatar's argument succumbs once again to the reductio.
So I am offering two arguments:
1) Suffering in Pinprick World isn't "suffering" as we know it, and thus disqualifies for 2 in the asymmetry.
2) Since there is no one to miss out on the "good", no obligation was intendent on the missed opportunity. In other words, your world could be COMPLETELY all BLISS.. and if you did not create someone into that world, you are still NOT in the wrong by preventing that birth.
I see the first as the only real argument.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Okay, and I assessed this argument <here>.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Put differently, "If we omit the pinprick from (1) then (3) does not follow from (2)." I agree and I have not said otherwise.
Fair
Quoting Leontiskos
Yep. I don't see them as apt at all given they were responding to me making that point.
It seems like your position is that there must be balance - not "carry out a balancing exercise". That is not reasonable at all, if that;'s the take. And if it's not then you've missed that ANs do the balancing exercise, and suffering tips the scales. Given this is the case across the board in relation to procreation then the exercise has been carried out and the answer is clear. I'm not sure what else you could want? To deny the result of hte exercise (on their account, that is?)
Quoting Leontiskos
There is no need for one, unless for some strange metaphysical reason you believe this is hte state of things, arbitrarily. That seemed to be apokrisis' position. I found it funny, and a not just a little silly.
Ah, okay, I see what you are saying.
The question then is this: Why does the suffering of the pinprick do nothing to tip the scale?
I see two possible answers. Either the suffering of the pinprick is for some reason not counted as suffering; or else the antinatalist is in fact balancing suffering with some other consideration, in which case suffering does not always tip the scales.
Generally, AN is about suffering AND consent- that is to say, the deontological principles of non-harm and non-autonomy are both broken in regards to procreation. So there is that, and one can go down that line of reasoning as well.
However, keeping it just to suffering, for the sake of this particular argument, the consideration is that there are no people deprived of good and that is not bad. Therefore, in the decision for procreation, at least, the balance is always against causing the violation of the non-harm principle because it was unnecessary to cause to another individual. It is undisputed that, in this actual world, at least there will be suffering, and therefore a state of affairs will occur which violates the principle and someone will suffer. This should be prevented of course.
Who is making this consideration? Certainly not me, as I explained above.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I would say that it is also undisputed that in the pinprick world there will be suffering, at least until you give an actual explanation for why a pinprick does not count as suffering. The prima facie answer is that it does count as suffering.
That is the consideration of the balancing. No one exists who is deprived of good. Someone will exist who will suffer and thus non harm violated.
Quoting Leontiskos
And I answered you. If you want to attempt again to read it charitably, have a go.
@schopenhauer1 seems to assume that "other considerations" could only be positive experiences, which I was not assuming.
That said, I don't really understand Amadeus' post here. This is how I read it:
You haven't. Getting answers out of you is like pulling teeth. It literally took three months to get a real answer to my reductio, and that was the simplest argument on offer by design. Even then I had to draw out the argument you were intimating. Answers are not forthcoming, and you fall into petitio principii at the drop of a hat. :roll:
Prima facie, I would say it doesn't tip the scales because other pleasures out weight a pinprick (scratching a decent itch would be enough v a pinprick). But the suffering of life is vastly more intense, prolonged and intractable than a pin prick.
Quoting Leontiskos
Ill try to re-word your interp. to see if it gets you anywhere..
I think the discussion of what level of suffering need be prevented is more or less the discussion that antinatalists have among themselves (and it is also the discussion that others wish to have with antinatalists). The type of suffering doesn't seem that interesting - it's the balance between the "intensity, length and meaningfulness of the suffering" and other considerations* that is interesting. The antinatalist position is that suffering always trumps any other consideration.
As a clarifying point, to me, 'other considerations' could be positive experiences, bare pleasure (in an abstract sense), character-building, the achievement of some life-long goal etc.. etc.. But the problem with all of this is it's speculation. We're only talking about unborn people - in this way, we can see that suffering is ensured (by the journey to Death) but positive experience is not vouchsafed by being born. One could have an all-in-all 'good' life, but that's highly unlikely on the view of the world and life ANs take, and at any rate, the suffering which comes with one's death (ones anxiety, fear etc.. and the pain of those around us) would usually trump that possibly-good life. Only religion can break that loop, and I think that's a poor way to gt around it myself.
This seems in line with my interpretation to
Also, this is on line with what I was getting at here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Projects is a good word IMO as it captures exactly what is hoped for or tacitly desired- character-building, someone to learn through trial and error, achievement, the goods of life. It need not be bare pleasure. But its the parents positive project, overriding (I want X to happen) over the childs negative ethic (right for non-harm and non-consent to be unnecessarily violated).
Okay, so are you saying that a pinprick (or small amount) of suffering would not suffice for antinatalism? There must be more suffering before the arguments in favor of antinatalism become plausible. Is that right?
