No I see antinatilism like veganism, advocate but not enforce. It's a matter of personal ethical understanding and philosophy.

That would only be relevant if someone were saying something about depriving nonexistent persons of something. — Terrapin Station

It's relevant when discussing nonexistent or potential people.

Yes, and I said nothing even remotely approaching the notion of nonexistent people being deprived of anything. So bringing that up in response to my posts means you're ignoring the content of my posts to start repeating the same prepared talking points for the thousandth time. — Terrapin Station

But your points feed right into mine, so to not demonstrate how your logic about non-existing things not having certain things apply to them (seemingly pro-natalist if one focuses on consent) actually implies antinatalist conclusions (if one focuses on the fact that no actual person loses from not being born). It is not a tenuous connection either, but at the very heart of the logic whereby your objection is being used. So what you think shuts down one argument actually facilitates a much stronger argument that is in favor of antinatalism.

As I just added above: If you want to repeat the same garbage over and over don't use my posts to shit post in response like that. How about commenting on the actual content of my posts instead. Don't waste my time with the same old crap that has nothing to do with anything I was talking about. — Terrapin Station

Dude, I am.

I already said the point I'm getting at.. but I can walk you through it slowly, and in your case, in a circular holding pattern kind of way, where you will not see the forest for the trees of the argument, but here we go, baby-steps.

1) You think consent does not apply to a non-existent person, correct? It would be a category mistake or something of that sort, correct?

That has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I'm typing. I'm not saying anything even remotely resembling the notion of nonexistent people being deprived of anything. — Terrapin Station

Then I can't help you.. Keep on missing the point.

And what the fuck does that have to do with talking about nonexistent kids being deprived of anything? — Terrapin Station

Knock knock..hello..Because with your SAME LOGIC of NON-EXISTENT people, we can say that there is no harm to any actual person who is NOT born, but there may be CONSIDERABLE harm to those who ARE born... I'm using your very argument about NON-EXISTENT people to make an antinatalist claim, ala Benatar's asymmetry argument.

Ok, you have to be freakn trolling me right now. It's about your CONSENT argument. If you want a quote here it is:

Re antinatalism, it's not an issue of consent, because when we're talking about nonexistent people we're not talking about someone normally capable of granting or withholding consent. We need an existent person for that. — Terrapin Station

Right. And what does that idea have to do with anything I've typed? I'm asking you twice now. I didn't say anything at all resembling potential kids being deprived of anything. Read my posts instead of checking off your prepared talking points. — Terrapin Station

Either you are being purposely evasive of what I have brought up as a consequence of your own argument, or you are really not understanding how much this has to do with it. Either way, I'm not sure how to help you more than the very simple way I just explained it.

If it's the case you truly don't understand, then I can only say that you are stuck on the consent thing, instead of the implication of what it means for someone not to exist prior to birth, which is the real core of the argument. Prior to birth no one exists. You say, "Thus consent matters not". Ok, but then "deprivation of goods for non-existent person, matters not" as well. Thus, not having a child leads to no loss to any actual person, but being born would be a great negative, or what I like to call "collateral damage" to someone who doesn't like life.

Where did I mention anything like that?

You're going through a talking points script that doesn't have anything to do with what I was saying. — Terrapin Station

It absolutely does though. Your little paradox about no one existing for consent cuts both ways. You say, "People do not exist in the first place, prior to birth, to consent".

Ok, well I can also say, "People do not exist, prior to birth, to be deprived of the "goods" of life". So not having a child will not deprive any actual person of anything. There is no person to be deprived, or to feel deprivation of any sort.

However, if you DO have a child, and that child does not like life, that is a lifetime of collateral damage for that child.

What does that have to do with whether being conceived or born is a consent issue? — Terrapin Station

Because your little supposed paradox cuts both ways. No one exists to be deprived of anything either. That is David Benatar's main point in his Harm of Coming into Existence. However, if someone is born that did not want to go through life, that is a lifetime of collateral damage, with no loss to any actual person. His sub-points were also very astute empirical observations (outside the a priori logic), that people are harmed more than they a) think and b) report. However, the empirical observations are a separate argument. I'd like to focus on the main premise, that is no one is deprived.

