regarding taxes, laws, jails.. These are political actions, not personal ethics. — schopenhauer1

So what? Your system has them as immoral because they are using/imposing on others to benefit an aggregate. Just repeating 'they're political' is not an argument. It's like saying, to steal a phrase I read recently “Eating oranges is wrong because oranges grow on trees”. You need to make a case as to why things which are are immoral when not political become OK when political.

You're ethics is leading to more and more worrying consequences the more you explain it. First we have laws and taxation obtaining this weird status where they're basically immoral, but rescued by politics. Then we have this intimation that somehow anything a politician tells you to do becomes morally OK even if it wasn't beforehand (the most serious concern to date by a long shot), add to that latest revelation, the idea that property is sacrosanct and cannot be taken from a person for any reason whatsoever, that we're not even allowed to so much as take a paperclip from someone to save a school-full of children.

Do you seriously not see what you're doing by digging yourself further in here? I know I've been a bit acerbic, but really it's based on the fact that I find it very hard to believe that you can't see these consequences a mile off. So it seems that you're wilfully continuing with your advocacy despite them, which is just antisocial (if not down right sociopathic). But I thought something similar about @khaled too and was revealed to have been manifestly wrong (for which I should properly apologise). So maybe I am with you.

But the more you ignore them and dig your heels in, the less I'm able to to believe that you genuinely can't see these consequences, or their antisocial implications. This latest refusal to engage with the problem of making laws, taxation and the seconding of personal property for greater harm reduction, is not helping that impression.

it seems to me that there must be some basic wiring in the human brain (and, being basic, it would have to be universal to the species) which provides a basic problem-solving framework. — Echarmion

Yes, it seems that's basically true, although the further back in developmental term researchers are able to go the fewer assumptions we seem to have. So far the idea of cause and effect seems fixed, rules around containers and contained objects seem hard-wired and are probably essential to our visual system. Rules around object permanence, surprisingly, seem to be learned rather than innate, so I think the law of identity is of questionable origin, instinct-wise. Laws like non-contradiction are almost certainly learnt. Very young babies show no surprise at all at obvious contrary scenarios co-existing, Andras they do with something like an larger object seeming to fit in a smaller container.

I generally tend to think that some ways of processing sense data are hard-wired, but they're often not the ones we'd expect, and I don't think they cover all that much of even what we might call 'rational thinking'. The expectation of consistency in the world is the one 'rule'of rational thought I'd be tempted to say was hard-wired, but if a new piece of research later proved it not to be, I wouldn't be that surprised.

Aren't you pre-supposing a correspondence theory of truth here? — Echarmion

Not intentionally, no, and it's not clear from the rest of the paragraph what has lead you there, could you perhaps explain a bit further the link you're seeing here?

The cognitive science you refer to sounds interesting. Can you expand on it with reasonable effort? — Echarmion

Sure. A fair amount of work has been done trying to see what goes on when people are resolving the truth value of syllogisms "Socrates is mortal...etc". The findings are broadly that the regions of the brain involved in the resolution vary quite a bit. Not hugely, but enough to be interesting. Subject matter changes what regions are employed, for example. Syllogisms regarding unfamiliar objects are more likely to utilise the left cerebral cortex alone, Andras those involving familiar objects might be solved referring to the perirhinal cortex dealing with memories of the properties of objects.

http://www.yorku.ca/vgoel/reprints/Goel_cambridge2a.pdf is a really approachable read on all this, with a great discussion on the contribution of neuroscience to psychology at the beginning.

The point here is that if the method for solving a simple syllogism is this heavily context dependent, it seems vanishingly unlikely that we're all assessing theories and beliefs in anything like a consistent manner.

isn't "success" the homogenous method we're looking for? It doesn't particularly seem to matter whether all the methods are heterogenous if we can then judge the results by a homogenous standard - their predictive success. — Echarmion

Yeah, I can go along with that. It's very much the view of the Cambridge version of pragmatism at least (I don't know much about American pragmatism). That which works when we act as if it were the case is less wrong than anything which doesn't. But calling that a 'method' I think could only be justified with something like trial and error. With something like statistical analysis of empirical data, we might judge the outcome by it's success, but the method by which we derived the theory we're testing was not itself to 'test it's success'. It was to compare the statistical significance of a correlation against the probability fo it's occurring by chance. It's a specific heuristic which we've found delivers useful results in the past, so we reuse it.

Well it does feel to me that they're different. That saying something wrong is different from saying something incoherent. I can imagine wrong states of affairs - counterfactuals. But I cannot imagine contradictory ones. By the same token, I can organise a society according to wrong goals, and have those goals nevertheless be reached. That's not the case if the goals are contradictory. — Echarmion

I certainly would agree they're different. But does that difference lead to one being superior to the other in establishing which theories are wrong?

Duping someone to give you money so you can give to charity is not — schopenhauer1

You do realise this is exactly what taxes are? The idea that taxes are immoral has an unpleasant pedigree.

We don't have to make that decision on someone else's behalf that will affect them, and as you mentioned, cause conditions for harm and violate their dignity by putting some goal above and beyond that of simply preventing suffering. — schopenhauer1

We do because suffering is no more prevented by avoiding birth than it is by giving birth, as I've already pointed out.

here is a chance to cause absolutely no unnecessary harm. — schopenhauer1

No it isn't. Avoiding birth causes the harm that the child would otherwise have mitigated. This has been explained. The vitriol is because you avoid this counter-argument by trying to claim that avoiding aggregate harms is not ethical. A a fundamentally antisocial attitude "I only care about me and mine".

I would not think so much on the aggregate level, but on the person you are affecting with your decision. — schopenhauer1

That's already the case. Again, I've explained this. There us a real already existing person who will suffer harm because of the lack of a next generation person. That is just unequivocally true. Ignoring is not a satisfactory counter-argument. We don't even need aggregate suffering. Pick one actual person. Whatever potential suffering prevents them from just becoming a hermit, that is the suffering that a child can grow up to reduce. And it's not 'using someone for some esoteric goal' it's the same goal - reducing suffering.

