I just reread the essay, and I have the same reaction now as I remember having when I first read it - that of incredulity towards his reference to moral duty and obligation. I have anti-realist intuitions when it comes to morality so all this talk of duty, obligation, etc, strikes me as nonsense. Where does this duty come from? How does it exist? Why does it have authority over me? Why should I care? The way I'm reading the article Singer is referring to moral duty in a moral realist sense - that of a stance/desire-independent authourative "force" that compels or binds you to act, regardless of your values or desires. I don't believe in this. And so his trying to make an analgous case between a duty to rescue a drowning child in a pond, and overseas starvation fails for me, as I don't even think there's a moral duty save the drowning child. I'd save the drowning child if I wanted to, and I'd donate to charity if I desired to as well. Neither are "morally obligatory" - there is no such thing. And maybe in the eyes of Singer this means I'm acting immorally because I don't want to impoverish myself to the point of marginal utility in order to improve the overall state of the world. So what? I care about my welfare more than I care about other people's, and I'm not responsible for the state of the world, or the negative welfare of other people that I didn't cause. Invoking "duty" to compell me to act against my self-interested desires* simply doesn't work.

*note also that my self-interested desires also include my desire, to a degree, for others to not suffer, hence I would save a drowning child if it were at little risk to myself and I do make a small amount of charitable donations. The point being it is my desires that I act upon, and not out of a sense of duty or obligation - the invoking of which has no affect on me.

I used moral language just fine all my life before I ever encountered metaethics, and now suddenly I must pick a position between the existence of some type of bizarre normative platonic realm, or hold that all moral statements are technically.. false?

This seems like philosopher babble to me. Take a statement (divorced from its actual use in discourse - itself problematic), "torturing babies for fun is wrong!" Everyone that isn't a psychopath just agrees, and leaves it at that, but the philosopher must know *what* makes it true - is there a stance independent normative realm the statement flies out and corresponds with?? And if not must the statement then be actually false???? AHHHH!!!

People don't have metaethical commitments when they use moral language. Philosophers take individual utterances eg "x is wrong" and build entire worlds out of them to the point you can reach a conclusion like "torturing babies for fun is wrong" is actually a false statement. Its just idiotic.

You know how a normal conversation goes? Someone says you shouldn't do x because x is wrong. The person responds why is it wrong? What you DONT do is go into some metethical tirade about stance independent normative facts and get into a debate on their existence or not. No you just explain in the typical manner, "x is wrong because it causes y type of harm or negative outcome" and the person may either come round to your conclusion or not. That's how moral language works. I don't know what the philosophers are doing.

I'm somewhat of an amateur fossil hunter. It would seem odd to me, that when I find fossils I am not holding the remnants of the bodies of animals that existed a long time ago, but am instead holding... ? I suppose under the 'all is quality' view, I am holding nothing more than mind-dependent qualities - the way the fossil looks, feels, it's texture. It only signifies the past to the degree that I build an explanatory narrative around my perceptions (i.e. there is nothing more to the past than this narrative). But I think what's missing from this account that reduces our existence to 'quality only' is our pre-theoretical lived experience as being human bodies.

When we speak of "quality" what we are really referring to is our bodies sensory perceptions - our visual field is predicated upon our eyes. The senses of taste and smell are bodily - one puts food in their mouth, or holds something to their nose. You cannot touch fossils without hands. It would seem incoherent to think both my hand and its touch are 'in my mind' - my body would be 'in my mind' yet my sensory perceptions are dependent upon my body? It appears nonsensical, especially considering my body will remain when I die, much like these creatures whose fossils I find. You have direct evidence of this every time you eat a chicken - a plate full of bones.

P3: If a view multiplies ontic categories without necessity, then it should not be accepted (Occam’s Razor). [p → q] — Bob Ross

Surely this leads to solipsism - why posit minds beyond your own? But I think applying Occam's Razor to ontology is a misapplication. There is no requirement for the ontology of the world itself to be as parsimonious as possible.

