You mean the thermodynamic imperative as the blind will to power, and humanity as the vessel of its ultimate expression? — apokrisis

I meant more, big brains, language, social relations, and tool-use are vast areas of study as exactly how that happened, and ideas about the mind/body problem...Also, what makes humans cognition "human" etc. What caused the language to evolve in the first place (bigger brains? social relations, tool use, or vice versa, or both?).. What does it mean to be a brain that thinks in mainly language? How does that change the perception of the world? Free will/deliberation versus instinct... Preference-utilization, social organization, tool-use, etc.

Oh how meaningless this existence we are condemned to live!

Hey, there is definitely an antinatalist telling of this story for you to enjoy too. :starstruck: — apokrisis

I would of course, say suffering itself creates antinatalist ethics, but yes, the suffering of our own environmental making can certainly be part of that. And the ethics of not putting more carbon-creators onto the planet, though not central, is a nice byproduct of the philosophy.

Explain please.

Ethics applies to imposition simpliciter as it seems to treat human beings as robots! :chin: — Agent Smith

Huh?

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? — Agent Smith

It’s not bound by a human or animal condition. How does ethics apply? You tell me. Besides that it merely exists.

If you say to me..it’s wrong to impose on a robot..I don’t know what applies to said being if it doesn’t feel pain or burdens at all. I’ve maintained that whilst one form of imposing is bad (forcing your will), it’s combination with the other form (creating burdens) makes it the more so. I’ve maintained that if life was an ever adjusted personalized utopia, there might be something there as a justification.

I guess I’m asking, does ethics apply to something not bound by a human or animal condition?

Kinda thorny issue. Doesn’t really cross my mind because it’s 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?

I see! Is your argument for antinatalism from imposition still dependent/predicated on dukkha? Odd that! I would think not! — Agent Smith

One informs the other. Dukkha is a form of necessary suffering not contingent on conditions of contingency.

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: — Agent Smith

Well, you quoted Schopenhauer and now you’re 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 I’m going to agree with you, that’s my very argument you’re 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.

big brains, language, social organisation and tool use — apokrisis

There is so much metaphysics and epistemology wrapped up in that sentence segment.

Btw, no "hypothetical persons" were made to suffer while writing the post — 180 Proof

There isn't even a "they who never suffered". Only being in the condition of born does the condition of harm apply :wink:. And we can intelligibly talk about preventing birth (and suffering) being that we are already born.. All works out there.

The OP doesn't equate "the mechanistic worldview" with "scientism" (at least, not explicitly as far as I can tell) and the OP frames this thread discussion, so my "drive-by" disnissal of your non sequitur apples to oranges comparison stands. (Btw, no "hypothetical persons" were made to suffer while writing the post ) :smirk: — 180 Proof

Ok, now that I read it again all the way through.. Yeah it's more about the posture of using science as if it can solve all problems and its use in public policy.. The potential of science versus the reality.. It's more modern statistical/chaos/complex variant versus the more straightforward logic of the Enlightenment Age. Using it as a weapon against ideological opponents, and instilling a worldview.. Got it. Not sure where Schop might fit in there. He avoided politics mainly. Carry on.

It's a view of a handful of philosophers, not science. — L'éléphant

this view is the idea of evolution (Richard Dawkins type emphasis) — schopenhauer1

The comparison you make is false, schop1, and confuses the issue much more than it clarifies as your post (the one I'd quoted) shows. — 180 Proof

I can't and won't argue against generalized swiping and griping at me. Drive by griping...
What particularly is the problem?
The mechanistic view (not just "science" in general.. but "scientism"), excludes everything but science as truth-bearing. That's how I interpreted it anyways..
So science vs. scientism.. It's similar to other debates I have seen on the forum.

Apples andd oranges. :roll: — 180 Proof

Um, that was my point. Don't focus on apples only. There are also oranges. Apples don't exclude the oranges. Apples can inform the oranges and vice versa. In fact, the oranges may be transcendental to apples.. If so, there would need to be oranges to understand the apples. However, from the perspective of apples-only, it would seem you would never even need to learn about oranges.. But that's some bad apples.