The only way around it is to say that only the person who's being interfered with is relevant. Which leads you to the absurdity that it would be immoral to stop a gunman heading towards a school. Something you've still not denied. And you wonder why the vitriol? Seriously?

Isn't that also a conclusion arrived at by using logic? I always get confused by these kinds of arguments. — Echarmion

Well, it depends on how circumscribed your definition of 'logic' is. Ramsey likens logic to aesthetics, or ethics. A mode of thinking we find to be pragmatic. So, by that measure (a mode of thinking, among others) the observation that logic is such a thing is just empirical, and the resolution of empirical data need not be subsumed within the definition of 'logic'. I think the merit of this approach is that it avoids the potential circularity of defining logic by 'whatever mode distinguishes right from wrong answers', and then that any answer delivered by flawless logic is right on that basis.

But if you agree with that claim, then you also agree that there is a way to figure out what is wrong, don't you? — Echarmion

Not as I see it, no. That there are states of affairs which are objectively the case does not necessarily imply that there are means of determining them. I infer that there are states of affairs which are objectively the case because it seems to be a good explanation for the success of scientific prediction. Not being privy to the exact thought processes of those making these predictions, however, I'm less confident about assuming some homogeneous method accounts for their apparent success.

In fact, the access I do have to their thought processes through cognitive sciences seems to me to show quite the opposite. A heterogeneity of method.

I am not sure I buy the distinction you make between claims about the truth value and claims about the method. Why can I make one claim, but not the other? I can say that the flat earth theory is wrong because it's refuted by observation, but I can not say the zetetic method (something some flat earthers champion) is wrong because it arbitrarily singles out some observations as more relevant? — Echarmion

I think you're right, you can make both claims. In a sense, that's my point when I said...

Say you have a proposition, and you 'feel' it's wrong. Later you compare it to another (necessary) proposition and you 'feel' it leads to a contradiction. How is your first 'feeling' made objective by your second? You could be wrong in either case, in either case we might agree that there is a 'right' answer out there somewhere...

What is it about the status of feeling there's a contradiction that gives it this authority over any of your other feelings about the proposition in question? — Isaac

Basically, I'm disputing @Pfhorrest's notion that there is one method (feeling that there is a contradiction), rather than a suite of methods. I'm saying you can make both claims, but that it is not necessarily required that your first claim is justified by your second. There's no special status given to the feeling that two propositions are contradictory above the simple feeling that one proposition is wrong. 'Wrong' and 'contradictory' are just two attitudes we might have toward propositions.

When the mean lifetime was 40 ys and childs dying in infancy was a common thing. — Ansiktsburk

Whereas now, without anarchism, we have Covid-19 spreading like wildfire across the globe....

...or maybe, just maybe, picking two states of affairs which happen to coincide doesn't sufficiently prove one caused the other...?

Are you suggesting that logical contradiction or consistency is only a matter of subjective opinion? — Pfhorrest

I would say that's the case yes, I agree with Ramsey that logic is simply a mode of thought, not an objective fact about the world, and as such is prime to some subjective variation. But that's not my argument here, rather it is...

merely that people can sometimes wrongly assess whether or not something is contradictory — Pfhorrest

...even under the view where contradiction is an objective fact, it is still possible for epistemic peers to disagree about what is and what is not contradictory.

Things either are contradictory or they're not. People can assess whether they are or not incorrectly, but "you might be doing it wrong" is the most inane argument against anything that I can imagine. Get back when you can point out a specific thing someone's doing wrong. Meanwhile, the mere possibility of doing it wrong doesn't make the entire endeavor pointless or futile. — Pfhorrest

This would all be relevant if the 'incorrect', or 'wrong' we were talking about were, like your example with the sum, the goal. In that example, there is a 'right' answer regardless of the propensity for some to miscalculate.

But that's not what your claim is here. It's not simply that some things are right and others wrong and that we should strive to reject the wrong, leaving the viable options for what is right. I agree entirely with that claim.

What you do here is additionally claim an objective method for doing so. That the 'wrong' can be identified by determining that it is contradictory, and that such an identification carries normative weight. That's not the same as the maths sum example at all. Instead of talking about whether the answer could possibly be right (regardless of the potential for miscalculation), you're talking about how we know whether the answer is right. A completely different proposition to the mere declaration that there is a right answer.

Say you have a proposition, and you 'feel' it's wrong. Later you compare it to another (necessary) proposition and you 'feel' it leads to a contradiction. How is your first 'feeling' made objective by your second? You could be wrong in either case, in either case we might agree that there is a 'right' answer out there somewhere...

What is it about the status of feeling there's a contradiction that gives it this authority over any of your other feelings about the proposition in question?

Yeah, it is sometimes used more loosely than that (as the second reference in the Wiki article states) — Pfhorrest

Where in that article does it say that the 'absurd' definition is 'more loose'? It just seems to reiterate exactly the conclusion I reached from the wiki. As does every other reference I followed, apart from the one single reference you cherry-picked (from mathematics, not philosophy) to try and prop up your untenable argument.

should be clear from context to anyone fluent in English who isn't looking to maliciously misinterpret me that I'm meaning the sense equivalent with proof by contradiction — Pfhorrest

I took both definitions as being possible. I don't see how that's malicious or uncharitable.

I said...

Are you claiming that what is 'wrong' is synonymous with what you personally find absurd or objectionable? — Isaac

...which you've neatly avoided having to answer by side-tracking into this attempt to recast your inability to raise a counter-argument as some kind of stance against my cantankerousness.

Both absurdity and contradiction are senses which you personally might have of two propositions and which others might disagree with. So I'll ask again. Are you suggesting that what you personally find absurd or contradictory is the measure of what is actually wrong?