Your brain, in interacting with the external world during childhood, developed a method of generating and intepreting brain states, that in consciousness is experienced as representative of things and events in the external world. — wonderer1

But the issue is that if we do not sense the external world directly, but instead our senses are representational, our bodies themselves are also part of what is sensed, and therefore must themselves be representational. I see my hands, touch my head, hear myself speak. I may posit this phone I am typing on is a representation generated by my brain of a phone in the external world, but then so too must also be the hands I am holding it with - both are part of my visual field. And so the external world must not mean "the world beyond my body", but instead is a sort of radically skeptical hypothesis of a world that exists beyond the solipsistic representational bubble I inhabit. My body, being itself represented, must not have a brain doing the representing - a brain in the external world would be doing it.

I agree entirely. Frankly I think your posts are the most valuable and insightful on this forum. I have nothing further to add but to agree. It gives me a sense of community knowing others out there feel the exact way I do as well.

Personally, I work a job which requires long hours - I work in logistics and warehousing (I drive trucks, forklifts, deal with freight companies, move things from A - B). This suits me well because frankly, I really don't cope well with unstructured time. Unstructured, non-goal directed time for me is just an imposition of boredom, ennui, depression, suicidal thoughts and actions. I hate the sense of having "nothing to do". I know deep down it's because it's a confrontation with the worthlessness of existence, the valuelessness of simply being alive (for me), and so I very desperately crave having goals and ends and aims things to do and places to be and places to go. Which is why the jobs I work suit me very well. I need a job where, essentially every moment is goal directed. Always on the move.

For me, personally, I'm not anti-work as the jobs I work essentially function as 'pain-relief' - I'd feel worse NOT working. The problem is of course - I was borne out of my mothers womb into this world having perpetual biological needs that REQUIRE work (on threat of violent death - starvation, thirst, violent by other animals, etc) to maintain. There is no choice. It is, once embodied (or as I think of it - once humanized), we work to address our needs until we die. That is to say - no me, no pain and therefore no work to mitigate it. If I were never embodied there is no need to drive trucks to mitigate of unstructured time in the first place. No womb, no father whom ejaculates within, no conception, no child, no seeing the whole embodied striving played out in the next generation, no more work, no more perpetuation of the family, social, or political structure that ones forefathers cared about so much.

No humans - no pain nor suffering.

Also we're a social species, we invest quite a lot in making sure your model matches my model to a good degree of similarity. — Isaac

The trouble is that under the view that, "all perception is generated hallucination", other people, your own body, and the wider world around you is itself included in this generated hallucination. Essentially your perceptual 'world', which includes your own body, and other people, functions as a sort of internally generated self/world model, which is theorized to be caused by the brain/nervous system of something unknowable ("hidden state"). Its a kind of solipsism.

But we want to minimise surprise, so a good match between the probability function of the model and the distribution of the hidden state is something we evolve toward, purely by energy efficiency. — Isaac

I would imagine a "good match" (I don't even know how a good match would even be possible between hallucination and the unknowable..) is irrelevant in terms of our evolution, and the content of our 'hallucinations' would evolve towards what is useful in an evolutionary context (survival, gene replication, etc).

I like this. This is a far more satisfactory answer than "It's just silly lets not think about it." It takes the problem seriously and suggests a genuine solution. And this analysis seems right to me. It seems like @Cuthbert has correctly articulated a niggling feeling of 'there's something wrong with the thought experiment, but I'm not quite sure what'. — bert1

See also:

To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work of our organs — ? — Nietzsche

But then every night I dream and the external world is, in fact, the work of my nervous system (if I take as true that brains are the source of dreams) and global skepticism holds. The world we occupy while dreaming is essentially that of a brain in a vat, or in Nietzsche's words - the external world IS the work of my organs (but, the work of those organs/brain of the body that I occupy as a dream homunculus). If I doubt the external world while dreaming, I can (occasionally) become lucid and have some sort of control over the dreamscape (flying, moving objects at will, etc). Dream characters have even directly told me I'm dreaming. It seems to me there is no fundamental difference between waking life and dream life (see Thomas Metzingers: The Ego Tunnel), other than the stability of waking life and the inability to become lucid and control the world around me at will. We live in an ideal world every night, as a body in what seems an external world.

But in waking life people have only told me I'm dreaming in jest, and their true externality appears incoherent to doubt. After all, jumping off dreams cliffs shocks you awake, but kills you in waking (real?) life.

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” — Zhuangzi

From birth we can look forward to being host
To woe, and then to giving up the ghost.
Happy are they who quickly burn to toast,
And blessed are they who ne’er came to the roast. — PoeticUniverse

Haha, catchy!