It doesn't work to point out that the person chose to go to the concert hall, because being born isn't a consent issue. Why not? Because for consent to be an issue, it requires someone normally capable of granting or withholding consent. That requirement is not met when we're talking about conception/birth, so consent isn't an issue there. — Terrapin Station

Even if I was to distill this argument down to collateral damage- by having someone who did not want to go through life in the first place, you created a lifetime of collateral damage. This is not a minor type of collateral damage we are talking here, but a whole lifetime of existence. If no one is born, no actual person is deprived of anything, either. There is no person in a locked room going, "Let me in!".

good and meaningful as possible — NKBJ

I present to you my thread on this subject:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6202/work-should-be-based-on-quantity-of-boredom-involved

Right! So what's the point in that? — NKBJ

It's a nonsensical question. The point in never existing (which can never happen to the ones who already exist) or for potential new people?

I produce knowledge :wink: :victory: — NKBJ

The assumption is that production is good and needs to occur, and people need to fulfill that by being born to do that. But of course this is begging the question why this needs to occur.

Laziness is generally frowned upon in my opinion because people are envious of the lazy person. The envious people can’t afford to be lazy, so they feel animus toward the lazy person who can do what they themselves would want to do. — Noah Te Stroete

Laziness scares many because if all were completely lazy, the techno-economic system breaks down. You need those ingenious go-getters to make stuff. We are born so this can keep moving along. Habits form to make us accept it with something like glee. How are the ingenious ones going to get any accolades of if not through either money, esteem, or the knowledge that people are consuming stuff they thought of?

But there's a point to my existence because I, as a conscious creature, am the meaning-maker and I say there is one. Instead of feeling robbed of.... of what? Non-existence? The chance not to...think? Be? Feel? — NKBJ

That perspective is off.. If you never existed, there is no mattering in the first place. There is no you to be deprived of anything in the first place. You are not in a room saying, "Let me in!".

Once you've stared down the empty and treacherous throat of existential crisis, you need to pull yourself back and decide: "you took the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade." — NKBJ

Just keep producing stuff or die, including more lemonade.

In my opinion, work or "labor" can be a good thing, once removed from the typical humdrum of the ever-hungry capitalist machine.

Par exemple, most people have "creative" hobbies in which they labor to produce something for their personal or shared/social enjoyment. — NKBJ

I find this argument of "creative" inherent capacities to be a slippery slope to justify the very "ever-hungry" (x economic system). The realities were because we were born we have to survive which means we need to utilize/consume some sort of resources for survival. The historical circumstances of civilization for the last 5,000 years has made it such that certain economic systems dominate, in the last 300 years or so, economies that can accommodate the harnessing of scientists and engineers to create more products wherewith other people can work (usually at more boring activities) to maintain these products and services in order to distribute through consumable exchanges at geographically convenient or logistically convenient settings. We are now in a holding pattern where society is structured that our creative "capacities" are to be harnessed in this techno-economic manner.

We know these are the material givens of reality/economics. So we bring more people into this so they can make "choices" within this system. I just don't see it as good to bring people into. In fact, no economic system would be good to bring more people into. To justify that it is good to bring people into some sort of work-reality (any X economic system) because people have "inherent creative capacities" that can be harnessed by this system, is just justification to forcing more people to be born in order to work in the absurd circularity of the economic system.. Sprinkle this with some sort of hedonic justification of the 6 or so pleasures of the world (physical/aesthetic pleasure, relationships, yadayada...) :vomit: :vomit: and you have justification to use people FOR THEIR OWN GOOD DAMNIT!!.

BUT you also have choices about how to deal with life's lemons. Be a gloomy grouchy McSadPants, or try and make the best of it. — NKBJ

Yes it is a truism that we have choices. But as others have brought up, the system itself cannot be chosen. One cannot change the givens of existential and historical realities. One just deals with them, by yes, making choices within that framework. The ultimate arbiter of work is being born in the first place. Apparently people need to be born so they can work, and have choices about where to work :roll: (even if that was a perfect reality of really being able to choose where to work).

