That's being "entitled to someone else's suffering", then, no? — Dawnstorm

Yea I know. I got what you were saying

Should you save his life? — Dawnstorm

From my stance: Whether or not you do is completely neutral. You didn't freeze him, you don't have to save him.

Are you asking my child to suffer through a life he doesn't want just so he can cure cancer? — Dawnstorm

Exactly what he asked for when I presented the hypothetical actually

the foundation of the argument from comparable suffering is off in some way. — TheMadFool

Sorry but this sounds like pure handwaving to me. Let's look at an example: You locked 200 people evenly in two different rooms. You have a button. If you press the button, people in room A die, if you don't press the button people in room B die. This is exactly like this scenario. Whether or not you press the button/have kids you have still done something bad. What's the problem with this

It can't be 2 because we agree we mustn't commit a moral blunder. — TheMadFool

No we agree we must try not to commit a moral blunder. You conflate that with "We haven't commited a moral blunder".
Premise 1 is: It is wrong to have or not have children.
Premise 2 is: We have not commited a moral blunder.

If you get a contradiction one of these is false, that being 2.

What your argument says is: "In order not to commit a moral blunder, assuming it is wrong to have or not have children, one must have children AND not have children". That's obviously impossible, so assuming it is wrong to have or not have children, it is impossible not to commit a moral blunder.

you should have children and you may have children. The conclusion of your argument is the latter and not the former. — TheMadFool

Yes, I never claimed it was the former

your argument amounts to the claim that having children or not having children are both morally bad — TheMadFool

First off, not my argument but ok
Secondly, Yes that's what it amounts to (just confirming)

1. (C v ~C) > B assume for reductio ad absurdum
2. ~B........we don't want to do something bad
3. ~(C v ~C).....1, 2 MT
4. ~C & ~~C....3 DeM
5.~C & C.......contradiction — TheMadFool

All this shows is that we can't not do something bad given those two options. Nothing about that is problematic. The original premise must be false so either 1 or 2 is false. 1 is true by definition. So 2 is false, we can't do something not bad in this scenario (having or not having children). I don't get how you got step 6 from the above

the solution of a puzzle is to destroy all traces of the puzzle having ever existed in the first place. — TheMadFool

That IS one solution yes

I think it only demonstrates that both options lead to undesirable consequences and not that one is preferable over the other. — TheMadFool

That's called natalism

irrelevancy of happiness of any form. — TheMadFool

This isn't a matter of happiness though. If those people don't get saved they will be hurt (killed). So by choosing not to have a child you indirectly killed 4 people, since you could have saved them by having a child (or so the guy I was talking with would say)

to concede that happiness is irrelevant and that the morality of having/not having children is based solely on the suffering that it'll cause. — TheMadFool

Yes that's something we agreed upon beforehand. He was trying to make a case for natalism using negative ethics

However, if you do press the button, one additional person, your child, will be forced into the room and made to kill all 20 — TheMadFool

That makes it rather uninteresting though doesn't it. How about: If you push the button your child will save 4 people. That's more like the situation he had in mind

I'm fairly sure that under anti-natalist tenets this would amount to a "chain of suffering", or a morality of mutual relief: you should suffer so as to reduce someone else's suffering, and in turn you're entitled to someone else's suffering to reduce yours — Dawnstorm

Could you elaborate. I just don't get what you're saying. Where did entitled to someone else's suffering come from?

I agree with everything you just said, though I don't think bystanders can ever be morally responsible for something. These aren't my ideas.

Methinks you're wrong

the most straight-forward answer — BitconnectCarlos

And how in the world did you "cacluclate" what the most straight-forward cause is?

Andy punched it and also Jim, Pam, Michael, Tobey, etc. did not directly interfere or stop him." — BitconnectCarlos

This is the technically correct verion though (assuming those are the only people that could have stopped him and there were no other factors)

Onto a bigger issue though: I can't stand moral systems which make insane demands from individuals. Why are you on a laptop when that money could have been sent to a child in Africa? Why have savings or investments when that money must be donated otherwise you're a murderer? If everyone followed this the entire economy would fall apart and there would be zero money to donate. Everybody would be impoverished and nobody would have any money to help. It's completely insane and I can't seriously contemplate it. Sorry, you've hit on one of my sore spots here. — BitconnectCarlos

Agreed. This isn't my idea.