I just mentioned something about mechanistic view in the Life Sucks thread. I think a great example of this view is the idea of evolution (Richard Dawkins type emphasis) vs. Schopenhauer's idea of Will.

Will is a constant craving that when manifested in the experiencer, reveals itself as dissatisfaction. Well, the mechanistic view would "poo poo" this "internal-ness" of the idea of Will and craving. Rather, it is the organism's environmental fit, variation of mutation, and population statistics that drive evolutionary change in organisms. For science to "stay in its lane" it should just focus on these empirical things. However, the downfall of just focusing on the mechanistic is not that we focus on scientific findings, but rather that we only focus on scientific findings. But science has nothing to say on something like the concept of desiring/willing/craving/BEING. A mechanistic/scientistic approach IS its own philosophy. That is to say to ONLY focus on scientific findings whilst disregarding any other considerations. And this is the troubling part.

Rather, in this Schopenhauer case, for example, it seems science is simply reinforcing the idea of Will.. That is to say, organisms that need to maintain metabolic functions, work against entropy, find homeostasis. An organism with all these mechanical functions can be said to be a being dissatisfied. And thus, here is a philosophy beyond the science, but makes existential claims. Things science cannot touch, but are important considerations for being a thinking human that has values, has aesthetics, self-reflects, etc. The fact that we put value on science is itself a value, and thus, negates the idea that it is a de facto and sole consideration.

So you’re 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 don't know your particular take.. give me a summary and I can talk to that.

Slave.. ok.. go on.. how?

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. — Athena

The "you" in the last post is the universal "you", not you specifically. It's a hypothetical "you".

I don't. — Isaac

Yet, somehow procreation gets a pass. And THIS might be the central point that we should be arguing. Is life REALLY that variegated enough to count as acceptable? In fact, is any amount of variety of choices enough? I would say, short of an infinite amount of choices that somehow conforms to an ever adjusted utopia (for the person experiencing it), no amount is enough.. But even if we were to give some leeway in a mostly utopia, this existence certainly isn't it.

That is to say, you likely disagree with forcing someone to work at your company for the rest of your life because you think this is too limiting in someone's ability to choose what to do with their life. But my main point in the OP on the first argument (about choices) is that there are de facto choices in life itself that can never be overcome. Survival, and survival in a relative-context (socio-cultural-economic-political context), is one major de facto "choice" made for us by simply living (as you acknowledged earlier). I call these kind of de facto choices, necessary choices/conditions.

The problem also pointed out in the OP is the following: Who really knows what are acceptable necessary conditions to start for someone else? My answer, no one. No one has that omnicience. Rather, it is taken as a "right" that the parent gets to decide that the conditions of this life are what other people should be living out and experiencing. But these range of choices that we agree are necessary, are simply, by fiat of the parent's decision, simply taken as their divine right to make for another person.
The poor logic goes something like: "I deem X conditions as a good enough slate of conditions/choices, therefore ANOTHER person should too". Nothing else in this world seems to be justified in this way. It would be a horrible person who went about their day, significantly affecting others in what choices others have to make, simply because they deem it right to do. Mind you, even if a person said to themselves, "I represent the MAJORITY of humanity's wishes and will thus so limit others in their conditions because I have a "mandate" from the "majority".. This would be woefully wrong and unjust justification for such action. It is at root, what I call, "aggressive paternalism" and using whatever post-facto justifications afterwards to make it seem okay to do. So, the illusion that there are more "choices" in life, doesn't negate that THESE choices (the de facto ones of living itself) are indeed (aggressively so) deemed "appropriate" to start for another person.

How so? — Isaac

Because a majority of people think X, a basic right is taken away... People think dear Trump to be the best leader, therefore Trump can do no wrong.. We see it happening right now.. Take top secret documents from White House, perhaps he should get a pass if enough people think he represents them, and so whatever he does can't be wrong.. Even if 95% of Americans loved the guy, he should still be kept under the same rule of law. But just as easily it can go in the negative form... The majority think that slavery is acceptable, therefore slavery is acceptable. The majority of people think that one religion is the true religion, therefore other beliefs cannot be believed.. The majority of people think.. any of it....