The problem here is not with 'life', it's with your storytelling abilities. — Isaac

I mean, tell that to people literally starving to death. Sure, there is a physiological, hormonal basis to the felt sensation of hunger, but there is a difference between a bodily sensation (eg, the sensation of hunger, thirst, cold), and the needs of ones body (eg, nutrition, water, maintaining core body temperature). It is these needs that burden us (i.e. "a difficult situation or unpleasant responsibility that you must deal with or worry about").

As @Khaled points out, we can change our attitude towards the issue (eg, "the needs of my body are a fun challenge to deal with"), but the point remains - it's still something one deals with, as long as one is embodied.

There is the alternative to embodiment, but one doesn't think any normal person would want/choose it, unless there is something wrong with them. — skyblack

Suicide?

I think we pre-theoretically inhabit a shared world of coloured objects. To the left of me is a red box of crackers. The red is not "my red", nor it is "your red" (this is nonsensical) - it is the cracker box that is red. If you don't believe me, look for yourself. Yes, there are cases of colour blindness where one can look for themselves and not in fact see red, but this doesn't mean we each have an internal, private red we individually perceive, but rather one of us was born with a deficiency in colour perception.

If there's a "my red" and "your red", then why not also a "my box" and "your box"? But then your body too would be my, 'your body', and now the whole too, as it is all perceived by me, would be 'my world'. But then my body with its sense organs are also part of this world perceived - so then, my senses cause their own existence? Or perhaps the world, my body, and everything I've ever known is some sort of on-board self/world model within an actual, physical human body (see: Thomas Metzinger)?

I think at this point the box of red crackers is just getting thrown at your head.

Lol.

Surprisingly, this is my position as well, only stated differently. If we think it’s more likely that they will find life worthwhile, it’s fine. Most cases are unclear, but data surrounding overall levels of happiness, suicide rates, etc. leads us to believe that it is almost always more likely that the person will consider their life valuable, or worth living. Therefore it is almost always permissible. — Pinprick

But doesn't this "more likely" lead to a repugnant conclusion whereby if we believe 51% of people find their lives worthwhile whereas 49% don't, procreation is permissible? What is the cutoff? I can imagine a world of 10 billion people, 5.1 billion are happy, whereas 4.9 billion live in abject misery. The odds in this world favour a worthwhile birth, so is it therefore permissible to "roll the dice? Intuitively, the answer seems to be a resounding "no". These 'odds' are after all based on fallible human judgment. Not to mention the absurdity of using the amount of people who resort to lethal self-harm as a parameter of a "worthwhile life"...

It's also worth pointing out that the pleasures in life do not cancel out, nor negate the suffering experienced. There is no scale at the end of ones life our good and bad experiences are stacked upon, with the balance determining the worth of ones life. I think the best we can do is suffer, subsequently experience pleasure and then retrospectively tell ourselves that it was "worth it" in the end. Point being the experience of suffering isn't erased or negated - it was still endured. It's also interesting to note the deprivational language used here - "worth it" is in some sense referencing whether a bad or harm is "worth" enduring or undergoing. We aren't speaking about an objective good here, but rather a trade-off. And who am I to impose this "trade-off" on another person? I couldn't imagine justifying this with, "well, I guessed it was more likely you'd find it worthwhile, so I did it".

Right, well partially right, but you also know that they will experience pleasure, so you have to consider that as well. But technically being born doesn’t cause harm/pleasure, it’s just the necessary conditions for harm/pleasure to take place. — Pinprick

I don't see how any analysis of embodiment itself doesn't lead to the conclusion that it is a burden and a harm. Human embodiment is a locus of perpetual, pressing, potentially lethal biological need, which ends in inevitable death. Babies are after all born crying for milk and comfort. Why is it a good thing to create the conditions of harm to take place, for another person? There is zero need to do so, from the 'perspective' of the unborn.

Say in my power is the ability to instill within you a 6th sense, which has both the capacity to be experienced as painful or pleasurable. I guess that you are 51% likely to judge this added sense as "worthwhile" to have. Do I therefore have the right to bestow this sense upon you, without your permission? How wouldn't this be immoral? What's the difference between me instilling an extra sense upon you, and instilling the (traditional) 5 senses upon a fetus?

if you want to eliminate procreation this isn’t a zero-sum game because you’re trading off the potential suffering of the not yet born anti-natalist for the real suffering you would cause in many living people. — Joshs

So what you're saying is that we ought procreate so that the future people can be used as a means to reduce/prevent the suffering of the already living?