But if it is right then it seems like suffering does not always trump any other consideration, for the suffering of the pinprick does not trump the consideration of other pleasures.
Quoting AmadeusD
Good, this is my main concern: If suffering always trumps any other consideration, then how is it that the balance between suffering and other considerations constitutes an interesting discussion? How could one be talking about balancing suffering with some other consideration if suffering always outweighs any other consideration?
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay. Well at first blush it seems like you may be willing to balance suffering and other considerations in a way that schopenhauer1 is not.
As I saw it, he was saying something very similar to me. He was saying those other considerations (not just purely pleasure) matter not against the one consideration that matters- suffering.
I think it would clearer to say that "the sum total of suffering ensured by living a human life outweights any version of hte calculus a ANist can provide".
I.e, on our understanding of suffering, pleasure and how to balance them (those terms are obviously lacking nuance) we cannot find a reason to risk the most likely outcome - that one's sum total of suffering vastly out-weights the other considerations in one's life. To bring a person into existence when there is a very high - almost inescapable - chance their life will be, on balance, bad for them, is wrong. (i would think that statement stands to reason - you need not agree, but it explains the position I think).
Being an AN is a result of running the calc, and never coming out with 'life' as the winner. Not that its pre-decided. Obviously, that would be stupid. But if its a 2/98 chance, i'm going to force someone into the race.
Quoting Leontiskos
It only does so once the calc is run. The statement is not meant to be a position of it's own. It's more "I've run this calc 60,000 times and zero came up on the side of procreation". Again, disagree, sure, but it's wrong to take this as a position rather than what causes the position to be taken up.
Quoting Leontiskos
Possibly. Reading down just this page I get the feeling he's just being imprecise in a way that sort of hides what I'm saying about in some more let's say confident language.
Fair enough, slightly different than what I meant but in the ballpark. My way of interpreting the balancing is more deontological I think than your approach which is more perhaps consequential but this just shows the diversity of AN whilst basically agreeing on the same foundation @Leontiskos
Okay, interesting. I do see this as a more conservative version of antinatalism than schopenhauer1 holds.
Quoting AmadeusD
And I see this as substantially different from schopenhauer1. This is something like consequentialist antinatalism as opposed to deontological antinatalism, and it does seem more rational and plausible to me. It certainly does not fall victim to the two counterarguments I formulated for schopenhauer1's position.
Edit:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes.
This would I would think fall more into those objections as presumably, some condition of life would simply need it to be 51% good to procreate when you run the calculus. To me thats a limited natalism. Thats actually a weaker/more conservative position than negative utilitarianism. A negative utilitarian would say for example, to cause the least amount of preventable harm the situation, especially because its very doable, unlike post-birth scenarios. I just dont think the aggregate approach is amenable to certain ethics- even NU should be geared towards individuals. Not using people for a great calculus machine aggregating all suffering from everywhere seems to be a good start. [but a calculus for preventing an individuals suffering makes sense].
Learning is also a kind of 'suffering' too. The impossibility of clarity for the term 'suffering' makes AN a particular kind of subjective view. Like most items in ethics it is more or less opinion.
"there's a risk, so don't" which I can't quite see as a good enough reason not to procreate. The A-symmetry seems to rely on the consequentialist concept, even if the actual justification is more broad (i.e to live is to suffer. We shouldn't cause others to suffer. Don't have kids). I think I see why Leontiskos had a problem with this. It's more-or-less arbitrarily nihilistic. I think the consequentialist description overcomes some objections that are in concept, rather than execution. I wouldn't say life simply is suffering. I would say it is most likely the vast, vast, vast (perhaps 99.85%) of people born will, on balance, suffer more than they enjoy their life. Therefore, the possibility (0.15%) of a life worth living tells us not to create lives, on balance rather than because life is awful prima facie.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nah. Note, for example, that the reductio objection that we have been considering recently simply has no force at all against Amadeus' position. Amadeus' position does not support the conclusion (3) as Benatar's does.
This also conveniently shows that the objection is not ad hoc, it is not superfluous, and it does not prove too much. Instead it is tailor-fit to your own account in a way that does not necessarily fit alternative antinatalist accounts.
Well, I see what you mean, but AN makes the claim that 'giving birth is intrinsically bad'. This is an ethical evaluation and quite clearly is incompatible with a 'subjectivist' view of ethics, for instance. Viirtue ethics is probably the best 'foundation' of ethics in general. We might assume that, say, a good action is both good for the recipient of the action and for the agent himself/herself. So, yes, compassion is a good ground for ethics and I agree with Schopenhauer.
It's also compatible IMO with a 'deontological' view: being compassionate is also a duty to both oneself and to others - one should/must seek the good for oneself and others.