What does "you may have kids" mean? It makes as much sense, in keeping with the spirit of antinatalism, as "you may make the child suffer". For antinatalism the stakes are high: unwanted and undeserved suffering, completely avoidable by not being born. You can't possibly think that a wishy-washy "may" is an adequate response to such strong beliefs. — TheMadFool

I have no idea what any of this is supposed to mean. All I'm saying is: If you cause comparable suffering whether or not you have children then there is nothing stopping you from having them. Does that make sense?

This is why I brought up the "vanished from existence" factor in an earlier post in this thread. If the Drowning Man still would have drowned even if the Abandoning Man had vanished from existence before getting the opportunity to abandon him, then "abandonment" is not an action. — Pfhorrest

I had a similar thought in my OP. I accepted that inaction is just as much an action as anything you can do but then said that in order to be RESPONSIBLE or morally liable for something, you need to do more than just be a causal factor in it occuring. If you hadn't been there and the bad thing would have happened anyways then you're not required to take steps in fixing it.

Inaction isn't a cause. If I ask you for a cause I would expect to hear a series of actions or events. — BitconnectCarlos

Inaction IS an action. Inaction is: Not doing X but doing Y instead, where X is the action in question. So inaction is just doing Y. Inaction is just as much an active action/choice as any other.

If I were to accept what you're saying the upshot of this is that even the best of us are all the cause of countless people's deaths so I guess everyone is basically a murderer or at least guilty of countless manslaughters. — BitconnectCarlos

Yup. He made that case and said: So you should try to reduce suffering as much as possible through your action/inaction, inaction doesn't automatically mean you did nothing wrong because it's just as much an action as anything else

Your friend's argument is a weak one and, as you've noticed, is incapable of making the case for both antinatalism and natalism — TheMadFool

How is it incapable for making the case for natalism? Natalism doesn't mean "You should have kids" it means "You may have kids". If you establish that you can be responsible for comparable amounts of harm whether or not you have kids then you may have kids, aka natalism

Firstly, it's based on indubitable facts — TheMadFool

We sorta agreed beforehand we weren't going to rely on empirical observations like these. He would make the case that life has enough pleasure or value to compensate for the pain in it, aka (2) is false

There's a definite possibility that the next child to be born will grow up to cure cancer or solve the world's energy problems but unfortunately for arguments like this, it's equally possible that this child could turn out to be another Hitler, Stalin or Mao. We can't make decisions when all possibilities are equally likely as is the case here. — TheMadFool

Yup I made that case. But that doesn't actually accomplish anything. All that has been established now is that whether or not you have a child, you cannot know the effect, so you cannot definitely say that not having a child is the right thing to do. The guy I was talking to made an intersting comment, that a big reason antinatalism sounds convincing at first is because of the choice of verb "procreate". He rephrased it like this: "If you abstain from having children you have a chance to cause a lot of suffering" which is technically true. The case he was making is that you simply cannot know the effect of your choice either to have or not to have children and as a result one doesn't take a privilaged position over the other

and you’re not killing him just because you didn’t save him. — Pfhorrest

That's precisely the question here. I don't think this is as clear as you think it is. Let me define the word "abandon" as "not save a drowning person". Now I can say "You killed him because you abandoned him". What counts as "inaction" purely depends on what you count as action. So if I were to use "abandon" instead of "save" it makes it sound like an action that is in fact killing someone

Obviously it is morally preferable that he be saved, but you are not morally liable for that not happening. — Pfhorrest

I agree with you but I am not exactly discussing the morality of the situation right now. I am asking whether or not you not saving someone is a cause for their drowning. I think the answer is yes

Down the contrary road, everyone who hasn’t already given all of their possessions to the most effective charities and dedicated their entire lives to helping those most in need in the most efficient manner possible is morally liable for all of the harm that’s happening that could have been prevented it they did that. — Pfhorrest

Yup the guy I was talking with said that. (something to that effect)

That's exactly the debate we were having but what exactly does it mean to "do nothing". If you see a drowning man and you don't save him have you "done nothing"? No, more specifically you just chose to walk one way as opposed to another. Your choice not to save him is just as much an active choice as saving him. To make it clear the guy I was talking to phrased it this way:

If you extend your foot to the right 30 degrees, the drowning man will grab it and be saved (A). If you keep walking as you are he will drown (B)

A: A person gets harmed because of your choice of how to move
B: A person gets saved because of your choice of how to move

Just looking at it this way, in terms of just A and B, A starts to seem immoral.