I see. So the lava baby's mother should perhaps just carry on. After all, who can tell what will happen in the future? It's such a mystery. Maybe the lava will do the baby good. — Isaac

In that situation, it is certainly a known harm.. Not much mystery. But in life in general, there are other known harms.. but THESE are deemed as acceptable (but why do they get to decide that these are acceptable for someone else?).. However, there are also unknown harms.. things parents didn't anticipate (nor could).. and THESE alone disqualify the decision as just to do on someone else's behalf. Again, @Tzeentch's analogy of the parachute opening 90% of the time should apply here. Gambling with people's lives is not something people should do lightly, or at all.

Nothing causative about it. It's assigning the object of an imposition, not the consequence of one. — Isaac

Sophistic nonsense. I don't want to go into this again about causation, but when deciding an ethical decision, it is the person involved and their actions that matter, not simply the action in isolation.. It's the person who decided to pull a trigger pointing it at someone, not the fact that the bullet is the actual thing that hit someone. This is too obvious even for you to be throwing out this kind of red herring. In other words, it's irrelevant that it wasn't the "person" but the "bullet" that killed the person.. The "person" was the one who decided to shoot the person dead! At some point X, there is a person in the world. THAT person was created by something (namely, parents). That something was a decision (to conceive and carry out to term). A person existed where there was no person. Whether that person was a sentient/alive "person" before X time, doesn't mater that at X time they do exist. You can also argue how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.. you can argue anything and think it relevant, but this particular thing you have is not relevant, and if you know it, it's bad faith arguing as it's red herring at this point.

I would if I had to, yes. why on earth would you let hundreds of people starve just to preserve one person's autonomy? — Isaac

Because it's unethical to use people, even for what seems like a good cause. What if the elderly people protested and said, "No, no please stop doing that! I rather starve than have you use people for some cause!". Would you still do it? But this puts you in double binds because here we have a "majority" saying X (seemingly your only way of judging things), yet in YOUR estimation this IS the best ethical thing (i.e. greatest good). Interesting...

You do. — Isaac

Then this is clearly where our differences lie most plainly.

Not in the least bit problematic. As I said before, if you want a set of rules which essentially say we must never ever impose anything on individuals for the benefit of the community, then you don't have an ethical rule, you just have a neo-liberal political agenda. Put down the Rand and back away. — Isaac

This is just straw man characterization. At the end of the day it is about what we want to see from others and whether wanting to see stuff from others means forcing the situation onto others.

:smile:

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? — Athena

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, I’ll just ask why people need to do this on the first place. Rocks don’t 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 what’s best for others. Rather, there’s a nothingness, a lack at the heart of things. Just creating more people to overcome constant lack. Schopenhauer’s 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 didn’t exist, they didn’t need anything to be lived out in the first place.

Hence the importance of the argument that one is not imposing one's will on someone, one is merely imposing one's will (on a mindless object) in such a way as it will eventually become a someone. — Isaac

Distinction that makes no difference and why it’s sophistry. A person shooting the gun is the factor that kills the person. But you know that. Why you keep on the point, is obviously suspect. Or you think there’s a really good point, there’s somehow profoundly missed. It’s not. You’re just being willfully pedantic for arguments sake.

If one is reasonably sure (after having done their due diligence) that the situation they're planning to bring about will be a better one for the world in general (their community specifically) then it's a perfectly good thing to do (in ethical terms). — Isaac

If you think it’s best to force me (cause it to come about such that :roll:) I work for a company the rest of my life unless I kill myself, no amount of research or outcome would justify that.

If one imagines their community '+ child' and imagines their community without and can reasonably say the community is better off with the child (that community now including the imagined child, of course), then their behaviour is ethical. It is good that they try to bring about that situation.

... That's it. — Isaac

That’s it? Anyone can justify doing anything that affects another’s life significantly in the name of community. A slippery slope! Also no amount of research predicts the unknown harms that result. Things change literally day to day, moment to moment. You’re not a god that “knows” exactly how much harm will take place. More importantly, who are you to judge of what is acceptable for someone else to endure? Why should they even have to endure it? Life’s slate of choices and many harms doesn’t have to be lived because you, the existing person with the ability to procreate deems or so.