I'm referring to many previous discussions in which you repeatedly, and I think willfully, misinterpret "reductio ad absurdum" as "reducio ad something-I-subjectively-don't-like", rather than the technical meaning in which "absurd" means "self-contradictory". — Pfhorrest

Then why did you direct me to a Wiki definition in which the first paragraph states reductio ad absurdum to be "the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction"? I've bolded the 'or'. One or the other, not that the two are being treated as technically the same thing.

If you want to use that BA of yours to teach me something about the technical meaning of philosophical terms, then it would help if you directed me toward definitions which actually support the claim you're making.

you seem to be referring to one specific discussion in which everyone kept bringing up things I didn't disagree with and then acting like that somehow proved something against my position that already included within it the things that they were saying. — Pfhorrest

This ^ characterisation of the discussion is the thing I'm talking about. Everyone else was saying that this wasn't what was happening and that your posts had meaningful problems of the sort we described, you were saying that this was exactly what was happening and we were all wrong in thinking otherwise. It is the characterisation of our objections as being "the things you were saying and already agreed with" that was your error in that thread. They were not the things you were already saying, you simply didn't understand the difference.

Almost all of my positions are ones that much better-credentialed people than me also support. In this case, aside from the obvious philosophers like Karl Popper, Ernest Gellner, and Hans Albert, you've also got legal scholars like Reinhold Zippelius, physicists like David Deutch, biologists like Hans Krebs, and the one I expect you'll like most, neurophysiologists like John Eccles. — Pfhorrest

No. You think your positions are ones that much better-credentialed people than you also support. It is possible for you to be wrong about that (which is something people better qualified than me have tried to demonstrate also). That you think your arguments are supported by these writers is not de facto evidence that they in fact are. But you seem (in common with a worrying number of people here) to have some trouble distinguishing between things seeming to you to be the case and things actually being the case.

Notwithstanding that, all of those writers are themselves critiqued and opposed by a slew of similarly well-credetialed people, so their support alone doesn't lend authority to your arguments, it just helps us understand where they're coming form. As far as an indication of who has misunderstood whom, they're useless.

when it comes to discussing a topic in which I majored summa cum laude with easy straight-As, putting me in the top twentieth of people who have BAs on the topic, on an anonymous internet forum where over two thirds of people don't even have a BA in it at all, yeah I'm leaning statistically toward it being other people not understanding me rather than vice versa. — Pfhorrest

Really? Then I suggest you take a serious look at the stratification of your samples. Within a couple of paragraphs I can tell quite easily f I'm talking to someone who has some knowledge of the topic or not. The idea that ten pages into a discussion you're still assuming your interlocutors are drawn from the full population who responded to that survey is rather worrying.

you should know that already, because we've been around this merry-go-round many times before and if it didn't sink in the first million times — Pfhorrest

Ah. Are you referring to the discussion in which literally everyone involved was pointing out how you were wrong but you insisted you were right regardless?

So how come it's the case that it's me who doesn't 'get' your argument and not you who doesn't 'get' everyone else counter argument? Tell me, what's most likely - that you're a unique genius who nobody understands, or that you've made a mistake which you don't understand?

You can show something is wrong regardless of external premises, via reductio ad absurdum. If assuming the thing itself leads to contradictions, then you have reason to discard it, without appeal to anything else. — Pfhorrest

In the first half of this proposition you are explaining how we show something is 'wrong', but what you actually demonstrate is something which seems to you to be 'absurd' and which provides, for you, 'reasons' to reject it.

Are you claiming that what is 'wrong' is synonymous with what you personally find absurd or objectionable?

I tried to ask you to stop with the vitriol and you refused. That's your deal. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, except that was always the case. Has been since the beginning if the thread. Yet when you think you have a counter to any point I raise you're happy to put in one of your 'to whom it may concern...' type of posts. When you can't answer the point raised you ignore it a cry faux calls of 'bad sportsmanship. It's transparent.

The point, lest it get lost, was that your supposed 'ethics' requires that if we see a man walking into a school with a gun we must not interfere with his chosen purpose because the harm we're predicting will befall non-specified persons, a mere aggregate benefit to us stopping him, not worth striving for, ethical at all.

How convenient. This way you get to just avoid having to deal with any lines of argument you can't answer.

This not-replying-to-me-but-really-replying-to-me just looks childish. Grow up.

It's not about political actions. We could restrict it to an individual taking down a would-be suicide bomber. No politics involved. By your measure it's unethical to interfere with the bomber's personal agenda purely for some aggregate goal like saving everyone else's life.

I think it is wrong to use individuals for some cause beyond the individual (which is my main contention). — schopenhauer1

So how do you justify imprisoning a murderer? That would be unethical by your standards. As would taxing anyone, as would providing unitary aid of any sort. Sounds monstrous.

this kind of aggregation puts some abstract cause above and beyond the individual. — schopenhauer1

It is no less individual people being harmed by the lack of harm-reduction activities of the theoretical child than it is the theoretical child themselves. In each case we're postulating an actual single individual who will be harmed by your actions. One by your bringing about their birth, the other by the lack of harm-reduction your future child would most likely provide.

it relies on probabilities and contingencies one can never know for certain regarding how it affects the aggregate — schopenhauer1

Nonsense. Most people are satisfied with their lives and most people would be significantly less happy living as hermits. The means it is virtually a certainty that other people in society are responsible for reducing the harms you would otherwise suffer in their absence. There's no ambiguity about it.

When I want to prevent suffering, I am preventing unnecessary harm from taking place (for what would be that future person presumably). — schopenhauer1

What about the people who would otherwise rely on that future person to reduce their own suffering? Why do they not feature in you calculations?

Conversely, having a child to help some aggregate scheme — schopenhauer1

It's not 'conversely'. It's the same scheme. Avoiding courses of action which result in harms to actual people.

believe this violates their dignity (once a person is actually born), to put some other cause above the harm/suffering/impositions put upon the person — schopenhauer1

So, take laws specifically, on what basis do we arrest murderers?