'Giving birth' is tricky here because the 'human being' doesn't exist (unless one believes in some kind of existence before birth*, but let's assume that this is not the case). Let's say that we cannot know the 'final outcome'** of the future person life (i.e. if that individual will be satisfied with life or irreversibily unhappy), in this case, clearly we must admit that, after all, we can't say that 'giving birth' is a good act. In this sense I agree with the antinatalists. However, I am not sure if 'giving birth' qualifies as a 'bad' act, even when one considers the future individual.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Probably, 'deontological' was the wrong word. I believe, however, that ethics itself is intrinsically social. Ethical agency doens't seem to me to make sense without a community. In other words, if, say, 'I act in order to bring the good to myself and to others', then I cannot 'ignore' the presently existent human beings and the human community in general. If one accepts that seeking the 'good' is also a social 'enterprise', then trying to preserve society seems, after all, a 'good' act. If one believes that, clearly there is a contrast with AN.
*For instance, Hindu, Jain and Buddhists believers in reincarnation/rebirth see the 'birth as a human' as something good, precisely because it gives the chance to get better rebirths and liberation. So, if this belief were true, then antinatalism would be wrong.
**As in the other thread, if one believes (as say Christian universalists) that in the 'end' 'all will be well', then of course IMO life would be good for everyone (ultimately).
Well, not sure of your point. If, say, one has no economical problems, would you still think that 'giving birth' is morally wrong?
Also, generally antinatalists argue that 'giving birth' is wrong becuase it is a choice that affects others (in unknown ways) not becuase it undermines our 'self-preservation'. At best your argument is for a personal choice of not giving birth.
It is not about economic problems but legal ones. You are very likely to end up at some point becoming the noncustodial parent of the child. That is a stupid hobby.
Above a certain national divorce rate, it looks like a bad decision to have children with a person of that particular nationality:
https://divorce.com/blog/divorce-rates-in-the-world/
It is preferable to pick a country with a much lower divorce rate, choose a romantic interest there, and have children there instead.
I ruthlessly discriminate against anybody from a high divorce rate country. So, yes, I consider it to be morally wrong to have children with these people. Better safe than sorry.
What are you talking about? Its either effectively the same (a threshold needs to be met, but empirically, this seems to never be the case..and this always wrong de facto) or its premises are wrong (that the threshold is met or can at some point be met).
Also your non sequitur tying 3 has no support. If the threshold is never met, 3 effectively always stands (its good no one suffers..as the threshold represents suffers here or pain). True its not as digital as deontology, but the aggregate amount of too much pain that this life holds seems to be his definition of suffering.
But this isn't an argument for antinatalism. Antinatalism is the view that is morally wrong to give birth. You are merely saying that in some circustances one might choose to not have children.
Why not check rather than pulling numbers out your arse?
36% chance of creating an unhappy person then.
This average happiness is potentially overshadowed by life's inevitable suffering - "Nearly 1 in 2 people born in the UK in 1961 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime", "12.7% of all deaths registered in the UK in 2018 were from dementia and Alzheimer disease".
@AmadeusD may not be too far off:
Quoting AmadeusD
What are you talking about? The reductio objection has nothing at all to do with a threshold, and that is the problem. For Benatar's argument even a pinprick suffices to trigger antinatalismad hoc counterarguments aside. The objection requires only the presence of suffering, not a threshold. The whole premise of the objection is that Benatar's argument absurdly greenlights antinatalism even when suffering is outstripped by happiness by 1,000 miles.
Amadeus rightly notes that any position which assumes antinatalism before considering the balance between suffering and other considerations "would be stupid":
Quoting AmadeusD
His key distinction is between suffering trumping other considerations before a balance-analysis, and suffering outweighing other considerations after a balance-analysis. The deontological antinatalist is committed to the former, which Amadeus disagrees with.
Apokrisis' statistic already included such folks. It was baked in.
The consequentialist antinatalist apparently thinks that if we polled everyone on their deathbed and asked them if life was worth living or they wished they had never been born, the vast majority* would wish they had never been born.
* For Amadeus this is something like "99.85%"
Your second paragraph suggests you understand what I was getting at. Of those polled only a fraction would have been people experiencing the suffering at the end of life.
99.85% does seem rather high, but I don't think it unreasonable to determine the majority of people have net bad lives.
Do you think it is unreasonable to determine that the majority of people would rather had never been born?
But then thinking that nothing in this actual world does or ever will meet that threshold, effectively makes this a nonissue.
Quoting Leontiskos
I am fine with that. But I gave my thoughts on pinprick world. Its either not suffering as we normally define it, or indeed, since no one is obligated to bring happiness only prevent suffering in this instance, it can be defended. Why would it matter if no one existed in the first place? The problem is using Benatar as if hes purely doing hedonic calculus and not explaining the difference of good and bad in respect to non-existence. Not existing hurts no actual person, only existing does.