There's no question of whether it's right to 'impose one's will without consent' - one imposed one's will on a mindless object, so there's no ethical component there. — Isaac

Yikes, this is a terrible attempt at causative ethics. “No I didn’t do it, I merely pulled the trigger”.

There's no question of special consideration for the so called 'one who is affected by that imposition' - the whole community are affected by it. The resulting child is not magically affected more than the elderly couple who now won't starve in their dotage. — Isaac

You wouldn’t kidnap someone to take care of the elderly, or would you? There is no difference that one person already exists. AGAIN, lava pit baby. mother thought lava put was a ritual that would save the community. It doesn’t matter, even if she was RIGHT!!

There's no question of someone being now 'burdened with existence'. Every entity is burdened with existence. At most you could say that a consequence of procreation is the awareness of that burden (which the gamete wouldn't have had if one hadn't forcibly changed it's level of consciousness) - but since the overwhelming majority of people simply don't mind, this burden seems small in the weighing. — Isaac

You don’t get to do significant things to people because other people say they don’t mind it. Peoples attitudes change over time. It’s the tail wagging the dog. Rather, what is right to do is not about public attitudes. If everyone suddenly became super religious, and 10% of people dissented, it doesn’t mean freedom of worship is now not a thing anymore. And yes, every entity is burdened with existence, but it is only sentient life that knows, feels, is aware, of it and can suffer. So to make a sentience is to make something that suffers. Ethically, being the judge that significant harm is acceptable to create for someone because you think you have “reasons” is problematic.

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. — ssu

I mean, you aren't wrong.

Is this the antinatalism thread again? Or going there? — ssu

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.

It’s best to recount the lackluster, and negative states as a balance.

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. — Yohan

Does the i universe need sentient existence? What is a non sentential existence?

My political position?

Not following your line of thought here. — ssu

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.

No man, you can't go back because it goes against your tedious point. You admitted your position here:

I would argue that the parent's will to birth a baby over a lava pit was imposed, not on a person, but on a {whatever we might call the baby in the birth canal}. — Isaac

So. Is it a good thing to make a gamete a person? This can be addressed, but it can't be addressed using arguments about imposing on people or forcing people. Neither of those two things have happened. — Isaac

Right, the parent is imposing their will and that leads to a person born. We can call it different things for the debate, but it actually doesn't change the material thing at hand behind the debate.. I would like to move forward on whether it is indeed good for the parent to create someone (they are imposing their will such that a person is born where one would not be because they decided to do this).

The annoying thing about your argument is that in most cases I think the answer to that question is "no". There's a really important argument against having children. It's being buried because you want to blame someone else for your lack of effort. — Isaac

There are important arguments against having children. Creating someone who will be burdened unnecessarily is one major one. Utilitarian (negative or otherwise) arguments are just icing that provide more evidence to this logical cake.

I have no idea what you're blathering about. The baby born into a lava pit was burnt alive in lava. I'd say that's something done to it. The parent, knowing full well it was in the birth canal, dropped into a pit of lava. — Isaac

This has nothing whatsoever to do with my argument which is about the object on which a person's will is imposed. — Isaac

:chin:

The closest I can imagine to your example would be if one were of the view that human beings did not have any will, or moral rights until they left the birth canal. If that were the case then yes, I would argue that the parent's will to birth a baby over a lava pit was imposed, not on a person, but on a {whatever we might call the baby in the birth canal}. — Isaac

Ok.....

The result of such a decision would be a considerable amount of pain with no benefit, it would be a pretty evil thing to do. — Isaac

Yep. So it looks like you are agreeing that the parent's will to the birth of a baby (over a lava pit.. but could be any X condition) was imposed. I don't see how the lava pit changes anything in the structure of the statement.

Nothing was done to the baby born into a lava pit in your sophistically twisted conception.

I guess lava baby was properly cared for because you don’t believe anything is done to it. Yep. THAT’S not lunacy.

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. — ssu

Rocks don’t feel pain and don’t 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.