But to each his own--enjoy wallowing in your self-made hell :) — NKBJ

Another fallacy...if the system is flawed, it must be something wrong with YOU. It is a nice bit of social engineering to get people to blame themselves. Better shape up or shut up buttercup and all that. Knee jerk cliches. Widgets have to be made. The donuts do too. Better change your complaints so that you can comply with making widgets and donuts.. and all the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary aspects of the economic circularity of absurdity.

You could always retreat into the woods/mountains as a hermit and forget about us silly humans. — NKBJ

To quote myself:
Your options are... be beholden to the forces of this behemoth technological economic giant and get by with the six or so "goods" to overlook the cirucular productive forces that we are forced into, or do the following- kill yourself, become a part of the underclass (homeless), become some sort of monk/hermit. These last three are not great choices, and the main de facto choice of just complying with the circular productive forces with six or so goods, is the default. These are just not great choices to be forced into. Keep the productive circular thing going with six goods to tide you over, experience contingent harm, and deal with problems and overcome them. By the time you realize that you don't want to be a part of ANY of these choices, IT'S TOO LATE.

It's because philosophy majors have no ability to turn their craft into making money, but remain certain that they have something valuable (although monetarily of little value) to impart upon society, so they ask those whose labors actually result in financial success to provide for them so that they can enjoy the benefits of society they could otherwise not afford.

Those whose focus is on business and the earning of money (the mundane fields of finance, law, and accounting), don't seem as needful of the social pooling of money for the general welfare. — Hanover

One of the worst assumptions of all economics is that people should like producing things, and that production is good in and of itself. The assumption is we should throw more people into the world so they can be happy producing things. Kill me now please. :vomit:

Fair enough, but I'm simply pointing out that existence is zero sum. If you are in a position to grant a good life, then you can bring a being into existence that may potentially flourish. On the other hand, if you view existence as a negative, I fully encourage you to not procreate, as that would weigh heavily upon your conscience. — Neir

One of Khaled's ideas I think here, is that you can never know what the child might think of life, whatever circumstances you are experiencing or are projecting for the child. Collateral damage in this case of being off by a little is not just like the collateral damage of some minor contingent event- it is a whole life time someone will have to live out that did not want to live it out.

You are granting it the potential to feel positive and negative experiences, i.e. life. The alternative is absolute nothingness, so it's just a balancing act. — Neir

And this is an important point. Nothingness is not a negative or positive. Nothing matters to nothing. There is no mattering even. As such, there is no deprivation for any actual person happening in the case of no-person existing (that very well could have).

Is art ethical? Crafting positive and negative images, granting the potential for enjoyment and disturbance, intending for the love but preparing for hate, it's a lot like bringing life into the world, and I don't think it's rational to judge any individual life until the work is finished, like letting an artist get into their groove and witnessing their eventual portfolio after they are finished. — Neir

I'm guessing you are saying life is like art- you never know what you're going to get. Great, but don't force others into it, prior to birth, there was no actual person deprived of this great "art" that just NEEDS to be experienced and "finished".

In that case we dont need a quantification method. We simply know that x is less than x + y, where both x and y are some positive, non-zero number. (Of course, we don't know that it's "much" less, but we can ignore that part.) — Terrapin Station

I would say this is not bad model there, but you are also missing that it is on behalf of someone else, and that part is central to @khaled's point. It is not just straight up hedonistic calculus as you are implying here.

Perhaps I could embark on a mission to prevent this from ever happening to someone else again. — Possibility

Indeed that's what antinatalists are doing. I'd like to add, that it is ALWAYS bad to make challenges for others, when no challenges needed to be encountered in the first place. If no one exists, no one exists to need any challenges to make them "better, fitter, more rounded people". But that is not the case with birth. Birth brings people into the world, from essentially nothing, and THEN has them have to become better, fitter, well rounded people. People need to be challenged once born, some might say, otherwise XYZ. That is one claim. But in this situation, people are actually saying, "People need to be BORN IN THE FIRST PLACE to be challenged, made fitter, be well rounded". That is where the category error lies. Now you are putting a premium value on challenge on behalf of someone else which some might say is pseudo-sadistic (not torture, but still putting an obstacle in place on behalf of someone else who then has to endure or deal with it).