Either way, Benatar goes out of the way tgat even if you dont bite the bullet in pinprick scenario, THIS world is not that world hence he has a litany of follow-up empirical evidence of how we are often mistaken psychologically and empirically just how bad it is in regards to present pain and pain reflected or projected.
If you are talking about a poll like the one that showed 64% happy - 36% unhappy, ostensibly, the percentage of people that would rather they had never been born would be lower than the unhappy 36%, when considering things like unhappy people that prefer to have been born "otherwise they wouldn't have had their children" etc.
My same objection to the happiness poll would apply to the birth preference one though. I don't know how many of those suffering at end of life wish they had never been born.
Further, I would rather prevent a life of suffering in spite of a future person's preference. There are many people that hurt themselves, and society determines it just to thwart their preference.
The case against antinatalism is not about its logic. That is all too easy to dismiss. It is about people confirming themselves in the social role of being victims of life itself. It is about the nonsense of forming a communal identity around a justification for not feeling better about their world.
Suffering can't be avoided so one can't be criticised for not even trying.
This thought used to be framed as existentialism and nihilism. Now it is framed in this really bullshit legalism of existence being an unconsented fact. Of no person having a right to impose a burden on another.
Systems of laws arise out of the need to organise successful human communities and not the other way around. If you think there is a problem, changing the system is what you should strive for.
But systems of laws recognise rights and responsibilities. They are based on a pragmatic balance between individual wants and communal needs. Burdens will be imposed. All that is asked is that they are reasonable.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
In modern society, what are we truly the victim of? The industrial food industry. Big pharma. The banking industry. The atomising effects of neo-liberal economics and social policy.
If you live a healthy life, the odds of metabolic diseases are greatly cut. We can live in ways that avoid cancer and dementia. But also a lot of that is down to the fact we now all live so long.
What are the actual death bed regrets of people? They are about not doing more to be part of a personally meaningful community. About not getting out and living life more.
So from a moral philosophy point of view, there are some real issues to be addressed. The modern world has many pluses compared to other times, but also plenty of questionable economic and political settings.
You know something has to be out of balance when most folk are more familiar with Kim Kardashian's intimate life than they are with their next door neighbour's.
In this context life as something to be lived antinatalism is just whiny bullshit. A wet legalistic self-justification.
Sure, the decision to be a parent ought to be taken with a clear-eyed view of the risk/reward balance. Studies show that 10% of parents in developed countries wished their kids had never been born. :grin:
But taking a rational view of life is the habit we would want to encourage. People who can cope with balancing complex risk/reward decisions and so likely to make the best of their lives as well as of their communities.
I agree with that. Ethics is born, or created, in between, or out of, two or more people.
Quoting schopenhauer1
In my view, saying ethics is to call up a community, such as humanity. So it doesnt make sense (to me) to talk about AN without talking about both humanity and the individual; otherwise we arent doing ethics (or even psychology).
Humanity can be limited to all of those humans alive now, but this humanity is where any ethic is inflicted upon the universe. This ethics only emerges among humans (at least emerges as a topic of discussion only humans currently call ethics).
We, here on this thread, are building an ethical discussion. This is where ethics lives. Both within each individual as you read, and among us now exchanging these words of ethical wisdom.
Ethics itself, like this thread, is particular to humans, and out of this, the ANist shows that consent and suffering are paramount considerations, and out of these that we (humanity as each individual) must not procreate.
I still find AN difficult to fully grasp in its use of ethical reasoning to promote a world bereft of ethical reasoning, a world bereft of human procreation (humans being the creatures who use ethical reasoning as a thing).
I agree we are broken. I agree suffering is unavoidable and ubiquitous. And I agree compasssion is essential to ethics, a good, a virtue to be cultivated. And I agree it is good not to inflict suffering without consent. But I dont see anything reasonable about eliminating the infliction of suffering by eliminating the ethics and compassion (along with the human species) that show us suffering is something to be compassionate about in the first place. It makes ethics itself potentially unethical, or non-sensical. It is either suicidal or nihilistic, not simply good anymore as good is no longer good.
When we end human procreation, we end the existence of compassion in the same universe that led us to be ethical and not procreate in the first place.
Its like this: we all get together write a rule down and all sign it with full consent and the rule is all of those who make rules must not procreate. There need be no good in the rule or reason why the rule is written, because all good and reason will cease to provide account of anything at all where all those who make rules do not procreate.
Right. Also IMO human beings are, so to speak, essentially social. Ethics, in particular, seems to me based on how an individual relates to other individuals. Making an ethical claim by 'abstracting' oneself or another person from the social context seems to me a contradiction.
BTW, I don't think that we must have kids. But I think that the antinatalist ethical 'prohibition' to have kids is wrong. One can choose to not have kids and making arguments for that choices, sure. But saying that it is always ethically wrong to give birth is a different matter.