That is using people, and as I've stated before, I believe this violates their dignity (once a person is actually born), to put some other cause above the harm/suffering/impositions put upon the person that would be born. — schopenhauer1

So no laws then, no taxation, no parenting, no charitable work for whole communities, no overseas development aid, no welfare, no health provision... I'm afraid your president has just left office, you'll have to try again in four years' time.

But to those who disagree, and who see life as full of harm, to them death ought to look pretty good. And yet you don't see many antinatalist suicide notes... Why is that? — Olivier5

To be fair, this has already been addressed. The argument presented was about not committing to courses of action which lead to a net increase in harms/suffering. A person's suicide would arguably do that to those left behind even if they themselves would thereby no longer experience harms themselves.

I mention this just so we don't get caught up in that particular quagmire again. Not committing suicide is perfectly consistent with the form of antinatalism presented here. Thankfully.

Imagine for instance, that you knew your next child will be absolutely miserable, to a point where normally you would consider it wrong to have them (warzone, genetic illness, poverty, you name it), but would cure cancer. Is it ok to have them? — khaled

This is why I don't particularly like consequentialism. I believe that if we were ever capable of such certain predictions we would have evolved mechanisms to make decisions in the light of such knowledge. We aren't, so we haven't.

In the spirit of hypothetical musing though, I think you'd have to have the kid. If we assume nothing but a requirement to not increase overall harm.
And once alive, of course, they'd have the same obligation and so ending their own suffering would be disallowed.

But this is one reason why I don't think least overall harm is a good thing to have as one's sole objective.

I find that it's a trend that the more posts you have on this site the more combative you become. Looking at you Isaac. — khaled

Guilty. In my defense, I've lead rather a blessed academic life, replete with ivory tower. I'm not that used to having to discuss issues in a 'public forum' kind of way. Steep learning curve perhaps.

, good to know that I'm not in intellectually dishonest spawn of Satan :blush: — khaled

Sorry if my response came out a bit condescending. I just wanted to say something positive. Hope you weren't offended.

I would still want to see some proof that the parent can actually parent before considering having kids to be right. That they actually are likely to produce ethically good children. But this has always been the case. — khaled

Yeah. I agree. I'm not really a consequentialist at all, so don't normally look at things this way, but it's an interesting exercise.

So the idea that your children are overall slightly more likely to produce a net reduction in harm than not is not something we can just take for granted.

If you're a pretty bad parent, it's a less reasonable assumption (though becoming a better parent would be a better ethical choice here).

Having loads of kids is less justified, a reasonable assumption might be that society's general harm-reducing effects might only require a threshold 'new generation'. Excessive birth rates might not be justified.

The dynamics of the society you bring children into might have an influence. Excessively bad societal influences might make an ethical child increasingly less likely.

And your example of the war zone. If a child's really going to suffer badly during their life, they'll have a lot of harm-reduction work to do to make up for that. Not impossible, but increasingly hard to justify.

So yeah, not my cup of tea exactly, but an interesting way of looking at it, with some useful explanatory power with regards to our instincts.

I actually see the inconsistency now. Will get back to you later. This might just do it. — khaled

Wow. You would be about the first person I've ever debated with on here that's even considered the possibility of changing their position in response to an argument put by the other side. Regardless of what you come up with in response, I'm impressed you'd have the intellectual honesty to do so.

With surgery: NOT doing the surgery is the more harmful option.
With laws: NOT having the laws is the more harmful option.
With parenting: NOT sending your kids to school is the more harmful option. — khaled

Yep. And with having kids (of above average ethics) not having them is the more harmful option. Same as with law. Not having children increases the likely harm everyone will suffer who will not have their suffering reduced by your ethical harm-reducing children.

Whereas NOT having kids guarantees 0 harm. — khaled

No it doesn't because it exposes to harm alk those people whose harm your children would otherwise have reduced/eliminated.

With birth, there is no way not doing it can harm. — khaled

Absolutely absurd thing to say. I can think of a hundred ways not having a child might cause some harm.

I am saying that EVEN IF the child is likely to have a net harm reduction effect, that does not make procreation right. — khaled

Yes, I gather that. Which is inconsistent with your response to surgery, laws and parenting where in those cases you use the net harm reduction to justify the action to take on another's behalf.

Why does net harm reduction apply in those cases but not birth?

This is because you can't really argue that I have harmed someone by not having a child even if my child would have helped them. — khaled

Net harm reduction is the measure you use elsewhere. Net harm reduction. The net harm reduced by having a child is something which is at least arguable. Certainly requires actual empirical data and is not this ridiculously simplistic equation you would have everyone use.

But yes, best we don't continue this, you're just either not debating honestly or not capable of following the arguments.

When have I said otherwise? Did you actually read my reply to pinrick? — khaled

It's not the admission that they only need to be above average, it's the failure to grasp the fact that approximately half of all people will have children above average. That justifies half of all births, for a start.

Because we can't be sure of the overall picture of the child's impact on others. — khaled

We can. I just explained that. Most people are satisfied with their lives. So overall people's harm-reduction activities must be sufficient to render an overall satisfaction. So we can be sure that overall a child's net effect on others is going to be to reduce the harms that those other would otherwise feel. Unless you're claiming that most people would be happier alone?

Though we have enough data to conclude that in all likelihood a child will have a net positive life, we do not have enough data to conclude that in all likelihood he will not be an asshat. — khaled

Of course we do, what a ridiculous thing to say. Most people are not asshats (whatever one of those is, but I'm presuming it's a bad thing) that alone is sufficient to demonstrate that your own child is more likely not to be one than to be one.

How does a survey about how happy people are lead to the conclusion that my child will not be an asshole? Assholes can be happy. This is a non-sequitur. It does not follow from a general satisfaction measure that people's general harm-reduction activity is net positive. — khaled

Are most people happier alone? No. So it follows from this fact alone that most people's happiness is generated by others. Without society we'd die. Something you neo-liberals seem ideologically blind to. So yes, the fact that most people are happy is exactly and precisely an indication that most people are working hard to reduce the harms that would befall others without that work.