There are just so many errors like this made by those defending procreation. They assume people NEED to experience XYZ, when in reality, no one needs to experience anything prior to birth. It is a value that the parent just wants to see play out in someone else. But why this needs to be "played out" begs the question other than the parent just wants this to occur. No one needs nothing before birth. No one needs to experience anything in the first place. I don't get why people don't get that.

But all of this ameliorating (helping, putting a bandaid on, etc.) can be avoided by simply not having a new person in the first place. Done, presto. No one exists to be harmed (or need help from being harmed), and no one exists to be deprived of good. Done.

For the record, you seem to be arguing in good faith and earnestly, Terrapin seems to be constantly just jerking you around and not addressing the questions at hand. In fact, he doesn't even address his own "prerequisite" questions that are supposedly going to "dissolve" the mystery. This is most likely because he doesn't have any good arguments, so it's just a long trolling holding pattern. I'd like to actually see some arguments from him for once, but I suspect he's bereft.

@khaled I like your arguments there. You may want to read some of my posts- most of which are on antinatalism. One major AN reason I see is the treadmill idea. You don't force someone on a treadmill they cannot get off of easily (suicide), even if a person eventually habituates or even identifies with the treadmill. In other words, you don't give challenges for people to overcome, even if people identify with the pain and challenges that were foisted upon them by being "granted" life. It's not a matter of whether someone eventually likes or identifies with something, but the fact that it was considered "good" to give them challenges to overcome in the first place. I know it is a weird notion to some, but I see it as an inherent bad to start challenges for other people. We should not be the arbiters that ensure others are overcoming challenges. That is essentially what we are doing, despite protestations to the contrary, as de facto, life has adversity of some kind. It is as if people (zombie-like in unison) are saying "but we NEED more people to overcome the challenges of life because we NEED more people to overcome the challenges of life because we NEED more people to overcome the challenges of life because we NEED more people to overcome the challenges of life".

What do you mean by "understand"? How do you understand something you use, if not by using it? — Harry Hindu

Unlike everything else we try to understand, with consciousness, it is investigating the phenomena that allows for other things to have understanding. A computer is only in relation to how the use perceives it- or what the user is conscious of about the computer. A computer may not be a computer in and of itself without a consciousness. The thing itself is perhaps unknowable outside of a human consciousness and is certainly defined by it epistemically.

What do you mean by "map"? I can use the map to get around the world because the map is about the world. Also, the map is part of the world! — Harry Hindu

The map is the secondary layer we create to make meaning of the world, it is not necessarily the world as it is in itself. It is a representation of what's going on, but not what is going on. We conceptualize and quantize what is going on, but it would be a mistake to say the conceptualization and the quantization is the metaphysical thing itself. It is just something we do to make epistemic sense to us, perhaps because we are a natural linguistic species. It is was also my claim that we can never get past an epistemic sense.

I don't see a reason to be using terms like "physical" and "mental" to refer to different kinds of "stuff", rather than different kinds of arrangements, processes, or states, of that "stuff". This is also saying that the experiential property isn't necessarily a defining property of the "stuff", rather a particular arrangement of that "stuff". So you can have objects without any experiential aspect to them. In other words, realism can still be the case and the world and mind still be made of the same "stuff". — Harry Hindu

The question is why it is experience comes out of a particular arrangement of stuff. We know that it is does, but why this particular characteristic of experientialness comes out of it is the question that is begged to be answered here. By saying that this happens, there is now some sort of metaphysical dualism: arrangement of stuff/experientialness. This presents a bifurcation like any dualism.

The only difference is what they call the "stuff" - "physical" or "mental". — Harry Hindu

That makes a major difference though. It is a pretty big philosophical leap to suggest that most forms of matter or processes have an experiential aspect to it. That is what panpsychism believes.

Is this a language can't express everything? More of a Witty what we can't speak of we must pass over in a silence, and the beetle in the box isn't a something but not nothing either? Also, it's not the things in the world that are mysterious, but the world itself.