1. If we polled everyone on their deathbed, X% would wish they had never been born
2. Therefore, X% of potential future persons would not want to be born
3. Therefore, we should not give birth to new human beings
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
You seem to be saying, "It looks like X isn't going to be high enough to justify (3), therefore we can't give them a choice." This is a bit like the father at the theme park who reasons, "My daughter wants to go on this ride, and if she goes on it she will probably enjoy it, so I can't let her go on it." This is reminiscent of the "paternalism" that schopenhauer1 claims to oppose.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
The imaginary poll is taken at end of life:
Quoting Leontiskos
They have all been addressed.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Pain isn't suffering? This is ad hoc, and it brings with it more problems:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, completely irrelevant:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, there is nothing about balancing or hedonic calculus involved in the objection. At this point your reading comprehension is coming into question.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again:
Quoting Leontiskos
The point can be rephrased in any number of ways. "The woman learns that any children she has will inherit her extremely painful disease. Should she bear children?" "The antinatalist learns that any child she has will experience a pinprick of pain. Is this sufficient to exclude children?" To be blunt, the idea here is that your argument is stupid because it justifies stupid decisions. It makes no sense to say, "Ah well the advice does justify stupid decisions, but it is still good and reasonable advice."
Quoting schopenhauer1
...and paternalistic gaslighting is the icing on the cake. "Humans think life is good even in spite of the pain, but they're wrong so we're going to exterminate the race through lack of births." What is the difference between this and genocidal insanity?
Pain vs. Suffering certainly does bring on debate. Does a pinprick followed by no other suffering (necessary or contingent) count as suffering? Well, interestingly, one can argue that the pinprick being the ONLY version of suffering, as the mark-for-what-suffering-is revolves solely on that, might be considered the worst thing ever because it literally is in that world. So, perhaps from the perspective of Pinprick World, this threshold itself would be suffering, and thus indefensible to enact upon on another.
Of course I can cut all this short and just go with my #2 response which is that people should not be unnecessarily harmed and non-consented under any circumstance. Nothing wrong with that. And you can make a whole incredulous response to this, but then you never really addressed how it is that non-existence hurts anyone.
But, even if that sort of response seems off to you because it is so rigid, all you need is as I said, that the "Threshold never reaches the level of pinprick world". And you may say that a future point would lead there, but then you are using people in the meantime to get there- and indeed, it would be generations to get there. Notice, you can say two pinpricks, three... and increase it, but even if you were to increase it by a factor of 100s but still less suffering than our world, that isn't currently our world, and using people to get there would nullify it.
Quoting Leontiskos
No you are assuming some baseline "common sense" sensibility beyond the violation. This just Kant-objections redux. There's a reason why 1st degree murder and 2nd degree and 3rd degree murder is considered murder yet have different blameworthiness/punishment aspects to them. There's a difference between murder and manslaughter as well. So is pinprick world akin to manslaughter as opposed to murder? Perhaps, the situation might be "wrong" in some very abstract sense, but there can be allowed degrees of it. In your world, which is a ridiculous reduction. For example, in your world there is no gambling with lives aspect, whereby there can be varying amounts of pains and pleasures. It's all the same amount of pain and all the same outcomes. That drastically changes how that world operates compared to ours. Yet you claim that it's a "reductio" rather than being so irrevocably different that they count as different kinds, not just degrees. I am pushing back on that. At some point, for example, murder is no longer murder, though someone might have died, and someone was involved.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yeah this is certainly strawmanning the argument to a laughable level. "We are going to exterminate the through lack of births..." sounds like the goal of AN is to exterminate the race rather than prevent a violation of suffering/non-consent.
I can think of my own thought experiments for you here:
I have a game that I think is worthwhile for other people to play. I enter you into the game without your consent. In the game, you may have good moments, but there are also some tragic ones, harmful ones, and throughout the game, you are put through a lots of negative experiences. In order to escape the game, the person can only kill themselves. They are in it permanently. Are you justified to put someone through that game because you think it is good for them?
Quoting apokrisis
It might be this assumed stance that I most vehemently reject as being moral. It is circular reasoning. Why should burdens be imposed? You will use your systems theory to justify it. However, being that we are counterfactual-acting creatures, we could always choose not to burden someone, so the system itself can produce people that can choose the counterfactual than what you claim the "system" wants to have happen. Yet, hypothetically, all people could choose to not procreate. What you are tacitly suggesting is that there is some instinct or logos, or necessary aspect to procreation. But with deliberative creatures, there is no necessity to procreation. Thus, saying that "Burdens WILL be imposed" is just wrong. Burdens NEED NOT BE imposed.