Something as at least one could also mean everything which is at least one — TheMadFool

No, being at least one is a property of everything (in this universe) not its definition.
Something: At least one thing
Everything: Everything (which is also at least one thing)

So something is a subset of everything. Being a subset, something CAN MEAN everything but it doesn't have to. Example: The set of all cars, and the set of all cars I own. The set of all cars I own is a subset of the set of all cars but it IS possible for the sets to be equivalent, if I own every car ever. Similarly, it is POSSIBLE for something to mean everything, if the person using "something" had in mind every thing

If I say "everything" then it doesn't contradict "at least one" right? Since something is defined as "at least one" then that means there's no difference between everything and something unless we qualify the defintion of something as "at least one but NOT all". — TheMadFool

No? How is there no difference? One is a subset of the other.

The logical meaning of something is "at least one". This definition of something is incomplete because if something means just "at least one" then all/everything, because it is indubitable at least one, is also something — TheMadFool

Why would that be a problem? I don't see anything "incomplete" here.

Likewise, we cannot begin with ‘individual’, ‘suffering’ or ‘harm’ as abstract conceptual definitions and accordingly employ logical reasoning for the purpose of concluding our argumentation with assertions about the morality of intentions. — Possibility

Why not exactly? I read the quote, nothing in it says this is problematic. Morality and suffering/harm are the same "class" of things. We can use logic to go from talking about one to the other. How else do you propose we begin to argue about morality? Having premises that don't involve suffering or individuals?

employing moral reasoning — Possibility

What the heck is "moral reasoning"?

You're asking why positive ethics should outweigh negative ethics (and you seem to take the side that negative ethics should outweigh positive ethics.) It's crucial to define these terms though, and in your original post you define positive ethics more along the lines of maximizing well-being (this phrase is strongly linked to utilitarianism/consequentialism) versus negative ethics which is more about prohibitions and rules like the non-aggression principle or non-harm principle as well as other deontological principles which limit action. You're asking which should take priority. Am I understanding you right? — BitconnectCarlos

Yes. You can't just say "use both" because in many situations they give opposite answers. And while I did define positive ethics as essentially utilitarianism, that's just a bad habit of mine. Positive ethics is anything telling you "you should do X"/"It would be wrong not to do X" instead of "you shouldn't do X"

Well the 'controversial' cases are, by their very nature, ones about which we have conflicting moral intuitions. For example, torturing an innocent person for fun is intuited to be wrong by virtually everyone, which is why there is no serious dispute about its morality. But abortions, for example, are cases about which people have no very clear intuitions and thus are cases where people typically appeal to theories rather than intuition. As equally plausible theories deliver conflicting verdicts about such cases, disagreement reigns.

What to do? Well, we can't appeal to intuition, because intuitions are not clear. But we can appeal to imaginary cases (or real cases) that seem sufficiently similar and that elicit from us clearer intuitions. We can then infer from their similarity a conclusion about the controversial case. — Bartricks

Ok. I would have decribed this as "There is no answer to moral questions" but I see we effectively agree even though we use different words for it

I don't understand the significance of the reply to the first quote. Ok, survival instincts are not deterministic. So?

I'm confused about one thing though

So there are no human actions that are free of ethical implications due to something that ‘makes’ us do it. — Possibility

I presume this implies the serial killer is wrong right? Because he CAN choose not to kill yet he chooses to do so. But then how can the parent be right in procreating? He/She also chooses to ignore the logical implications of his/her actions

But again, you’re making a logical evaluation based on your perspective and extrapolating that to be some objective ‘evaluation for anyone’. But there is only the individual and their subjective evaluation - they don’t have to show YOU that their evaluation of the harm/benefit scale favours them having a child. They don’t have to answer to you at all, or to logic, because the will of the individual is most important here (according to your ethical perspective). — Possibility

Everything here is correct. However I don't believe there are nearly as many individuals as you think that would honestly say

Let X be the suffering due to not having a child. The person in question here is saying

My X >>> All the suffering my child will experience (including his own X)

Their numbers would be similar to serial killers who honestly believe they aren't causing much suffering

He obviously saw it differently at the time, otherwise he would not have committed the act. — Possibility

No way to tell that but ok

That doesn’t make it right, but it does allow those who subscribe to an ethics of ‘cause as little harm as possible - especially to oneself’ to justify either murder or procreation. — Possibility

Again. For like the 100th time. I don't "ban" procreation. I never said it can't be justified. Just that the number of people that would seriously think it justifiable is negligible

You’re not presenting objective facts, you’re giving your individual opinion — Possibility

YES. But an individual opinion the vast majority shares. Do you honestly think most people would believe in:

My X >>> All the suffering my child will experience (including his own X)

If they thought about it?