For example "Do not deny pleasure" results in you being obligated to give me 100 bucks if I ever ask. So you amend it by adding caveat X. "Do not deny pleasure unless X" may or may not break elsewhere. Add as many caveats and maxims as you want. Point is to arrive at a system that is surgical enough to make MGE wrong, birth ok, and not break elsewhere. I haven't seen anyone do that so far. — khaled

Of course you haven't, if three caveats in you throw your hands up and say "oh it's all too complicated for me".

No because with the caveats it produces no inconsistencies. — khaled

Neither does mine.

But to say that you have no way to distinguish between X and Y is a critique. So you have to introduce some factor B that is present in X and not in Y, that together with A makes X wrong and Y ok or what have you. — khaled

Yep. And when I do you complain about the multiplication of factors. I can't win.

in my brain it always seems to come down to a few important factors that make almost all else irrelevant. — khaled

No, it doesn't. Unless you are an exception to every other brain studied.

Again, just because it is computationally expensive does not mean the answer has to be complicated. — khaled

It basically does. It's a fairly strict rule of evolution.

It is computationally expensive to determine which action results in the least harm as well. — khaled

Possibly, but why are all those other brain regions involved?

It's 15 unrelated factors with no indication about which can be applied when and why that is too complicated. — khaled

As I said, explains a lot. How many factors do you think are involved in, say, economics?

at that point you're just doing intuitive morality, with no real system. — khaled

There's no difference. All systems are either descriptive or pointless. It's your brain that's coming up with these systems, motivated by the same processes it's trying to describe. You can't get outside of it and make it want something else. Where would you get the motivation to do so from?

It’s mathematical. Assuming you don’t assume your child will cure cancer or do any such amazing feat. Which is just as unreasonable to assume as it is to assume they will do some large harmful feat like become a criminal. — khaled

Then your grasp of mathematics is as flawed as your grasp of ethics. It is only necessary that your child is above average for it to be the case that their net action is to reduce harm. Unless you have some harm-o-meter data you're not sharing with us?

Even for those below average, action to improve the likely net ethical activity of their child will have just as positive an effect on net harm as not having the child.

How so? Again, check my reply to pinrick. It is very difficult to say that having a child will reduce net harm. — khaled

Se above. You're just misunderstanding what 'net' means.

it is just as unreasonable to assume that they will work to reduce harm as it is to assume that they will work to increase it. Which is why I don’t consider the child’s effect on others. Too many unknowns to accurately predict in any way. — khaled

You're just being disingenuous now. Previously when uncertainty was raised as a critique, you rallied to "we can be sure of the overall picture". Why are you now avoiding that? We can be sure - from the general life satisfaction measured in every survey on the matter - that people's general harm-reduction activity must be substantial, certainly net positive. We can be almost certain that an average child will do a substantial amount of work reducing harms.

Again, there's thus duplicity. When we talk about harms birth brings about, the most trivial of harms are invoked. When I talk about new generations reducing harm suddenly they've got to cure cancer before it counts. If any of life's trivial burdens counts as a harm, then just smiling at someone to make then feel better counts as reducing that harm.

A point at which frustrating their desire to ride a motorcycle arbitrarily can be predicted to cause as much harm as actually riding the motorcycle. Until that point, yes it is wrong to ride the motorcycle. That point is around where they get a license — khaled

This is a fundamental issue which stands apart from the other points about complexity.

Your ethic is about reducing harm, you even argue that most other ethical positions can be reduced to this maxim (like your motorbike example). So most ethical people, in your view, are reducing harm.

When faced with complex situation, you revert to the net reduction in harm - surgery, laws, parenting etc.

When faced with uncertainty, you revert to "the best you can predict with the knowledge you have".

So how is it that in conceiving a child (who, by your own notion of ethics will spend a good deal of their time reducing harm), I can somehow be certain that the net effect would not be to actually reduce harm?

Obviously if everyone agreed to not have children, then the net effect would be an overall reduction in harm eventually (once everyone living died), but it only takes one accidental birth and you could argue that your own child could then justifiably reduce the net harms in the world, and so could others and then we're back to square one again.

Continuing to have children (who work to reduce harm) is the only way to ensure the net harm in the world is reduced short of actual 100% immediate genocide.

Call it what you will. In my book that's called "breaking". Because until caveats are introduced your system is insufficient. — khaled

This makes no sense at all. If I've just explained how circumstances and caveats are essential to understanding morality, it's nonsense to maintain that their presence can be described as 'breaking' it. Your maxim has caveats too. Is it 'broken'?

But I haven't seen a combination of factors that actually succeeds in doing this that don't break elsewhere. — khaled

They don't 'break' elsewhere. They just don't apply. Why should a single factor be applicable to all cases?

I only say the "but you wouldn't..." when critiquing the premises you present me. So you say something like "Denying pleasure is wrong" and I reply with "But you wouldn't just give me 100 bucks if I asked you even though that would be denying pleasure". — khaled

But it's not a critique. To say factor A needs to be taken into consideration in case X but it's not so relevant in case Y is not a 'critique'. It's just a representation of the fact that morality is not a 'spot-the-pattern' book written for three year olds, it's a bit more complicated than that.

But you add 3 different caveats every time I give a point at which they don't work. Like a hydra, you cut one head off and 3 more pop out. At this point you have like 15 different completely unrelated factors that go into what makes something right and neither of us can be bothered to clean them up. — khaled

If fifteen factors to consider is really too complicated for you then I can see exactly how you've ended up with the arguments you have - it explains a lot.