No, "society" doesn't suffer, individuals with POVs do. I make a distinction between mitigation ethics and preventative ethics. Once born, we are in mitigation ethics mode where indeed, we may have to trade greater harms for lesser harms. Uniquely for the procreational decision, we can be in preventative ethics, where absolutely/purely we can make a decision to prevent ALL harm to a future person whereby no drawback (lesser harm) is had for that person. No ONE is deprived. And ANs generally all agree that (unlike your definition of ethics), positive ethics (other people's projects.. like continuing humanity, wanting to take care of a new person, etc.), should not override individuals' negative ethics (rights not to be harmed, non-consented).
Edit: Notice also the pyramid scheme aspect to this. By society existing, it becomes self-perpetuating as you can throw another person in the fray, burden them, cause them to eventually deal with life/suffering, and you can always justify it by saying, "If we don't sacrifice the rights of individuals not to suffer, our society will collapse!". And this to me, is just a justification for doing harm, not an actual answer to the problem that exists.
Again, this doesn't make sense to me, as we discussed in earlier discussions. Ethics only exist because humans exist. Once there are no more humans, ethics need not exist. We don't exist SO THAT ethics can persist, but rather ethics exists because humans exist.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, I'm not convinced that the majority of people end up preferring they had been born. On top of the people that already wish they had never been born you have those suffering at the end of life wishing they had never been born.
Considering my view that most people are likely to live net bad lives, it would be more like the daughter wanting to go on the ride (after eating lots of candyfloss), and if you let her go on it will make her sick.
It would actually be worse than this, you would be putting her on the ride and making her sick before she even had a preference on it.
@schopenhauer1 was the master of these thought experiments. Forcing people onto rides, Willy Wonka World etc :smile:
Thank you much appreciated..oldie but goodie:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10842/willy-wonkas-forced-game/p1
Here's a thought experiment..
I realized I went from 3rd person to first person in that OP :lol:
It is the dialectical reasoning of the systems science view. The complexity of a system arises from the fruitful balancing of its contrary impulses. Rights and responsibilities are one such way of capturing the essence of modern social structure.
I only used your emotive jargon - burdens - to make the connection to your own reductionist position. You can see that burdens are really just the global responsibilities that can justify a person also having their particular local rights.
Speaking more generically, a system is a hierarchical balance of the dichotomy that is constraints and freedoms.
So at every level of natural order, we have the same general idea of a balancing of top-down long-run constraints and bottom-up constructive or creative freedoms.
What you call burdens are in fact the constraints that shape up a society as a collection of individuals with their freedoms. The freedoms that are meaningful and pragmatic as they are how the society can continually renew its own globally persisting being.
But you dont seem to have an understanding of nature as a developmental or self-organising system. This is why your logic is so broken.
I agree that 'society' doesn't suffer but individuals do. And I also agree that we should avoid to cause unnecessary suffering, especially when there is no possibility of consent. 'Not intentionally causing unnecessary harm' seems to be a 'regulative ideal' that we should follow.
And yet, I think that as an ethical duty, if you want, we also have a moral obligation to act for the benefit of others. In fact, I think we should act with the benefit of everyone in sight, although of course we cannot directly benefit to everyone due to our finitude - hence I see this as a 'regulative ideal'. The fact that ethics seems to work only when a community of ethical agents is present seems to me that this second regulative ideal is necessary.
It seems to me that these two 'ideals' give us an ethical dilemma, if we accept both as ethical regulative ideals. Of course, if we give the prominence to the first one, it seems that, unless one holds to some kind of religious/metaphysical beliefs, antinatalism would be right. I'm not convinced, however, that the second 'ideal' is 'lesser' than the first. So, it seems to me that antinatalism isn't the 'best' ethical position for both the 'single individual' and 'all individuals'. I would like to find a way to avoid giving 'prominence' to one ideal over the other. But I admit that at least until now, I never found a solution.
I agree - we dont exist for ethics.
But AN is the ethical system that places the ethics above the humans.
For the ANist, the ethical principal is a higher good than the agent, because the ANist is willing to destroy the possibility of all future ethical agents for sake of upholding its ethical principal.
But if ethics tells me ethics should not exist, why would I think I should be ethical?
I exist, then ethics exists. If the ethics exists because of me, but this ethics tells me I should not exist, then the ethics should not exist either. So what is wrong about inflicting suffering without consent again? I was wrong to exist then so is my ethics wrong to exist. So why do a fabricate this whole ethical dilemma? Why not let the Forrest fire burn, the earthquake crumble, the storm drown, and the human procreate? Why not, if our ethics is nothing and for nothing?
The AN position upholds ethics above the ethical agent, in order to eliminate the agent and so eliminate the ethics.
That is what makes no sense to me.
There is nothing good about being ethical in a world that should not have ethics in it because it should not have humans in it.
I'm not sure how you get this. Placing ethics before humans would be the opposite. For example, some forms of utilitarianism would have it that you should violate people's basic rights if it helps the greater community. One example might be, having a set of people secretly tested for scientific experiments without consent (this did happen to a group of Tuskegee Airmen in the American South, for example) .. But there are many many examples of this kind of thinking.