So what are we arguing about? — Possibility

Whether or not it's wrong

You might answer, ‘because I was hungry’ - to which they might then ask, ‘well, why did you have breakfast because you were hungry?’ The reasoning you give for initiating your action X, whether or not you employed that reasoning at the time, will eventually come back to a certain moral principle which reassures you that X was the right thing to do — Possibility

Really? I highly doubt this. What if I then asked you "why do you believe in this moral principle" you'll have to find some real world reason. This is an endless cycle. Eventually you'll have to answer "just cuz". If you asked me: ‘well, why did you have breakfast because you were hungry?’ I would answer "because hunger makes me have breakfast most of the time" or in other words "because that's how it is". I don't think I'm doing any good by having breakfast

or at least be more aware of where our moral principles contradict each other and where we discard them in favour of ‘survival instinct’, for instance — Possibility

I'm confused. I thought you were making the case that all of our actions have some moral support behind them. But here you're talking about survival instinct

these moral principles are those we deem ‘necessary’: not just a ‘should’ but a ‘must’. — Possibility

I didn't eat because I "must" eat in a moral sense. If by must you mean: has an overwhelming urge to then yes I ate because I must. There is nothing moral about that however. Just like there is nothing moral about a serial killer killing people die to an overwhelming urge to kill. To tell the difference between moral and other "shoulds" and "musts" replace them in the sentence with "would have to" and again with "would be wrong not to" and see which makes more sense

Example:
I must eat goes to:
I would have to/have to eat
I would be wrong not to eat

The first sentence make more sense. I'm pretty sure you're not meaning to imply the latter when you say "you must eat"

Anyone in their right minds’ is a subjective value structure. What you mean is ‘anyone in YOUR mind’. This is your perspective of their life and the life of their child, not theirs. Someone else’s evaluation of their own individual yearning to be a parent and the possible life of their own child is always going to be drastically different to your perspective. Suffering isn’t about quantity of instances, but about qualitative evaluation. As someone who places no value in the existence of either individual (only in the quantity of suffering they represent), your logical evaluation of their possible instances of ‘suffering’ means exactly squat to them. There is no way you can know what is true for either of them. — Possibility

Let X be the suffering due to not having a child. The person in question here is saying

My X >>> All the suffering my child will experience (including his own X)

Is this really an acceptable evaluation for anyone. That's like someone justifying murder by saying "my minor inconvenience due to having to meet this guy twice a week is greater than all the grief I caused by killing him"

There is only very few instances where I would believe both of these are true. Again, I don't "ban" procreation, if someone can show me that the first scenario is the case for them, sure have kids. You'll have one child every 200 couples or so then maybe, and that's being generous

they can still ignore your claim that procreation would be ‘harming’ a possible child more than it relieves their own yearning, and there would be nothing morally ‘wrong’ about that, by your standards — Possibility

How would there be nothing wrong by my standards. They can "forget to consider" it genuinely but if they actively ignore it of course that's wrong. A murderer can't "actively ignore" the suffering he causes and then claim to be doing nothing wrong.

Yes. Moral questions have correct answers (the proposition "This act is morally right" is either true or false) . But I am sceptical that there are any moral rules.

This is what I think about psychological questions as well - there are correct answers to questions about what psychological state someone is in, but I do not think there are any rules about what psychological state person is in, only rough and ready generalizations.