Remember, the political issue here isn’t about preventing the birth of everyone who might suffer, it’s about preventiing the birth of those whose suffering would cause them to regret having been born and to support anti-natalism, and that I imagine is a small fraction of the population. — Joshs

Antinatalists seek to prevent all human suffering - regardless of whatever philosophical position the child would have ended up adopting. Can you spell out exactly what you're implying when you say, "I imagine is a small fraction of the population"? Is it that the people who regret having been born are essentially collateral damage justified by the majority who don't?

This is your opinion. — Joshs

Compare two people - one of whom is starving, while the other is simply not experiencing taste pleasure. There is a moral urgency to prevent the starvation of the first person, yet inducing taste pleasure in the second lacks this same urgency.

Why are you a better proxy for those not yet born than these other voices? — Joshs

"Not yet born", is a poetic turn of phrase - there is no referent for the term. I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone or anything (literally), which is precisely the point - nothing exists to suffer from lack of life.

Most would be saying they don’t mind the pain and your decision ‘deprived’ them of life. — Joshs

Nothing exists to suffer the deprivation, or to miss out on the good in life. Children are not out there somewhere in the aether, suffering from lack of embodiment. Preventing suffering takes precedence over the creation of pleasure, especially when not creating 'good lives' does not harm the unborn. It's an unjustifiable risk to create life where it needn't have existed in the first place. You are essentially gambling with the potential welfare of another person, yet if the dice roll is unlucky, it's somebody else that suffers the loss. There is no moral obligation to make this gamble. People don't need to be born - there's nothing wrong with non-existence, while on the other hand human embodiment contains serious harms.

there are a lot of great things to enjoy in life. Most people seem to agree — Isaac

I agree, there are enjoyable things in life. But most isn't all, and all is what I would require as a standard before I'd even consider inflicting human embodiment upon another person. I wont respond to your other points because it will just lead to a quibbling debate, but in my opinion the pronatalist/antinatalist position starts and ends with a question of what kind of man/woman one aspires to be. Do I inflict a burden where it need not exist, or don't I? Do I have the self-discipline to deny my biological programming, or don't I? Do I aspire to do what is moral, or to simply indulge my base instincts to breed like every other mammal? What kind of person do I want to be, and what kind of self-discipline is required to achieve it? I imagine the vast majority of antinatalist/pronatalist debates on this forum are in reality debates between those with children and those without.

At a certain point the debate just breaks down. The antinatalist simply requires a higher standard for the creation of life that another human body must deal with - the pronatalist doesn't. It's an impasse.

I've changed the details here, but I had a client once who could not read books because he'd convinced himself that tiny invisible people were living on its pages and he would harm them by closing the book.

He would say "but how do you know there aren't, why take the risk? It's not worth it". It seems a similar delusion is happening here, imagining the souls of yet-to-be children looking down on the world thinking "please don't put me there, I prefer it here". — Isaac

What?

I know from my own experience of human embodiment that there are significant burdens involved. For example, the ever-present need for warmth, protection, safety, water, food, etc - not to mention the near endless list of other needs a human has (eg, social, sexual, entertainment, existential). The majority of our lives are spent striving to meet these needs, which burden us.

It is precisely because there *doesn't* exist the souls of the 'yet-to-be', that one ought not procreate. No child is out there in the aether, crying out for embodiment, being deprived of having a stomach that needs to be fed. People do not pre-exist the harm that comes about from being embodied. So why create another human body with perpetual needs that must endlessly be strove against, and only for this person to die in the end regardless? A pronatalist might perhaps point to the good or joys of eating to justify procreation, for example. But the joys of eating are predicated upon having a stomach - on being a human perpetual caloric/nutritional needs, not to mention the source of this food is rooted in harm (eg, someone must labour to produce the food, bring it to market, in many cases horrific animal harm and cruelty being involved). To justify creating a body with a stomach, by pointing out how good it is to feed it, strikes me as absurd. You created the very deficiency that eating solves, and call that good. Better to just not create the deficiency in the first place, to not create a body with a need for food.