Or to paraphrase that last thing in terms of your post, it's the essence of things themselves that we can't get at it and remains unspeakable. — Marchesk

Yes. The things-themselves, the terrain. Panpsychism is simply a broad term for "that" when talking of terrain..that darn mysterious beetle that we know but cannot describe. I don't know which is more odd, panpsychism or neuropsychism. Panpsychism has the oddity of all processes or matter having some sort of experientialness. Neuropsychism becomes some sort of property dualism related to the neurochemistry/physiology interacting with the environment of an organism that begs the question of where and why the psychism aspect of the neurology arises, or what is the nature of this psychism that is arising.

It isn't so surprising that the hard problem is unsolvable when the capacity to give an account attempting to solve it apparently undermines any account. — fdrake

Exactly.

Now here I think you have an excellent idea. Being the pinko commie I am, I naturally see capitalism as an evil system of continual expansion, an all-consuming juggernaut, moloch, gang of ravening thugs, etc. that subverts nature to its imperative for continually larger profits which turns out suffering by the megaton.

Capitalism manages to produce a good share of the suffering to which antinatalists object. When will you become a member of at least the Democratic Socialists of America? — Bitter Crank

Indeed, we are ignorant of the millions of ideas that some engineer-types thought of. Their ideas which satisfied their intellectual curiosity.. created millions of boring jobs for others who are less creative in the technology world.. We are mostly ignorant of the very outputs we consume from these engineers, we live an existence where we know we know when we don't like doing a task, but have to do it anyways (unlike other animals), and no there is no solution, including communism for the problem of work, and the existentially configured human who must deal with it. We have to find motivation. Other animals don't. We have to find meaning. Other animals don't. We are simply minutia-mongers pretending there's meaning in the mongering.

@Galuchat @bert1 @Wayfarer@Harry Hindu
The hard problem also has to do with the fact that we are trying to understand the very thing we are using to understand anything in the first place. Consciousness is the very platform for our awareness, perception, and understanding, so this creates a twisted knot of epistemology. Indeed, the map gets mixed into the terrain too easily and people start thinking they know the hard problem when they keep looking at the map again!

We cannot help it, as a species with language. Language itself is a form of secondary representation on the terrain. We largely think in and with language, so to get outside of that and then reintegrate it into a theory using language is damn near impossible. For example, let's take a computer. The very end result is some "use" we get out of a computer. The use is subjective though. Someone can use the computer as a walnut cracker, and it would still get use out of it. The users experience and use of the computer is what makes the computer the computer. Otherwise it is raw existence of a thing. A computer is nothing otherwise outside of its use to the user.

Then, let's go down to the other end to its components. Computers are essentially electrical signals/waves moving through electrical wires- moving on/off signals. These electrical signals are just impulses of electricity through a wire. That is it. However, because we quantized and represented things into a MAP of 0 and 1, and further into logic gates that move information to make more quantified information, we now have a way of translating raw existing metaphysical "stuff" into epistemically represented information. Every time we look at any piece of raw stuff, we are always gleaning it informationally.

Some ways that try to answer the hard problem is to call consciousness raw "stuff" rather than information (panpsychism or some sort of psychism). It is a place holder for simply metaphysical "existing thing" that we then represent as "mind stuff" or "mentality" or "quale". Other than panpsychism, which is just a broad view of "mind stuff", there is not much else one can do to answer the hard problem, because it will ALWAYS have a MAP explanation of the terrain. What is an electrical signal if not simply represented as a mathematical equation, an on/off piece of data, a diagram, an output of usefulness (the use of a computer discussed earlier)? The raw stuff of existence can never be mined. The terrain is always hidden by the map.

The issue at hand according to whom? — Terrapin Station

Argument of antinatalism- not having children. There is no one who is deprived of anything. There is no one who exists to need...anything actually.

Again, it might matter to people who exist. — Terrapin Station

That is not the issue at hand. The issue is, no one needs to assess anything, if they don't exist.

You know what you were talking about with "it" when you wrote "Nor would it matter," don't you? — Terrapin Station

It doesn't matter.. the assessment of good/bad for something that does not exist.

But it might matter to people who do exist. You have to ask them to know. — Terrapin Station

It.. what is it here? We are talking about potentially having someone who doesn't exist yet.