The evidence that morality is like this is that it appears to be. Sometimes consequences matter, sometimes they don't. Sometimes numbers matter, sometimes they don't. That is, sometimes an act is right because it brings about more good than the alternative; but sometimes an act is right regardless of whether it brings about more good than the alternative. It all depends on the situation. — Bartricks

Ok. I'm just curious what basis you would have to disagree with someone on a moral question then. If there are no hard rules, only rough and ready generlizations then how can you tell someone "Murder is wrong" if they just disagree. What basis do you have to have an arugment upon

But in order to consciously initiate an action, a positive ethics is required. — Possibility

I don't think this is correct. Ethics is about what you "should" or "shouldn't" do on some moral level but it doesn't actually have binding power. I don't need to think X is the right thing to do to do X. I can still do X even if I think it is wrong. So no you do not need positive ethics to consciously initiate an action. Do you appeal to a moral principle every time you go to have breakfast?

It appears to me that your positive ethics is to ‘do what benefits the individual’ — Possibility

No, and this is addressed above. I don't have a positive ethics. I don't think people "should" do anything. That doesn't mean I will do nothing.

If you always prioritise your negative ethics, then your only actions will be — Possibility

No, again, just because I actually do something doesn't mean there was a moral reason behind it.

you’re asking those who subscribe to your form of ethics to also rely on your subjective evaluation of possible future harm to someone who doesn’t exist, weighed against your evaluation of the action’s benefit to the parent as an individual. — Possibility

Correct.

By your own ethics, however, YOU don’t get to decide that for them — Possibility

Correct.

The benefit/harm to the individual can ONLY be evaluated by the individual in question. So, by your ethics, the parent is well within their rights to evaluate procreation in relation to their own perspective of the harm/benefit scale — Possibility

Correct. And anyone in their right minds would clearly see that there is no way they benefit more from having a child than their child suffers their entire lifetime. "Suffering due to not having a child" is a form of suffering. What they would be proposing is that that form alone outweights ALL forms of suffering their child will experience. There is just no way that's true.

As I said, I am not against procreation just cuz. I am against it because it causes more suffering than it alleviates. If there is a scenario where it would alleviate significantly more suffering than it causes, sure have kids. But I think such scenarios are negligable

And there is nothing in your ethics that says they shouldn’t ignore information that it’s in their best interests to ignore. — Possibility

I don't get where this ignoring information thing came from. I'm not ignoring any information as far as I can see

I don't understand what two "identical ideas" look like so I can't begin to answer the question. Also there is a little arrow under every message that lets you reply so the person you're replying to gets notified. I only noticed this reply by chance

If you include things like time and position then two objects can never be identical

I don't rule it out, I'm just sceptical that there is any such rule. — Bartricks

Ok. This to me sounds like "There is no right answer" which is why I was confused. So your position as far as I understand is: There is a right moral answer for situations, but you're not sure if there is some law or function that can give us these answers

For an analogy: there is a correct answer to the question "what is Bartricks thinking right now". But I do not think we could formulate any rule about it - that is, that on a Thursday at 5pm Bartricks thinks about butter". — Bartricks

Ok. But do you think we can formulate some function with respect to time to get what Bartricks is thinking? Example:
F(2019/12/20 1:11 pm) = walruses

In other words, do you think there is some method by which we can say "X is right" depending on some parameters, be it time or anything

what seems to contradict is:

There is a correct answer — Bartricks

I don't think we can formulate a rule that will tell us when they do - and by how much — Bartricks

There is a correct answer — Bartricks

So sometimes the numbers don't matter. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. I don't think we can formulate a rule that will tell us when they do — Bartricks

These statements seem to contradict

I don't think we can formulate a rule that will tell us when they do - and by how much - and when they don't. We have to trust our reason. — Bartricks

I don't think "reason" is the right word here. I think "intuition" is better. Reason makes it sound like there is a correct answer (and you're saying there isn't)

This sounds like what a certain German philosopher with an iconic mustache warned would happen

What do you understand ‘suffering’ to be? — Possibility

An experience someone is trying to avoid

It’s not possible to increase both awareness and ignorance with the same action. Awareness is acquiring information about the world; ignorance is rejecting available information. — Possibility

Again, I don't know what these mean so I can't really say anything. It is however usual for an action to do both good and bad. Example: having children. That causes someone to experience a lot of suffering. Also causes them to experience a lot of pleasure. "You should not cause suffering" and "You should create pleasure" will judge the act differently

How does this

So negative ethics cannot stand alone. — Possibility

Follow from this

Ethics is only about how not to act in relation to the conducting of an activity — Possibility