But in my personal experience, when you actually ask those with children why they procreated, the reasons they give tend to relate to their desires in some way or another anyway (eg, "I wanted a family", "babies are cute", "it just happened", "my mother wanted grandchildren", "I thought I'd make a good mother/father", "I wanted someone to take care of me when I'm older", or some some other reason relating to fulfilling social/cultural/religious expectations, etc). It's mindless.

As I've stated before, the very act of bringing someone into existence is a political act. — schopenhauer1

Would antinatalism, as a practice, therefore be considered a boycott? Or perhaps a political protest?

It's just dealing with one damn thing after another. — schopenhauer1

Like this guy says, it's "always something":

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PPLgy0k0Cbw

Nah man. Even if there were genetic propensities, they don't explain variation like that. Reasons are cultural. — fdrake

Yeah, also JADCO was/is basically corrupt, and Jamaican athletes could dope with impunity while officials looked the other way.

"The commission has been under fire since former senior JADCO official Renee Anne Shirley told Sports Illustrated in August the authority had carried out just one out-of-competition test from February 2012 to the start of the London Olympics in July."

Jamaica won 12 Olympic medals in 2012, all in running sports.

One thing I don’t get about antinatalism is how the same arguments for it aren’t also arguments for suicide, or even arguments for mass euthanasia. If life is suffering and nothing can fundamentally be done to improve that, and nothing else is worth putting up with it, then best to end all life as quickly and painlessly as possible, no? If not that conclusion, then something in the arguments leading to it must be wrong. — Pfhorrest

I think hidden in these sorts of questions is the assumption that if life isn't miserable enough to lethally harm yourself, then it's worth procreating. This is an incredibly low standard to hold for the quality of a life worth starting. Regardless, there is a fundamental distinction between continuing a life, and starting a life for another. Those of us living are already caught up in the world, embedded within a social and political structure. We have friendships and familial relations (who, presumably, would be negatively affected by ones suicide). The living, in most cases, also have their own ends and aims, desires and wants. Most people have things they want to see and do - things to look forward to. And more fundamentally, the evolutionary ingrained instinct to live and survive is embedded deep within our psyche, and requires a desperate suffering to overcome. These all bind one to the world, keeping us caught up in the striving-towards that characterizes our lives. Whereas the unborn (in my view), are unburdened by these binds.

You've characterized the antinatalist as inhabiting a sort of suicidal despair, which (for the most part), I think is not the case. It's not all gloom and doom - living has it's goods and pleasures, it's moments of significance and meaning. The problem is that these are set against a backdrop of dissatisfaction, an incompleteness, a 'never-quite-satisfied' - all of which drive an ultimately aimless striving, one that culminates in aging, sickness, and death (if a violent act or accident doesn't kill you first). Recognizing that the unborn want and lack for nothing, what good or benefit is it to be burdened with the same bodily, social, and existential needs that befall us already here?

So if society perpetuates its dictates based on enculturating tricks, one of the more cunning ones is to make sure that the pessimist "knows" it is THEIR fault the foundations of existence have a negative value. See, by turning it on the experiencer as just their lack of participation in the good parts of existence, then existence itself can never get the bad rap. It's a clever meme that it's YOUR fault and thus the system is sound, the system is good, it is just your "malfunctioning" view. — schopenhauer1

Exactly. Pessimism is always characterized in this way as a sort of moral failing - a personal weakness on the part of the one espousing it. The pessimist just needs to stop being so soft and weak minded, to stop being so pathetic and just get on with it like the rest of us. It is through this attacking of the pessimists character that the content of his or her arguments or views can just be tossed aside, much like the rantings of a drunk. I suspect it functions as a sort of defense mechanism - far easier to attack someones character than to confront your own pessimistic doubts and niggles buried deep within.

I don't see how these "you're just depressed", "you are deficient", "you are weak-minded", responses are in any way an argument against antinatalism. I would think it's more proof for the opposite - why bring more children into the world when there is a possibility they will be afflicted by a malfunctioning mind that makes them see the entire human project as absurd and pointless? Why have children when they may suffer a deficiency in character that makes life seem a tedious process of bodily and social maintenance? There are zero reasons, for the child's sake, to take this risk. To 'be' unborn is the ultimate peace, why disturb it?