And when the network is indecisive what do we do? — khaled

'We' don't do anything. 'we' are the network. It's your brain I'm talking about here, the centre and sum of who you are, it's not some tool that something else ('we') make use of. It is us. I'm demonstrating that regardless of your armchair protestations, what actually happens when you make moral decisions is that a whole slew of mechanisms are initiated taking into account dozens, possibly even hundreds of factors at a blistering rate of calculations per second in the worlds most integrated supercomputer. That's what actually happens, and it happens in your brain, schop's brain, my brain regardless of whatever pubescent philosophy you want to claim you follow. If you genuinely believe you're the exception then I seriously suggest you offer yourself up to the various research units studying the phenomena.

We try to find the most important factors. — khaled

No we don't. There's no evidence to support the theory that we perform some global weighing exercise. That would require regions of the brain to be involved in orders in which they're just not involved.

Maybe a few pithy maxims IS all it comes down to for a certain individual. And the other factors in the network are just never prevalent enough to overcome those few important maxims. It's not that they're being ignored it's that they're insufficient to change anything. — khaled

Again, if you really believe this is how your brain works you'd be an asset to the research establishments, because it's not what has been seen in literally every other brain studies, but rather a very complex rendering of factor where (using signal blocking technology and, earlier, lesion studies) we can show that the removal of any one system changes the result.

It's like you look to normal attitudes as a measure of what's convincing morally but then refuse to allow conception into that set of normal attitudes. — Isaac


Because it is the topic of debate.... — khaled

That doesn't justify the approach. Prima facie, if all the balls in a jar are blue except one which is red, that fact alone doesn't have any bearing at all on whether that ball is supposed to red, or is 'really' red, or morally out to be red, or any other such thing... Until you've demonstrated an underlying reason why you'd expect there to be no aberrant cases, pointing out that they exist carries no weight at all.

That they can all be phrased as avoiding greater harms makes it dubious that “greater benefits” is the significant variable here. — khaled

Differentiating 'benefit' from 'lack of harm' is not a matter which can be settled objectively. Desire creates mental pain no less than actual physical pain (in fact uses the same circuits in some cases). So frustrated desire is a 'harm' in no less a sense than a broken arm. Unless you want to make neuroscientific case for a substantial difference, the terms are just vague synonyms in most of the caese we're talking about here.

What is the greater harm being avoided in birth? — khaled

We've been through this. For many the simple lack of a next generation is a harm. It's a harm to the older generation that there will be no younger generation to care for them, depending on your estimation of your own children's contribution it may be a harm to the new generation that they are without your children (note - your children don't have to be superstars to achieve this, only better than average). There may be problems the next generation will face which won't be solved without some 'hands-on-deck'. Human life has an intrinsic value and its absence from the universe is something most people think of as a harm. But the harms reduced by birth needn't even be that great because the circumstances in which our imagined future child may find themselves will (according to the intention of the would-be parent) will be overall pleasant.

I am giving examples that break it so that you continue to add caveats until you have a self consistent system with no side effects. Then I look to see if I agree or disagree with that system. That’s the point of these examples — khaled

But they don't 'break it'. That;s the point. What you're doing is presenting situations for one maxim in which it is insufficient on its own to explain the result. That's entirely to be expected if we use more than one maxim. Nothing's being 'broken'.

With exercise, the benefits of coercion would not outweigh the harms, given the methods we'd have to use. — Isaac


Now you have to lay out exactly when this is the case and when it isn’t. — khaled

That would takes far too long. We weigh each moral dilemma as it arises depending on the factors which seem to us to be relevant to it. That's largely why we come up with different answers a lot of the time.

Like saying "there are just no examples -apart from the example you just gave". What kind of counter-argument is that? — Isaac


It points out that maybe you’re using the wrong principle. — khaled

Why? Why would you expect there to not ever be any single exceptions. We've established that differnet scenarios introduce different factors to consider. What's so special about the number 1 that it can't be the sum total of cases with some given set of factors?

no one here has argued that the AN premises are commonly held. — khaled

That is exactly what you are de facto arguing by using examples of the form "but you wouldn't...". You're appealing to a commonly held premise, showing it's similarity to the premises of AN to lend them support. It's the standard response when I raise the 'Ridiculous premises, ridiculous conclusion' argument.


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I think there's a fundamental error you're making here. At least twelve different brain regions have been shown to be involved in moral decision-making, some say more. Different specialised regions get involved in different types of moral decision-making ranging from empathy, social status, prediction, disgust, goals...and more. Joshua Greene's paper is really good on this if you're interested. The point is each of these regions has tens of thousands of neurons, even millions. Apart from managing our body, working out social/moral dilemmas is the biggest job our brain does. It's occupied with it almost all the time at a tremendous rate of calculations per second. The effort is literally exhausting (one of our biggest calorie demands) and is most probably the reason why our brains barely fit through the birth canal (at huge survival cost). That anyone would expect the answers to be writable in a few pithy maxims is absurd. It's fiendishly complicated. Luckily for us we have the most integrated supercomputer the world has ever seen working on the problem almost every second of our waking day. The problem arises when, instead of trusting the results of that network, we ignore all but one region and expect the results to be anywhere near as good.

He was found to have a lethal quantity of narcotics in his system. — counterpunch

On what grounds are you cherry-picking this conclusion of the medical examiner's and not the conclusion that he died from

cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression

You claim to follow the science yet you decide which conclusions from which scientists you are going to accept on the basis of your political ideology. So you're effectively not following the science at all.

On the matter of cause of death only two scientific experts have spoken. They both concluded he was killed.

They may well be biased. They may well have political or ideological motivations which affected their judgment on top of their expertise.

But no-one is demonstrably less biased. In no-one can it be shown that scientific expertise is speaking more than in these two MEs.

If you want to know if a bridge will stand do you ask two (biased) engineers or two (equally biased) lawyers?

Malicious intent has been shown to apply to both. Since in both cases you intend to do harm. Just in one you intend to mitigate it as much as you can. — khaled

Causing non-trivial harm directly is sufficiently different from causing trivial harm (or causing non-trivial harm indirectly whilst pursuing other reasonable goals) that we do not use the term malicious to describe both. again you seem to be going down this weird line that if two things are similar in one aspect, they must be the same thing. Both birth and malicious genetic engineering result in harm to the subject. Just because they share that one thing in common, doesn't mean you can just treat them as if they were identical.