Quoting Fire Ologist
So this fails to be an example of "placing ethics above the human", as "the possibility of all future ethical agents" is not an actual human, but a reified concept (the possibility of a human). Quite the opposite, whereas creating suffering because we prefer to keep "Humanity and civilization going" would be using real people for an ethical principle (i.e. some positive project such as "humanity and civilization"), AN is actually ABOUT preventing suffering and non-consent of an ethical agent who will so be affected by that.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Your conclusion does not follow at all from the premise. The ethics isn't "You should not exist". Rather, the ethic is, "Do not cause unnecessary harm". All else you are saying is thus misguided and confused. Once you exist, it is incumbent to not cause unnecessary harm. The purest form of this is in the procreational decision which can prevent ALL harm with no cost to an actual person, and thus, to follow this ethic, at least in its purest action, would be to not procreate.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Your first part is wrong as I've explained above. The ethics is not "above the agent". Rather, the ethics is incumbent on humans that already exist to follow in regards to future ethical agents (by preventing a future person's birth). The principle is all about how we are NOT to treat a (possible) ethical agent from the perspective of one who already exists.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This actually makes no sense. If humans exist, ethics towards other agents exist. If humans don't exist, this ethic is no longer needed. No humans = no ethics. If there are humans, then the ethic (of not procreating) remains.
And the concept of "no consent" and the concept of "inflicted suffering on another" and the concepts of "good" and "ethics" are reified concepts. Not actual humans. No difference.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You can't discard my reference to "the possibility of future ethical agents" as a mere reified concept, and then say ethics is incumbent on current people "in regards to future ethical agents."
This is the problem with the logic. You need certain things be in place as premises and principals, in order to demonstrate a world where none of these premises or principals need exist.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You need human civilization to exist for any human preference to exist at all. The ANist is using a preference to base a conclusion that preferences should not exist. If preferences should not exist, why prefer not to inflict harm? Unless you uphold the principal over the person.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There is more to ethics than principles. Ethical principles are calls to action, prescriptions for behavior impacting other ethical agents - they are guides for physical, actual behavior in a society. AN ethical behavior based on principals (do not cause harm; procreation causes harm without consent) is for the sake and goal of eliminating all ethical action by eliminating all ethical actors. On principle, the ANist doesn't want any creatures that would have or construct principals to exist at all. On principle, principles should not drive action. That makes no sense.
So I ask, why would we use ethical principles (don't inflict harm) to make the world better if that better world doesn't need or have any ethical principals in it (because no ethical agents)? Why would I think it is good to follow any ethical principal that had the goal of building a society that had no need or place for ethics?
Quoting schopenhauer1
What drives the notion "ethics is incumbent"? Why would you say that? We choose our ethics just as we choose our actions according to our ethics. If choosing and choosing ethically are so good they are "incumbent", why would we destroy the presence of these goods by building a world that had no ethical agents in it? Choosing must therefore be bad.
Quoting schopenhauer1
If humans exist, ethics is possible, but need not exist - we are the only creatures who construct ethics, but before we construct it, ethics does not exist. AN is constructing ethics to construct a world without humans, as if the ethics of "not inflicting harm" was more important than the human that constructed this ethic. And all with the outcome of world where no creature could reconstruct this ethic and recognize how good all of those humans who did not procreate were back when they were living, ethical agents.
No, you are misconstruing my argument. The "no consent" and "inflicting suffering", if violated, WILL affect the person involved. "No humanity/civilization" would be [s]inflicting suffering/non-consent[/s] doing something FOR a reified concept.
Quoting Fire Ologist
All that's needed is actual people with a perspective that exist to know that a future person would be so affected if they violated these principles.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Again, this seems like muddled thinking. The "preference" is based on following a principle of non-harm/non-consent. That principle exists because humans exist. Once humans no longer exist, no need for preferences. I am not sure why this is so hard.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This question makes no ethical matter. In a way, you are undermining your own accusations of me. It seems you have a hidden agenda in your ethical principles (i.e. that they need to have some sort of "goal" that is above and beyond not inflicting suffering/not violating consent to an individual). No one is talking about "building a society" here. That is not this ethic, which is negative (nothing about building). In fact, as I've explained previously, no positive ethic in this case, where there is no tradeoff to an existing person, would matter when it violates a negative ethic. Your right to "build X, Y, Z" shouldn't override unnecessarily harming/violating consent, especially as there is no person who "loses out" on you doing so (i.e. preventative vs. mitigation ethics).
Quoting Fire Ologist
The "presence of these goods".. This sounds like people are instruments for "goods" to take place, precisely the thinking that I think is UNETHICAL... people should not be used (caused to be harm) so that your vision of a positive project is carried out ("these goods of life"). At some point, it is up to the individual to "choose" what they think is ethical. I am presenting the case that unnecessarily harming people (causing to suffer for no reason), is unethical- it doesn't matter if you had a positive vision in mind in doing so (when there is no need to have actually caused the harm in the first place).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Why does this matter that there would be no one to "recognize" that good was done or to "reconstruct this ethic" (whatever that means)?