Perhaps humanity will willingly work together to end the pointless repetition and suffering for future generations. — schopenhauer1

I think you give humanity too much credit. If somebody was already planning on bringing children into a world and life that involves work, suffering, sickness, need, grief, etc - into a life that culminates in an inevitable death - then I highly doubt the existence of just another way among many to suffer (covid-19) will be the tipping the point that sways them into antinatalism.

So what if some people don't want to die, but don't want the dealing with either? Yes, there are coping strategies, but having to do any of it, improvement regimes or otherwise, are not wanted to be entered in. Of course one is shit out of luck. That is the conundrum for someone who doesn't want any of it.

I was looking for some interesting conversation on the conundrum rather than disdain for the idea itself which I'm well aware people on the forum have a biased against. — schopenhauer1

But what more can really be said other than, "you're shit out of luck"? The premises of life are already present, you're already caught up 'playing the game'. If suicide is off the table (why?), then there is no option but to continue coping with and dealing with. The conundrum is essentially, "I don't suffer enough to lethally harm myself, yet enough to where I don't enjoy living". Well yeah, then you're fucked. You could find a distraction. Gaming? Gambling? Sex? Get a girlfriend? Fry your brain with drugs? Rig up some contraption that feeds you and toilets you? But you don't want suggestions on coping methods, so I'm not sure what's left to say. It's a terrible situation.

On my view, there is no higher state of 'happiness' anyway, than the way in which the antinatalist conceives of the unborn. To be unbound from all causes and conditions, where "exists", and "does not exist" doesn't even apply. How could any temporary experience of happiness or pleasure in this world even compare to this? All positive experiences in this world are filtered through the lens of our temporal embodiment as a deprivational human animal - subject to stress, pain, need. suffering, aging and inevitable death. If impregnating a woman somehow thrusts conditions on what was previously unbound by causes and conditions, then it is the ultimate crime. Compared to the timeless peace of the unborn/unconditioned - the experiences of this world are nothing but stress and suffering.

One reaction I have this time, is that on some level it seems to me it is not taking responsibility for being a part of this universe. Yes, it is bewildering and strange, but I do not simply find myself in it, I am a part of it. I am like it. I don't just experience the mystery, I am the mystery. — Coben

Yes, exactly. Life appears absurd and bizarre only when one takes a derealized/depersonalized stance towards it - when you intellectually look at existence from the point of view of someone that is other/outside the world. But we are caught up within, and as part of the world - there is nothing other than it.

But I don't think any life is free of unavoidable conditions. What if just surviving in general is bad, in ANY manner- Robinson Crusoe, advanced post-industrial economies, any of them? — schopenhauer1

If we conceive of the absence of our existence (and likewise, the unborn/unmanifested) as the ultimate peaceful 'state', anything manifested appears "bad" in comparison (if we judge that 'unmanifestation' is the ultimate good/peace). But this 'unmanifested' is only coherent if one views their existence as if a separate self/ego, brought from the ultimate peace into manifestation, somehow, because their parents had sex - and it is to this 'state' that one will return to at death. But this strikes me as almost delusional - the world appears monist to me - 'unmanifestation', 'unborn', 'absence of being' - are just incoherent ideas, no? There is just a world/being - no separate selves that blip into it and out of it. It's as if the thought train is, "the ultimate peace is the absence of my existence in this world", but in reality there is no separate "you" from the world to take leave, in my opinion. This is not an argument against antinatalism, though.

You never asked, is paradise unattainable. And no it isn't. Precisely the problem. — schopenhauer1

Are children brought into being from this paradise? Do we return to this paradise at death?

It seems incoherent to me that our lives and ourselves just burst from 'timeless non-condition' because our parents had sex. We are not brought into existence from somewhere/something that's not the world. As in, this abstract paradise ("unmanifested") is unnattainable because we are not distinct from the way in which the world is manifesting. There is no substantial self or being, separate from the world that has or lives a life, that will be annihilated at death - returning to paradise. It is through projecting nothingness prior to ones birth (and after), that these thoughts arise. There's nothing and nowhere and no time that's not worldly/manifested.