Whether something matters is up to the people who do exist. So you can't say something doesn't matter in an unqualified way. — Terrapin Station

Yep, no mattering for someone who does not exist.

Depends on who you ask. Mattering is something each individual will make an assessment about, and they can't be right or wrong about what does or doesn't matter to them. — Terrapin Station

They don't exist. There is no actual person who is deprived here. That is the kicker ;).

You don't know what any individual is going to think about what you consider harms, especially relative to things they consider to be positives. — Terrapin Station

Nor would it matter, if they weren't born ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Well-stated in terms of a moderate antinatalism. What are your views on things I mentioned earlier for reasons?

See below:
I. Keep in mind that no actual person is deprived if not born. However, some actual person will always experience harm if born (the Benatar asymmetry argument).

II. Being born means moving into a constantly deprived state. In other words, prior to birth, there is no actual need for anything, after birth, needs and wants are a constant (Schopenhauer's deprivational theory of suffering).

III. Life presents challenges to overcome and burdens to deal with. When putting a new person into the world, you are creating a situation where they now HAVE TO deal with the challenges and burdens. It does not matter the extent or kind of adversity, the fact that a parent forced a new person to deal with challenges and burdens of life in the first place, is not good. Forcing something to play a game that cannot be escaped, or to burden someone with tasks that cannot be escaped, including enduring one's daily life challenges, is not right, no matter how much people later "accept" or "identify with" the game they were forced into (i.e. the "common man's view" used so much to counter the antinatalists "extremism").

IV. Contingent harm is harm that is situational. You simply do not know how much harms there are in life for a certain person. This creates huge collateral damage that was not meant for the child to endure, but he/she must do it nonetheless. Some people will find the "love of their life" others will be loveless for life. Some will struggle to keep food on the table for themselves, others will become highly successful in a career. Having the capacity for achieving one's happiness, does not mean this will occur for any particular person. In fact, if we are to be really real here, the ones that will be successful with much of what most consider "happiness" are using the ones that will fail at this. Why? One cannot know who will be successful or not prior to birth, so you must take chances with peoples' lives to see the actual outcomes.

V. We are used as "technology/progress" advancers by a circular-production system. We rely on the productive forces to make stuff, and are forced into a system where we are constantly producing and forcing others to produce with our consumption. Once this system subsumes everything, there is no escaping being a part of its productive forces. We try to "self-help" people into accepting a "job that you like!!" so that this seems less painful, but we are just extensions of the machines we create. Plastics, chemicals, metals, materials of all kinds, mining, transportation, engine-building, building-building, any damn product in the world, manufacturing, utilities, engineering, etc. etc.

I can keep going, but I won't. You get the picture. Antinatalism prevents suffering for all, and forcing people into the world. No ONE loses out by not being born, but EVERYONE loses in some way by being born. My inaction to create someone hurts, literally NO ONE. Someone else's action to birth someone, always creates some harm, and if we believe that being deprived is a negative state, there is constant suffering there too.

As long as you don't plan on restricting my ability to do that, everything is ok. — T Clark

I never advocate forcing restrictions. I liken antinatalism to veganism- you can present your views respectfully, but don't force them. Also, do not bring things up in contexts that are simply meant to hurt people. But I'm on a philosophy forum where many ideas can be shared, some seemingly radical. This is a perfect context for arguing, and honing one's understanding on philosophical and ethical issues. I think you'd at least agree there.

On the other hand, if you want me to take your ideas seriously and deal with them respectfully, you should consider doing the same for me. A good start would be to acknowledge that your view is only held by a small minority of people and that there are other legitimate ways of seeing things. — T Clark

It is held by a minority, I agree. So were many ethical views in the past (the idea of mass conquest, slavery, abuses of all kinds were taken as part of life for the majority in most places). I think one main thing going for philosophy is how it forces us to look at things in different perspectives than we might otherwise see them. Having kids and procreation is taken as a given as something that is positive. I am presenting a different understanding of this. Perhaps by having children, you are imposing something, not creating opportunities for something. Perhaps, we are being imposed upon, and we are continuing this for others. To say, "Suck it up", for those who say life is an imposition, is to do exactly the thing for why people should not be born in the first place.