I find that in every day life this is never used — khaled

As an aside, I find this a really bizarre argument that both you and schop frequently use. I give an example of the way people think about birth and you say it's not convincing because it's hardly ever used. It's used all the time - justifying giving birth. It's like you look to normal attitudes as a measure of what's convincing morally but then refuse to allow conception into that set of normal attitudes. Like saying "there are just no examples -apart from the example you just gave". What kind of counter-argument is that?

Anyway, that aside we do use the counterbalancing benefits equation all the time (aside from to justify birth, which is the main one). We've given loads of examples, surgery, imprisonment, laws, childcare... That you phrase these as greater harms is irrelevant. The point is it still serves to differentiate MGE from birth. In MGE there are no greater harms being avoided, with birth there are.

We don't force people to exercise for example, even though we have a reasonable expectation of counterbalancing benefits. — khaled

Of course we don't. Because as I've said for like the hundredth time we do not decide moral dilemmas by applying a single maxim. Honestly - if we could just get past that one point I think we'd make some progress. You keep presuming you can apply some maxim to another situation and expect it to yield the same result. Different situation, different sets of maxim become relevant. It's not rocket science.

With exercise, the benefits of coercion would not outweigh the harms, given the methods we'd have to use. Not so with birth, where the method of coercion is harmless. With exercise, there's and alternative method (persuasion). Not so with birth. With exercise, failure to achieve the benefits is remediable. Not so with birth. With exercise, the benefits accrue mainly to the individual. Not so with birth... I could go on.

And when the befits do accrue to society in general (like severe health service impact) we do coerce - mandatory PE lessons, removal of health services without commitment etc.

I don't find convincing because it is never used in daily life either. I can't break your leg because I intend to pay your hospital bills later — khaled

I'll do one more of these, but I'm not going to just point out the actual differences all the time when the whole "this is a bit like that so it must be the same thing..." argument is flawed. Paying hospital bills is not the same as mitigation. Mitigation would be knowing you've created a risk of a leg breaking but being committed to doing everything in your power to prevent it. Like putting in a flight of stairs, or building a motorbike, or advertising a skiing holiday. All completely normal things were a person creates a risk of harm, but does everything reasonable to mitigate it.

Notwithstanding that, we can go through the differences. With breaking a leg, there's no given reason why you'd do it. Not so with birth. With breaking a leg, the damage is painful at the time regardless of later mitigation. Not so with birth... I could go on.

I'm saying that both birth and MGE are examples of malicious intent. Because they both have the willing intention to do harm. What differentiates? — khaled

See above.

If your goal isn't to say that there is something wrong with AN then what are you replying for? — khaled

I do think there's something wrong with AN. Just not that. A valid argument with ridiculous premises is 'something wrong', in my book. Plus, very little of the discussion here has actually been taken up with the ridiculous but valid AN maxim. Most has been taken up trying to show that it is commonly held but inconsistently not applied to birth. Those arguments are flawed, and it is those I've been mainly opposing.

Plus I think most AN arguments are just different ways to push neo-liberalism, which I think is wrong because of the consequences on society - consequences America is reeling from right now.

Who's adding caveats now? — khaled

I'm not opposed to adding caveats. On the contrary, I think it's absolutely essential to any ethical approach. The point is only that adding caveats changes the force of the maxim to which they're added.

I was just saying that setting a low bar when it comes to "how likely it is that our acts will harm someone" is the norm, and not ridiculous in any way. — khaled

But it is ridiculous in some circumstances. That's the whole point. We do not simply have one unadulterated maxim which we apply in all cases. You yourself admit that when you add the caveats to your own. In a scenario like the one you present, where there's a non-trivial harm involved, no counterbalancing benefits, a seemingly very selfish intent, no reasonable expectation of happiness, no shared goal etc... then yes, we might have a very low bar. But in other circumstances with all those features, it would be ridiculous to have such a low bar.

Your claim was that any difference between the two acts in question can be used to make one ok and the other not. — khaled

No. I never claimed that, only that it was disingenuous of you to ignore differences.

So if we can imagine a future child and recognize that an act done now, that will result in harm later, is considered "harmful" and therefore shouldn't be done, that would apply to both. — khaled

Only we can't agree. Not even you agree. When pressed on "we should not cause harm" as a maxim you add a load of caveats, we all do. The maxim is unworkable on its own. So whether the harm ought to be avoided does not necessarily apply to both because it only applies given certain caveats and those caveats depend on the circumstances.

So what caveat will you add now? — khaled

I listed them right from the outset. Non-malicious intent, reasonable expectation of counterbalancing benefits, intent to mitigate forseeable harms, mutual goal, expectation of duty...

Intent doesn't work, because: — khaled

You're simply confusing sufficient with necessary. The fact that it alone cannot account for the difference does not mean it's not a contributory factor.

The recklessness argument also applies to birth in general. Birth will cause harm in the same way MGE does. — khaled

No, again, you're either just not reading carefully or you're being willfully stupid here. Why would you think, when given a list of factors, that each factor alone is sufficient? Recklessness matters with non-trivial harms you've no intention of mitigated less than it matters with trivial harms or those you fully intend to mitigate. To say the birth will cause harm in the same way MGE will is again monumentally disingenuous. Of course it won't. The 'way' in which each cause harm, the types of harm they cause, the circumstances surrounding that harm... all hugely different.

I did so to demonstrate your inability to find anything wrong with the form of the argument. You still have not provided anything wrong with the form of the argument. — khaled

I've never claimed there is anything wrong with that argument, so I don't know why you might have done that. The argument "we should not cause any harm under any circumstances, birth causes harm so we shouldn't do it" is valid as far as I can see. Utterly ridiculous, but valid. The argument that "'we should not cause any harm under any circumstances, birth causes harm' - is not a ridiculous premise because we generally agree to something similar" is not valid. It assumes a similarity with other moral dilemmas without taking any account of the circumstances which make them different.