But is it really so simple? Did I just burst from a parinibbanic state, taking form as this body only for this conscious experience to dissolve back into nothingness, eternally? — inyenzi

What's the alternative? Is this a nod to the idea of reincarnation? — Schopenhauer1

No, not necessarily. What I'm getting at is that a lot of antinatalist argument rests on an assumed view of self which is essentially, "I did not exist prior to my birth, at which I came into being to live a lifetime as the same ongoing self (which suffers and is harmed), and when I die this self will be annihilated forever." Yet there's nowhere stable within the flux of conscious experience for this self to be located. And so if it doesn't exist, to whom does birth harm?

Does procreation create selves?

We are in an initial state of dissatisfaction or deprivation that must be dealt with, repeatedly until unconsciousness/death. This whole system is deemed as "good" by many, but not reflective about its deprivational nature that is there to begin with. If life presents itself as challenges to "deal with" (get and keep a job to survive, let's say, or making more comfortable environs for yourself), then what is it about this that is "good"? — schopenhauer1

Exactly. Without dukkha, there exists no impetus to act. Yet we humans are perpetually caught up in action - striving towards, maintaining, dealing with - all in response to dukkha. Things are never completely and totally as we want them to be. People come to identify with and support (eg, through procreation) the conditions of human existence because they don't grasp the deprivational nature of their lives - the dukkha that pervades their existence. That (some) people identify with the conditions of this life, and even come to as they say "relish the challenge" in no way negates the existence of challenges being a bad thing in the first place. However, when we conceptually grasp the absence of our existence (i.e. non-condition, non-existence, un-born), the negative conditions of our lives reveal themselves in contrast. The unborn do not even have desires to be satisfied.

What, exactly, is the difference between the way in which an atheist materialist views brain death, and parinibbana?

Functionally, they are identical, no?

The ending of this life with no new rebirth (because there exists neither craving nor ignorance in the arahant).
You don't go anywhere beyond death because there was no substantial "you" to begin with (just a process sustained by brain function/dependently originated khandas).

As far as I can tell, the Buddha refused to answer the question as to where we go after death (I assume because the question itself assume a view of a substantial self).

As long as you're a caring parent and are willing and able to provide as much as you can for your child, I see no reasonnot to have kids. — Purple Pond

It is as if having children is taken to be the default position - against which the antinatalist must present his case and challenge. But it should be seen the other way round, with inaction as the default, and a case needing to made for taking such a morally significant action. What justifies creating a being with needs? Needs are a source of harm, and having needs is not a good thing. Although one might believe that they can provide for the needs of a child (well, until the child has grown and has the skills to provide for themselves), this does not justify the creation of a being with needs in the first place. It is as if the justification for creating a problem, is that one will do their very best to mitigate the harm caused by it.

Before someone is born, what on earth would possess someone to non-consensually cause all risk of harm to another person? What does someone need to go through in the first place in order for this to be justified? Nothing..just selfish want of that future person to be born to go through XYZ agenda (which may or may not happen the way you intended it to anyways). — schopenhauer1

I think a lot (all?) of these antinatalists threads are missing the voice and opinions of women - those that actually become pregnant, and then breastfeed 'potential people' - and then traditionally do most of the child-rearing. I assume all posters in these threads are male.

I can tell you my partners thoughts for wanting to "non-consensually cause all risk of harm to another person", are essentially along the lines of, "I love you, lets have a baby", "I want to have your baby/child", "lets make a family together". She does not think in terms of potential people, consent, harm, agendas (for the child to go through). But I think it's more complex than just a selfish desire to have a baby, considering the pain/burden of pregnancy/childbirth, and then all the work that is looking after a baby and raising it into a child and then adult. If anything it's more selfless than selfish. Not sure what to make of this.

Antinatalism can be seen as a method to resolve the issue of dukkha. That is, as humans we are caught up in a constant striving, driven by discontentedness and dissatisfaction. Even our pleasures - the goods in life - are themselves impermanent, require work and maintenance, and suffer from habituation (they are not wholly and purely good but are immersed in dukkha). To be born human is to constantly strive, suffer (ranging from minor discontent, to excruciating pain), and then inevitably die. The antinatalist recognizes this, and recognizes this as a problem to be solved. Given his/her belief that the consciousness of new babies do not pre-exist their own birth, the solution is simple - stop reproduction altogether. All presently existing humans will die and reach parinibbana, while the unborn already dwell 'there'. Timeless non-condition for all!