They seem like unrelated statements which I don't even understand

An underlying impetus is not goal-directed, but neither is it random. Like a Mandelbrot set (only six-dimensional), it has a simple pattern that leads to an ever-increasing complexity without a definite result. The diversity comes from the point at which each ‘section’ of the pattern resists the impetus. — Possibility

I... Cannot see any similarities between life and a mandelbrot set

The method of antinatalism only reduces possible suffering to zero for a non-existent possibility. You can’t do anything with that. It’s a strawman. — Possibility

????? Is a world without people a world without suffering? I'd say yes. So is a world where antinatalism is applied a world without suffering? I'd say yes. So if your goal is to reduce suffering to 0, one way to do so is antinatalism

While you exist, you cannot avoid contributing to what others would refer to as ‘harm — Possibility

Yes. But I take into account my own harm as well. And I do not harm anyone else unless it relieves me of massive harm. You're not taking ME into the equation when you make that statement

My principle is: "harm as little as possible". Don't harm was a simplification

You cannot be certain that someone will not be harmed by your action — Possibility

So as I said act within your best knowledge

Your ethical perspective is dependent upon being the ONLY ethical perspective. — Possibility

Where did this come from?

(which defeats the purpose of ethics). — Possibility

Not true. Ethics is just about how to act as how not to act

On what grounds? If an action takes place before the person exists, then it is not an action against that person, but against something else. — Possibility

On the grounds that we can agree that the alternative is ridiculous. So if I set a bear trap in a park 10 years ago, it's a crime if a 50 year old steps on it but not a crime if a 9 year old steps on it? Another example: is there nothing wrong with signing a contract selling your child to slavery as long as you signed it before you had the kid?

Also what does this objections have to do with anything. I said that one should try to harm others as little as possible, (keeping himself in the equation). No where did I make a mention of acts done "on" people or things or whatever. I'm only concerned with the final result not whether or not an action was done on someone or something else.

On what grounds do you think that a harmful action done before the person to be harmed is born is permissable. What does time have to do with it.

As an example, ‘reduce ignorance, isolation and exclusion’ is a negative ethics, whose corresponding positive ethics - ‘increase awareness, connection and collaboration’ - works in harmony with it to enable actions that violate neither. — Possibility

How about: increase awareness by 50 but increase ignorance by 10 (I'm just using arbitrary numbers because I don't know what these mean). Is that allowed? By "increase awareness" it is allowed, by "reduce ignorance" it's not allowed. Contradiction see? So which should take priority. Life rarely has situations where an action produces ONLY good or ONLY bad.

Or do you disagree? — Congau

Yes. As I said. I disagree. If someone could have blinked to save the world from nuclear Armageddon I wouldn't think it bad for that person not to blink (if the person didn't cause the Armageddon)

The act of conception itself doesn't benefit anyone — Congau

Agreed. No one said not having children benefits anyone. What is being said is that having children harms someone, so shouldn't be done. Note I'm not saying having children will always produce more net suffering than net pleasure. I'm simply saying that having children WILL produce SOME suffering

There is a chance it will harm someone in the future, but there’s a greater chance it will benefit someone. — Congau

That is insignificant. That's what negative ethics means. Negative ethics doesn't care about the "chance it benefits someone" because benefiting someone is not taken into consideration when looking at the morality of an action. For negative ethics, it would be wrong to give someone 100000 dollars for a pinprick if they don't give you consent to prick them first.

The point is that an axiom like A+B=B+A can indeed be explained. You don’t just say it’s true “just because”. — Congau

Ok let's test that. Please explain why A+B = B+A

why do you care about those who lack the intelligence to understand — Congau

Who has the authority to dictate someone lacks the intelligence to understand? For that person it's you Who's lacking the intelligence to understand. To fools we seem like fools, there is no objective standard here.

You can't be politically correct or incorrect when you're trying to describe nature. Politics has nothing to do with it. What you choose to call different terms isn't science in the first place, so I don't think your question fits your example. Changing the name of a term isn't science

You don't "solve" a contradiction. A contradiction means: there is no solution to whatever you were trying to solve when you got this

For Christmas my boyfriend gave me another of his essay anthologies The Religious Temperament — Grre

Just wanted to say I'm impressed with this relationship

what do you think about Nagel? — Grre

Though I don't know much about his political view, when it comes to his views about consciousness I find we agree on almost everything