It’s not that there’s beauty, it’s that we need beauty. It’s not that there’s joy, it’s that we need joy. It’s not that there’s X, it’s that we need X. And yet your political position on how great it is to need X becomes someone else’s problem.

that does actually physically represent 2+2 — TheVeryIdea

Represented to whom? Something has to matter to something. That is where all this debate happens I guess.. And language games about it.. Is an effect something that matters to a subsequent cause that matters to an effect? What would that even mean? Some information people would say there is mattering in what happens to matter.

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. — ssu

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.

On the face of it this seems a strange distinction to me, am I correct in assuming that Searle's argument is based on the notion that a conscious entity had to construct the calculator and someone had to read the result from the electronic calculator so the result does not exist without an observer? — TheVeryIdea

He is saying that computation is only ever interpreted. The computer doesn't have belief that 2 + 2 = 4. It hasn't proven it. It doesn't understand it. It only manipulates it based on how it operates. Syntax without semantics.

Hey man, congrats..you used all the keywords of the literati here :lol:..”language” “public”..just throw in some Philosophical Investigations quotes, talk about Wittgenstein and you’re in! Chad it up!

Your gloomy prose is poetry to my ears :lol:.

But really, why I brought this up was that this thread started to discuss potentiality and actuality. And it seems that in many discussions about AN, people think because a parent is effecting/affecting a gamete (that then turns into a person) rather than directly a person, that no "force" of a person's birth is happening. And I find this statement wildly incorrect and sophistic. The parent starts a chain of events that results in a person. THAT person born is the person that has NOW (at it's time of birth) been imposed/forced, even if "they" were not around earlier. The very fact of the state of affairs of their presence becomes what is defined as the "imposition" put upon a person by the parents' move to procreate.

Boy this is getting tiresome pointing out the obvious, isn't it? Ha

He has a problem with the idea that the term "imposing" can include turning X into Y state of affairs. That is to say..at T1.. they set in motion would would become a person at TX, and it is TX that is the event at which the imposition took place.

Causing someone to be in conditions Y, is the event we are discussing. Should you cause someone to be in those conditions Y? The parent forced their will to create this person with conditions Y. There is no sophistry that can work around it.

So either you're arguing from a deontological position that we ought not impose our will on mindless cells, or you're arguing that the consequences of doing so on the consequent person are to be avoided for some reason. — Isaac

So I've seen you still have a misunderstanding of what consequentialism means and deontology. Deontology can be ABOUT actions ("consequences").. All actions in the world play out as consequences.. That's just cause and effect. Rather, deontology does not put "good/bad" values on the consequences (what plays out), but whether the action (consequences) are right or wrong IN THE FIRST PLACE.

And thus I will repeat.. A deontologist would say something like.. "It is always WRONG to burden people unnecessarily (and what that means)".. It doesn't matter how many "benefits" are calculated as a result.

Consequentialists would add up all the benefits and aggregate it and determine based on this kind of calculus whether it has been beneficial.. And you can have act and rule consequentialism, etc. but that's the gist of it.

Because you said your ethics were not consequentialist. So I'm asking what the moral issue is with forcing my will on a mindless gamete , if not the consequences. — Isaac

This is more sophistry around the word consequences. Consequentialism, basically looks at how good or bad the consequences are of an action. Deontology would simply focus on the rightness or wrongness of the action. You are making a category error, misplacing the action with how ethical consequentialism bases its theory on the goodness or badness of that action..

The action is imposing on someone. Consequentialists.. especially of the utilitarian variety.. will essentially reduce to a kind of moral statistics. Deontology (in my characterization at least) is more binary. It is or is not good to do.

Here's an example of deontology:
It is never good to impose significant burdens on others when it is unnecessary to do so (not ameliorating a greater with lesser harm)... Procreation imposes burdens.. It is thus never good to do so...

That's more deontology.. Even though it is based on actions taking place (how you are using "consequences" here".

Here's an example of consequentialism (of utilitarian variety):
IF X amount of benefit is created from the process of procreation (and usually for the greatest amount of Y agents), then procreation may be good. In this, the consequence that is important is the amount of benefits created.