But is it really so simple? Did I just burst from a parinibbanic state, taking form as this body only for this conscious experience to dissolve back into nothingness, eternally?

But two important points have to be made - unlike what Noah suggests, the fact of rebirth is fundamental to all forms of Buddhism. You can interpret it to say that it means the constant birth and death of our feelings and emotions, moment to moment - and that's true. But Buddhism really plays out on a much larger canvas than that. It is a sore point for 'secular Buddhism', in particular, which is generally averse to the idea that re-birth is something that really happens. — Wayfarer

Exactly. I question why secular Buddhism even exists, when under a 'one life and done' model, the path leading to the cessation of Dukkha is mere bodily death.

Suppose I am hit by a drunk driver and am greatly harmed, physically and emotionally. If I were looking for someone to blame, it would be the intoxicated driver himself, and not my parents (who are not at fault for whatever in the world happens to harm me). However, through their decision to conceive and raise me, the very possibility of 'my harm' came into being, which was a bad thing that should not be repeated.

Actually, I'll just leave it at that. Let's see how the antinatalist resolves how much suffering is tolerable, or does the whole thing come off as some fundamentalism if no suffering or harm is demanded. — Wallows

One thing about these arguments is that pro-natalism is taken as the default position, which the antinatalist must argue and combat against. But surely the onus is on the natalist to present and justify his/her case. She/he is the one creating a being that will be afflicted by dukkha, when there is absolutely no need or desire to do so (from the child's perspective). It is on the natalist to resolve this issue before procreating.

Perhaps when the antinatalist makes his arguments, "suffering" is simply too strong of a word, with too narrow of a scope for the argument to be taken seriously. It is quite easy for a prospective (or current) parent to rationalize, "it is possible my child will suffer at some point in his/her life, but he will overcome it. The good experiences of his life will outweigh the negative." As if the suffering of life is set against a background of positive existence. I think a better word to be used, when setting out the harm of life is not "suffering", but rather the Pāli concept, "dukkha", which means discomfort, disease, dissatisfaction, restlessness, suffering, etc. Ajahn Piyadhammo explains:



I think realistically, until someone grasps the first noble truth of Buddhism, until they have that gestalt shift where their endless striving, grasping, and desiring reveals itself, antinatalism will just be seen as some fringe argument put forth by the depressed and mentally ill. You can endless argue about consent and potential people, but it's a waste of time if the opponent still fundamentally sees life as a good thing.

My opinion is that the quality of, and conditions of human existence are nowhere near good enough to justify satisfying the want for a child (by procreating). The natalist 'counter-argument' is essentially some variation of, "I want a child (and human existence is good enough to justify satisfying my want)".

So who is right? Is life good enough?

From my perspective, anyone saying "yes" must either totally lack empathy, be completely unaware of the suffering in this world, or just have abysmally low, downright callous standards. The unborn have no need for life, so it better be pretty damn great in order to justify it's creation. But, it's not.

But... I have realized that antinatalism is, in essence, an extreme form of psychological projection onto an unborn and unknown entity.

What do I mean by this? Well, we all have visions of the future, or perhaps the antinatalist has an overabundance of concern for the future (anxiety, dread, angst). Those of us who have been mired in their misery, unjustifiably so in many cases, have taken their experiences and have created a fictional entity that is an unborn child. — Wallows

So the antinatalist is psychologically projecting his own misery onto the unborn. But the antinatalist was himself once that very unborn child. The projection is therefore neither fictional, nor the (at least potential) quality of life of that child unknown, since the antinatalist is directly aware from his own case.
The quality of life of a yet to be born child is not a totally unknowable, transcendent mystery. As humans, we know the harms (and potential harms) potential humans will face, and we can choose to mitigate these entirely (at least in our own children's sake) by not reproducing.

Even if we grant the argument, why reproduce if there is a potential for a child to grow and become someone so miserable he projects his own misery onto the unborn, denying and regretting life? Antinatalists exist, therefore antinatalism?

The unborn aren't suffering. Those born are either suffering, will suffer, or have the potential to suffer. Every human struggles, suffers, ages and dies. You can call this psychological projection, but as a human I have some stake on the claim of what it's like to be one.