When I give an example I am trying to do 2. — khaled

I understand that. And your examples fail, as I've shown, because they fail to take into account differences between your examples and birth which render the examples ridiculous, but birth not - according to the proposing party - the party you just specified was relevant to the discussion about ridiculousness.

It feels far more like you're trying to sneak in an argument in favour of AN by suggesting some inconsistency between our response to your examples and our response to birth. But no such inconsistency can be shown once you allow for caveats to the maxim, and you have already agreed that caveats are required.

let's take the example of shooting someone for entertainment. — khaled

No intent to mitigate non-trivial harm, no reasonable expectation of counterbalancing benefits, no reasonable expectation of consent.

So not an example comparable to conception.

You didn't show much. — khaled

That's yet to be established as you've not yet offered any counter-argument to most of my points and have not pursued my response to those to which you did, instead choosing to switch lanes again, back to the ridiculous premise.

Try it. At least with my own system. — khaled

Most people consider ending the human race as an ethical outcome prima facie ridiculous.

What do you mean "change the nature of the argument"? — khaled

X > y is one argument. Both x and y might be shown to be ridiculous, but the argument valid. Xa>y (in certain circumstances) is a different argument and depends on the circumstances, the discussion of which always seems to cause you to switch tack back to the original form, making it impossible to ever properly address.

You didn't. You said it's trivially easy then proceeded to not give an example. — khaled

The difference between malicious genetic engineering and birth is trivially easy to show once you allow the kinds of caveat to a single maxim which you allow. That is what I showed in my example.

I should add that I'm also trying not to just repeat what @Echarmion is saying, much of which classes as further examples of where the added caveats undermine the force of the argument.

assumed consent of the unconscious — Isaac


Is not something I ever add but something NAs add often if anything. — khaled

Well, I'll take your word for it, I thought I recalled a response to the 'unconscious patient' example where it was argued that we could assume consent. I must have misremembered.

AN (a form of it) is simply moving the bar from "near certainty" to ">0%". What is wrong with that? — khaled

It's ridiculous. No-one normally sets the bar that low. If that's all you're saying then we're back to ridiculous premises leading to ridiculous consequences. But you keep trying to make your premises sound less ridiculous with examples of the form I outlined above. Examples of this form are logically flawed in the way I showed.

To be honest this has been the pattern for the last 27 pages and is the reason I stopped responding. You start out with some ridiculous premise, for which it is shown to be trivially true that it leads to ridiculous conclusions. On being shown this you add a load of caveats to your ridiculous premises (like the special status of dependents, assumed consent of the unconscious, avoidance of greater harms, lack of duty where there's no causal responsibility...) to make the premises seem less ridiculous. But in adding these caveats, you change the nature of the argument. When these altered arguments are shown to be flawed (as I've just done), you revert back to the original ridiculous premise and we start all over again...

Harm who? There is no one to be harmed. This is a consequence of the insistence that having children is not causing harm "because there is no one to be harmed". — khaled

Not my insistence, nor anyone here, as far as I can tell. I think everyone's agreed that we can imagine a future child and mitigate harms that might befall them. It's only your lazy strawman arguments that suggest otherwise. The issue with non-existence is about consent to risk harm, not future harm itself. But this has been made abundantly clear many times, I don't suppose you'll take any more notice of it now than you have done over the last 27 pages.

Also, what if the intention was benign? — khaled

Then you have the recklessness argument, as I stated in my actual definition of the differences which you've just ignored. It is insufficient to have good intentions, one must also have just cause to believe those intentions will yield the expected result. An arbitrary and unevidenced belief in the benefits of blindness does not satisfy this requirement.

I don't remember putting forward multiple arguments for AN I've been harping about the same one since I found it. — khaled

I cannot be expected to argue against the position you think you're putting forward, I can only argue against the one that actually seem to be written. That you think you've been presenting the same argument is irrelevant.

Why would I allow myself luxuries when I know that they cause harm? Would this make sense from an ethical standpoint? Doesn't a luxury imply that I do not need it? And what does this mean for almost everything I own? These should be quite humbling questions, which should help you make sense of that quote. — Tzeentch

Not really, no. The context was the moral superiority of those cherry-picking. If we cherry-pick one of our luxuries for exclusion, that's an improvement on not having done so, so there doesn't seem to be a question of dubious moral superiority to answer. Obviously, someone relinquishing all luxuries has some superiority over someone relinquishing only some, but your "if one allows themselves to cherry pick, then shouldn't others be allowed to cherry pick as well?" made it clear we weren't talking about comparing quantities of luxuries sacrificed, but rather types. In such a case, if the amount of harm done is acting as a measure of worth, then the amount of harm reduced by each choice can act similarly as a measure, no?

So I'm still not seeing the link to attitudes of moral superiority. A person sacrificing a luxury which causes significant harm is (by the definition used here) morally superior to someone sacrificing a luxury of much lesser impact. Maybe I've just not been privy to the conversations you're referring to, but most veganism/organic/whatever arguments seem to at least attempt to quantify the harm done, not simply declare that the value is non-zero.

It amazes me how much energy is put into the social and political black hole that is Trash. We can always delete whatever Trash OPs are started, which will be low quality by definition. — Benkei

Exactly. A thread which acted as nothing but an advertising platform for NOS's brand of sycophancy should never have been allowed on the front page in the first place. Having a thread entirely devoted to what amounts to conflict therapy for a single person's obsession with a former president seems absurd.

I do nothing of the sort. — Tzeentch

I see. So why does the question "why?" get raised with regards to such cherry-picking, as you stated in the quote I cited? Surely the answer is abundantly clear - it reduces harm. What remains to be explained?

And what does...

I noted that this should be discussed without attitudes of moral superiority; — Tzeentch

...mean?