But what is wrong with inflicting suffering? Why is it wrong to torture babies to death and make more babies to torture them?
You need an ethics to argue torturing babies is wrong. Its not obvious. Otherwise, like an orca teaching its young, torturing babies to death is just another motion in space, like any other, neither good nor bad.
WE say it is bad to inflict suffering without consent. WE create this rule, this ethic. Now that its created, WE can choose to act on it. And the ANist can determine that to not-procreate is to act on this new rule we created. And what is the good of this act?? What is the good of the rule? In the end, what is the reason there were humans once but are no longer any humans? The reason would be because of the ethics we created. Not any other reason.
So the ethics itself, the principle itself, for the ANist, is the higher goal than some condition or state in the ethical human being.
We create a problem (inflicting suffering without consent) to create a solution (not procreating) for sake of .
upholding the principle, NOT for sake of any person. All things people are, to the ANist, something that SHOULD NOT persist, should not have come to be.
So AN upholds ethics to defeat ethics. It is literally for the sake of nothing.
In that case, it is legitimate to ask Why be ethical at all?
Instead of killing off the human race, we could all choose to kill off ethics. We could fight our instinct towards compassion (fight the pangs that arise when suffering is inflicted on another) instead of fighting our instinct to procreate?
Why must our response to compassion be the creation of ethics? If the answer involves humans (an individual, a community, possible future humans ) than antinatalist ethics make no sense as its goal is no more humans is a good.
I base the deontology as rooted in the idea that people have inherent dignity and should not be used as a means to an ends. I agree, if you don't agree with this basis for morality, that either people do not have inherent dignity and thus they should not be used, then none of this would matter. Some people think instrumentally, for example. I think that basis is wrong, precisely because it denies the individual worth of the individual. I also think that this entails that preventing things like suffering and non-consent are more important than whatever machinations you had in mind for a person that would violate those basic principles. Thus I say, your positive ethics doesn't override someone's negative ethics, if it need not be the case (you can prevent versus putting someone in mitigation mode where they must have some suffering but now trade greater for lesser, etc.).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Notice you said "any other reason". Well yeah, there would be a "reason" nonetheless. Some "reasons" are ethical and some are not. That's the debate here. It just so happens, the ethical ones ends in no human being procreated. Again, I see no problem with that. Your argument seems to be something akin to credulity but with no force behind it. You are essentially saying, "But look at this outcome! But look!"
Quoting Fire Ologist
If you mean by this that ANs generally don't prioritize positive projects over negative ethics, then yes. For example, a positive project from a philosopher might say they want to see, "The flourishing of a virtuous person" (which may or may not be the outcome, but even that point is irrelevant here, though can be the basis for weaker arguments like the "gambling with other lives" arguments, which are also valid). A less philosophically inclined person might just say they want "A person they can raise and do family stuff with". It's all positive projects though, whatever it is.
Quoting Fire Ologist
You are phrasing it so that it comes out this way. Rather, a violation of a person will take place, you are preventing that violation of a person. It doesn't matter if someone is not benefiting from this, rather a PERSON will not suffer and be non-consented. It is for the sake of the person not suffering and being non-consented, that WILL BE SO AFFECTED.
1 There is a null state (no person), and
2 there is a state with some bad
3 and some good.
2 is the only one that has moral relevance here.
That there is a null state is not morally wrong...
That some good happens (3) is not morally relevant.
All that matters is 2 does not occur, as THAT is the morally relevant/bad/wrong state of affairs.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Sure, don't make someone else unnecessarily suffer if you can.
Quoting Fire Ologist
You could. We can do a bunch of things.
Quoting Fire Ologist
See, you are caught up in the "no more humans". It is precisely this thinking that I question. Why is this project important to you other than incredulity or appeal to tradition? And you are going to say a whole bunch of statements about civilization, the wonder of a sunset, love, and all this, and all the "goods" of life, but if you go back to 1, 2, and 3. Why are we forcing suffering unto others so that X, Y, Z happens? Why does X, Y, Z matter? That people need to experience "goods of life", seems oddly messianic, and aggressively paternalistic. What makes you believe that these projects of "good life" or "positive experience" mean you get the right to make people suffer? Indeed, this would be using people's suffering for your messianic/paternalistic notion of what "MUST happen FOR them" or simply "What MUST HAPPEN" in general. If suffering isn't the paramount thing, then there is something that is not ethics going on here.. Perhaps ego? Perhaps forcing one's vision of "the good" on others? Perhaps, misplaced messianism (YOU know what's good, and YOU must be the one to carry that out). But as I've stated more eloquently here: