I'm not sure his better to explain it than I just did. In order to support the notion that a belief that A somehow changes property as a result of some logical deduction, becomes knowledge that A, the facts which prime the deduction have to have some property different from the belief that A, but in no case do they. The 'fact' that B is just another belief.

The deduction hasn't had any impact at all on the belief that A, all it's shown it that it is logically consistent (or not) with a belief that B. It remains a belief that A.

Likely the countries that score the highest points in various studies with the public health sector.

Japan for example has a quite well performing health care sector and it has scored in many investigation top places with it's health care sector compared to others. And it's doing just fine with the pandemic — ssu

That doesn't have any bearing on the point I'm making. There are key components of a healthcare system which cannot be bought in a short timescale no matter how much money you throw at them. It takes years to train as a nurse, doctor, researcher...and if you don't have enough you can't handle the task properly. Even if Japan's health system is in good shape, it doesn't mean their research facilities are, nor does it mean they wouldn't equally benefit from more robust and well-established interventions than a wild scramble to find Phizer's next golden goose.

I hear you, but I'm not so confident that they engage in any joined up thinking. — Punshhh

Ah, yes. I made the mistake of presuming any rational basis behind this clown-show of a government... As it is I'm now prepared to entertain that they might have any of a dozen crackpot theories behind their 'strategy'. UFOs may even feature.

We needn't worry about deductive arguments as they're foolproof justifications in that if the argument is sound it's impossible that the conclusion is false. There is no room for error with deductive arguments is what I mean. — TheMadFool

As I said in my first comment, this is of no use with knowledge claims because we have no means of distinguishing premises from conclusions. We cannot say that our belief in A is justified by the deductive argument 'If B then A, B therefore A' because our belief that B might be what is at fault, or our belief that 'if B then A'.

The whole approach rests on the flawed assumption that we build up our beliefs one block at a time from some first principle like an inverted pyramid. There's scant evidence that we actually do this and abundant evidence that we don't.

There are rumours going around the UK that the government is secretly happy that many thousands of old people will die, saving a great deal of expenditure in health and social care, as a vast social care crisis was looming before Covid, due to a population with to many old people. — Punshhh

This seems incredibly implausible to me.

1. The majority of the Tory vote is in the older population, they'd be killing off their own support.
2. The costs of their response are predicted, even by their own think tanks to far exceed the temporary and minor drop in pressure on the social care budget.
3. The biggest threat to the social care budget comes not in the form of the current elderly and vulnerable, but the immediate future elderly and vulnerable coupled with a relatively smaller working age population.

if A = B and C, and you can show that B and C are contrary to each other, you can rule out A. — Pfhorrest

All of which requires a belief in the truth-preserving nature of logical functions, a belief that 'A = B and C', and a belief that 'B and C are contrary to each other'.

If you also had a belief that A, how does your system tell you anything about your belief that A? It remains the case that you are either mistaken about A or mistaken about the relationship between B and C, or mistaken about the relationship A = B and C (or you're mistaken about logic itself).

As you have no means of determining which of those mistakes are the case, you are not discarding a belief because it can be ruled out. You are discarding a belief because you wish to replace it with another.

any belief is justified (including contrary ones) until there is support to the contrary, i.e. reason to rule that belief out — Pfhorrest

How is the existence of a reason to rule it out not also a belief? All you have here is competing beliefs - the belief in A and the belief in a reason to rule out A.

Do I not owe society anything for all that? — Isaac


As I said, you owe it to become a productive member. Or to at least try to. — khaled

So if that debt can accrue to me for benefits given without my consent to the deal, then why cannot the same debt be assumed for an imaginary non-existant person in the same way we imagine harms and benefits they might have when deciding whether to bring them into existence?

The people who give this support do so because they see their community as a moral good in its own right, but they wouldn't be so keen to contribute to that good if those who benefitted most from it incurred no duty to similarly nurture it. — Isaac


Agreed. But "nurturing it" doesn't have to take the form of having kids. As proven by the fact that people don't scoff at those who choose to not start a family nor suddenly think that those people are taking from the community's resources without giving back. As I keep saying, being a productive member is good enough payment.

An even better example is that we still give these societal boons to people who can't have children. Which shows that "having children" is not required payment. — khaled

I'm not trying to show here that having children is required payment, I don't quite know where you got that impression from. This line of argument proceeds directly from your comment...

What I find repulsive is forcing someone to do something for a "boon" they didn't ask for or don't want. — khaled

and...

I think the prices of these "boons" should never be paid by those who never asked for said boons and in return they shouldn't enjoy said boons. — khaled

If "being a productive member is good enough payment." for the boons that previous generations gave then that is almost literally the definition of doing something for a boon they didn't ask for. The issue I'm enquiring about here is to do with how people are motivated to do things which help future generations in your system where there's no duty at all on the beneficiaries of those actions toward the common good that has been thus built.

Once born you will inevitably be looked after by 'society' and benefit from its boons, without your consent. — Isaac


You don't need consent to benefit someone if you know that it will be a benefit. — khaled

We don't 'know' they'll benefit. We just have good cause to believe they will. If that's still all that's required then it's OK to bring someone into being without their consent on the same grounds - that we've good cause to believe they'll overall benefit from that action.

I'm fairly certain that your neo-liberal 'morality' would lead fairly rapidly to a vicious and unpleasant world of ruthlessly competing individuals — Isaac


I don't see how. — khaled

Have you been to America?

I find it interesting that often the individual is indeed the locus of blame/responsibility/accountability when it comes to making bad decisions, working a job, obeying laws (like paying that speeding ticket let's say), but this same individual that will be born (such as myself and you and him and her and any one) cannot (in decisions surrounding procreation) be considered (apparently to some) for the suffering, burdens, general "dealing with life" that will incur to them, except as lumped in as a vague part of continuing the goals of "humanity" in general. — schopenhauer1

Under what circumstances are they 'not considered' for these sufferings. Why do you think people are so worked up about climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, pollution...literally every social and environmental movement of that last hundred years has been out of concern to reduce the suffering of future generations.

It is the individual which should be considered in this crucial of decisions that will affect that person, not an abstract cause, where the locus or carrying out of the burden is actually carried out. — schopenhauer1

Nonsense. This implies that the benefits accrue to something other than the individuals. If you break up 'society; into it's individual component parts for the purposes of assessing burdens, then you can do so too for the purposes of assessing benefits. The social goal of maintaining a society in an amenable manner benefits the members of that society in the same way as it burdens them with the responsibility of doing so. The only difference between your view and mine is that you have this distasteful notion that we should keep some kind of 'accounts' of who put what in and make sure they get the same out.

As I (and I believe khaled) have reiterated over and over, moral theories at some point rely on one's intuitions and premises. Thus at some point, there is no going past the initial premises. To not recognize that we have stated thus and laid that out from the beginning is willful ignoring of what was said — schopenhauer1

No-one has said that this is not the case. The argument has been entirely (I even wrote the damn thing out in a single paragraph a few posts ago) that the premises are unusual, and that the conclusions are repugnant to many. This is quite significantly not the same as merely pointing out that your conclusion relies on your premises.

The point is not to castigate ONE moral theory for doing what most (normative and applied level) ethical theories do. — schopenhauer1

Antinatalism does not do what most ethical theories do. Most ethical theories attempt to formalise that which we find ethical, and to thus help resolve dilemmas which we find difficult to otherwise see the right course of action in a way we find satisfying. They do not attempt to use some sketchy logic based on selectively filtered premises to reach a conclusion no-one finds in the least bit satisfying.

The argument of " healthcare services have been stripped to the bone and the scraps sold to the highest bidder" might hold true in one national example, but to argue that ALL NATIONS have gone this route is false. — ssu

Really? What nation did you have in mind whose health service is run primarily with the health of the nation in mind, without demands of greater efficiency being laid on it to either increase profits or reduce government expenditure, whose health industry is not suffuse with influence from multi-national pharmaceutical companies? I may well like to move there.

As a child I benefited from a considerable amount of societal boons, right from birth. — Isaac


And you knew that eventually you'd have to hold a job and make your own living as a contributing member. And I'm willing to wager you didn't protest because the terms are very very good. — khaled

Yeah, that's kind of the point. Do I not owe society anything for all that?

I doubt whoever fertilized the land expected anything out of YOU specifically so no deal there. — khaled

Exactly. He did it for humanity in general (his future community more specifically). People do things for the good of the community. If they were to formalise this feeling I'd wager it would be something like seeing the perpetuation and well-being of the community as a good in it's own right. I doubt anyone putting a lot of effort into improving the community's resources for future generations is doing so with the expectation that those people will take whatever they want from that common good and give nothing back.

And I don't get this bit at all. Remember this line of argument started from "I find it repulsive for societies to force their members do fullfil "societal goals"". This argument isn't even needed for antinatalism it's a whole different debate. — khaled

I only mentioned the birth thing because I'm trying to understand your position and I know that's an important part of it. The relevant portion of what I'm saying here is that without the idea of avoiding conception your moral system doesn't make sense. Once born you will inevitably be looked after by 'society' and benefit from its boons, without your consent. The people who give this support do so because they see their community as a moral good in its own right, but they wouldn't be so keen to contribute to that good if those who benefitted most from it incurred no duty to similarly nurture it.

I'm fairly certain that your neo-liberal 'morality' would lead fairly rapidly to a vicious and unpleasant world of ruthlessly competing individuals, but I guess as no one would want to live in such a world this somewhat serves your purposes.

It's not about the simple act of spending money on a problem, it's about where the money's spent.

We know for a fact that general health improves outcomes yet barely a penny goes into schools sports, sports grounds are sold off for housing, social active schemes can barely scrape by and corporations are allowed to push sugar and fat drenched foods on children, force workers to sit for eight hours a day with impunity...

We know for a fact that good healthcare including capacity improves outcomes, yet healthcare services have been stripped to the bone and the scraps sold to the highest bidder.

What's the difference between the solutions above and the pharmaceutical route? The flow of money. Government to people in the first two cases, government to corporations in the latter.

You don't have to be a genius to work out why the corporations favour the latter. What is much more baffling is why a majority of left-wing commentators are so willing to work so hard to popularise the corporations' favourite solution for them.

I'm still not quite clear how your system would work. As a child I benefited from a considerable amount of societal boons, right from birth. Should society have asked me as a newborn whether I was OK with this deal? No, obviously not. So how should I handle the duty that accrues, in your system? Similarly, I benefit from the fertility put into my soil several generations ago, how should I absolve my repayment of that debt? How, under your system would anyone undertake any project whose benefits will only accrue to future generations?

Societies exist, and their mere existence benefits their members. It seems you've developed a moral system which just can't exist. The child above shouldn't ever have been put in that position because they should never have been born. But in this case it's not so much your moral system leading to antinatalism as antinatalism being required in order to make your system coherent.

You have moral intuitions about sacrificing your preferences for the sake of others I assume, so is it just that any such duty must be secondary to one's personal preferences? — Isaac


I don't see how that follows from me thinking that social goals are not a good enough reason to force people to do things they don't want to do. — khaled

So, seeing how strongly you feel about communities having moral coercion over individuals, I don't understand how you explain or figure duty. If your community provides you with boons, do you have no duty in return?

If you do, then it seems to follow inexorably that the community can exert a moral coercion contrary to the wants of an individual.

Otherwise what prevents an individual from benefitting from a community's protection, safety-net, shared resources, etc., and then when the time comes to give something back saying "you've no right to tell me what to do"?

First ask yourselves, how much investment and focus is put into vaccine research generally? Compare that with what is now happening with Covid-19. You think those billions now poured into various vaccine programs by major countries won't have an effect? — ssu

Yes, absolutely I think that (or at least not the scale of effect relied on). Developing a vaccine involves a very great number of resources and those resources are spread sufficiently thinly such that it takes a considerable amount of time to complete all the stages. Not all of those resources can simply be bought by throwing money at them. How is money going to increase the number of trained staff? How is money going to increase the supply of minority condition groups to test against? How is money going to speed up the long-term monitoring period?

It's lunacy to invest this amount of money in a medicine which might not even work when there's absolutely proven interventions which we know will save tens of thousands of lives not only now but in the next one, and the next one...

I say: evolution produces animals that are capable of thinking about and acting in accordance with morality. Evolution did not create morality. Just as evolution did not create light, but rather eyes that can sense light. — darthbarracuda

Then what did create morality? It's not obviously like light (which is made of the sorts of fundamental particles which evidently emerged from the big bang, affect other fundamental particles in predictable, measurable ways etc...)

We have very good reason to believe the fundamental particle's existence. In fact it would be almost impossible to construct a prediction-robust theory without it's inclusion in some form.

We have absolutely no such compulsion to posit the existence of some transcendental force (object?) 'morality'. Nor is it in the least bit difficult to create a prediction-robust theory without it. So I'm curious as to why you would create such a convoluted and unnecessary edifice? How is it helping us understand the world?

Antinatalism is in accordance with a set of perceived moral laws that transcend the survival of the species. — darthbarracuda

How do you judge what is and isn't in accordance with this universal set of laws? Let's say I said one of the laws was indeed 'keep the human race alive at all costs'. How would you show that it wasn't there in the codex?

Similarly then, I think life is just about the most serious thing you can get someone without their consent (meaning that if they don't want it, it does the most damage out of anything else) so, similar to a house, I don't get it to people without their consent. I don't think life is easy enough to justify that. — khaled

So, just to clarify, for you my second caveat to "Get the consent of others before doing something potentially harmful to them", the one about taking part on wider social objectives, that's just completely irrelevant?

You have moral intuitions about sacrificing your preferences for the sake of others I assume, so is it just that any such duty must be secondary to one's personal preferences?

What I'm getting at is, for me, the other reason why I'd not feel the need to ask consent of a person before buying them a house (on their credit card) would be if, for some reason, the community really needed them to buy a house. I'd feel perfectly within my moral bounds just going ahead and making that purchase on those grounds. That's how communities function, they have a goal which is more important than any individual.

A community needs members to carry out it's functions (and those functions are important to the existing members). We each play our part in those (as we each benefit from them being done), we know that one day we'll die, yet the part we play is still going to need playing, so we have children, to carry on that role.

Of course all this is post hoc storytelling to explain feelings which are originated either before birth or in our first few years of life and about which we can do very little except try to make sense of them. But the quality of the story matters, it doesn't trivialise it to say it's storytelling, stories are the glue that holds us together (I mean 'us' here as both community and as an individual - you'd be nothing but a contradictory set of incoherent impulses without a 'self' story to hang it all together).

The point I'm making is actually no different to Srap's (I think). Morality is a story we tell ourselves to explain the feelings our biology and early childhood experiences have left us with. It can't be 'worked out', but it is vitally important, and that story is about the community, not the individual. The morality story wouldn't even make sense at an individual level.

That's a question you should ask shope not me. — khaled

Fair point.

But if we're still talking about that then I wasted about 1.5 hours misreading you, sorry about that. — khaled

No problem, I'm sorry for any sloppiness in my writing which may have mislead you.

Where have I suggested the antinatalist doesn't believe this? — Isaac


Here:

No. I know antinatalists have this weird idea that you can't do anything for a person who doesn't yet exist, but tell that to the parent who's saving up children's toys for their as yet un-conceived grandchildren — Isaac


Which is why I said this is a criminal misinterpretation of the argument. — khaled

The premise we were talking about was whether one can consider harms which may befall an as yet non-existent person. I believe one can, and it's my understanding that antinatalists do too. The premise I described above as 'wierd' was that we cannot consider benefits which might accrue to an as yet non-existent person. A different principle, and one which I've been told many times is a crux of antinatalist thinking. If that's mistaken then I'm lost as to why a simple weighing of pros and cons on behalf of their future selves (as they cannot do so themselves) is not entirely reasonable.

If I really really like a game and I know you would probably really like it too, it is still wrong for me to tape you to a seat and force you to play it for 5 hours. — khaled

Yes, but only because it's possible to ask my consent. If, for some reason it weren't possible to ask me, and yet strapping people into games (or not) were a normal part of life, then yes, I would hope that you'd choose to strap me into the game, if you've good reason to think I'll enjoy it better than the alternatives. Why would I want to miss out on a good game just out of spite for not being asked when it wasn't even possible to ask me anyway? Being asked is my number one choice, second would be someone making a good balanced choice for me, not someone defaulting to 'no risk of harm whatsoever', for some reason. It's not how I make decisions about my life when I can do so, so why would I want it to be how decisions are made for me when I can't?

Just saying this to clarify my position, consider the questions rhetorical. I haven't forgotten you're not trying to push an agenda.

It wouldn't be a stupid mistake if everyone believed it because that includes you and if you believe it it is obviously not stupid from you POV :wink: — khaled

Fair point. My comprehension failure.

I have no excuse for this one. I just straight up misread. Sorry for all the trouble. — khaled

No trouble. It happens.

I guess we're done for real this time as I don't really have an opposition against the two points you're arguing. — khaled

Cool. It was interesting to hear what you had to say.

It might also work as a paradox of game theory, but I'm not going to work that out. (Not in this post anyway.) — Srap Tasmaner

Please do at some point though. It would be an interesting process to follow.

Meanwhile Dirac was doing it right and seeing reversibility in more accurate equations. — Kenosha Kid


OK, you really seem to believe the proposition that time is reversible, and applying this proposition in physics is "doing it right". I sincerely hope that you do not really have a PhD in physics if this is an indication of what is being taught in physics these days. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, to think that the collective professor-hood of world physics didn't think to come and check what you personally find intuitively plausible before constructing their curricula. What an oversight!

However, considering the harm the pandemic has already had on the global community, we can already conclude that vaccine technology does not protect public health from negative infectious disease outcomes, and investments in vector control, better outbreak protocols, treatment capacity, but most importantly simply public health in a general sense (preventing preventable diabetes, obesity, lung harm from bad air etc.) are more effective investments. In particular, investments in public health in the sense of healthy people is not even a cost but pays for itself many times over.

And yet, public health policy of the last decades has been based on under-investing in healthy foods, healthy city design, healthy habits, and healthy air -- which turns out to benefit fossil and food corporations -- and over-investing in medical technologies that "fix problems post-fact" -- which turns out to benefit pharmaceutical and other medical corporations. Certainly only coincidence and these policy failings will be swiftly corrected going forward. — boethius

Absolutely right. Which is why this Hollywood disaster movie narrative needs to be undermined. The hero is not going to "tell little Johnny I love him" and then sweep in and save the world from the evil virus. The 'evil' is the fact that we've strung out our health services, and the health of our citizens, to such a knife-edge that they can't handle what should be an expected part of human life (the emergence of a novel virus).

Unfortunately, 'successive governments yield to self-interest and corporate lobbying to create conditions for an otherwise handle-able virus to become devastating, but gradual pressure form social-interest groups brings about reform' doesn't make anywhere near as good a story as 'evil deadly virus sweeps the planet while the brave pharmaceutical workers engage in a selfless race to seek a cure (that will completely coincidentally earn them billions)'

As an example - the issue I just raised about reduction in the deaths on intubation. What came up as one of the most common factors in reduction of mortality? Normal ICU care. Not some fancy new technique, not a new medicine, just the ordinary, already established level of care that any sane country would have built some capacity in, given the very obvious and well-predicted threat of such an event as this.

And as to...

Also the speed that we will get a vaccine will likely be impressive. — ssu

... where else would you here such an expression outside of this narrative? "the speed which which you did those pre-flight safety checks was impressive", "the speed with which that new food additive was passed by the FDA was impressive", "The speed with which that new pesticide was approved was impressive". In any normal sense we'd be very worried indeed that a drug which is probably going to be taken by the entire world was being rushed through as the only hope of humanity's survival, but in this movie it's fine because the pharmaceutical companies have become the all-American hero, and any narrative dissenting from the "evil virus will kill everyone unless stopped by medicine" storyline is given greenish under-lighting and discordant music in the background.

Why are you adding that particular set of limits and not some other common constraints such as harm done in the pursuit of wider social objectives (like punishment for crime), or harm done where the harm is considered 'character building', or harm done where a greater harm would befall if not done — Isaac


I could ask you the same question. This is a vanilla vs chocolate argument. — khaled

I add the caveats so that I'm not forced into repugnant conclusions by following the rule. we've already established that what we personally find appealing and repugnant varies and has no logical method by which it can be derived. Why are we going over this again? The question is why on earth anyone would publish their personal preferences in a public forum when those preferences are the metaphorical equivalent of saying one prefers mud-flavour. We've no cause to say you shouldn't, but it's just a really weird position with nothing in favour of it.

All common caveats to the definition of 'harm' in this context, many of which could be used to mitigate the harm of conceptions, all of which you conveniently leave off your addendum. — Isaac


Because I think those caveats are BS in other words, very unintuitive. — khaled

You're not following the thread of the argument at all. I'm not questioning your bizarre 'intuitions' at all, you raised the un-appended version as if it lead to obvious conclusions. It's antinatalists who raise these partial rules and try to claim they lead inexorably to antinatalism. If you know already that there are perfectly reasonable caveats which avoid antinatalism (just ones which you happen to find unintuitive) then there's nothing philosophically interesting here - psychologically interesting, certainly.

It would still be wrong to say that they are doing them for "Non existing children". Did you read that sentence? It makes zero sense. You can say they are doing it for the benefit of people will exist but definitely not for the benefit of literal nothingness. — khaled

Makes perfect sense to me. I can guarantee you if you asked any of these people who they're doing it for they would answer "my grandchildren" without confusion, not "my future grandchildren who might exist but don't yet". We are capable of talking about acting for the benefit of imaginary beings, it's quite a normal part of humanity. If you wanted to say "ah but you're really benefiting them in the future when they exist", that's fine (but unnecessarily clumsy), I don't see how that changes anything.

The whole basis of the argument of antinatalism is that the actions you do have moral weight even if the person they affect doesn't exist yet and on the basis of THAT you shouldn't have children because it will result in them being harmed in the future. This is a central belief to antinatalism so it baffles me that you think every antinatalist doesn't believe in it. — khaled

Where have I suggested the antinatalist doesn't believe this?

If you admit that an act has moral weight even if the affected party doesn't exist yet then what do you do about the fact that the child would be harmed as well. — khaled

Balance that against the pleasures they might experience.

I could now argue "It is perfectly reasonable to not have a child on the ground that they'd probably hate some of what life has to offer". — khaled

Again, you're not following the argument, just reaching for knee-jerk prepared responses. I'm not laying out the complete reason to have children, I'm answering a specific point you raised. There's no call to assume I mean "...and don't include any other factors other than this one" at the end of every answer I give. I've already stated when you asked me directly about it that one need weigh the advantages against the harms when deciding something for someone not capable of giving consent. If you want me to take more care not to misrepresent your position you might lead by example.

Let me ask you this: Why does there need to be a disease AND everyone agree that ending the human race was preferable for ending the human race to become moral? — khaled

Because morality is not something decided by majority, it's decided by feelings I have, and I would allow for the possibility that everyone in the human race at the time had made a stupid mistake in their agreement to end it. Likewise, I don't trust myself to know everything with such certainty that I'm going to advocate ending the human race without widespread agreement. Hence both a reason I find plausible, and widespread agreement that such a reason is plausible are necessary.

This really undermines your premise that "Anything that ends the human race is bad and should never even be considered" — khaled

I've literally written the exact opposite of this in a comment you even reply to further down. Please read my comments carefully or not at all. I've nowhere said "...never..." and have specifically said that such absoluteness is to be avoided.

So what exactly is your problem if everyone tomorrow became an antinatalist and jointly decided that the human race should end. Because you've raised this issue from post one, implying that "ending the human race" is an unacceptable conclusion a jillion times but here you add the very important caveat "against its members' wishes". Antinatalism does NOT end the human race against its members' wishes so what is your issue with it now? — khaled

See above. Also, none of this has been about a lot of people independently arriving at the conclusions that we should end the human race. It's entirely about why anyone would want to actively persuade others not currently of that opinion to change their view.

So do you approve of malicious genetic engineering? Because it is not wrong according to caveat 1. — khaled

Yes it is. Do you even read what I write? "1. That the person exists, is conscious, is able to respond, and is judged to be of their right mind - absent of either you have to guess what they might want done (where the harm might be weighed against benefits" - in what way might someone want to be genetically engineered to have a disability?

Your whole post has just blatantly ignored most of what I've written and returned to lines of argument we've already established positions on as if we hadn't. There's little point in continuing if, no matter what I say, you're going to give me a short essay on "everything I know about antinatalism". The arguments I'm making (the only ones I've ever made) are -

- that antinatalism proceeds from, or relies on, some very uncommon moral beliefs and as such the fact that it reaches uncommon conclusions is neither surprising nor philosophically interesting.

- that upon seeing the conclusion resulting from these unusual beliefs are repugnant to many, and insulting when presented as anything like an objective moral (as they often are, but not by you), it is particularly anti-social to publish them on a philosophy forum (given the above lack of philosophical interest).

If you have any arguments against ether of those positions, I'd be glad to hear them, but so far all the lines of intuitions you've opened up have ended up admitting that these are 'vanilla vs chocolate' cases, thus supporting my first argument. The second doesn't even relate to you, but you started out defending a person to whom it does relate and then dropped that line of argument.

What I've no interest in is what strange moral intuitions you might have which lead to antinatalism. The only interest there would be if you had common intuitions which lead to antinatalism, but since one common intuition is that ending the human race would be morally bad (in all but the most extreme circumstances), that seems categorically impossible from the start.

We are born with certain basic innate a priori concepts such as time, space, causation, colour, sound, etc . During our lives, through regular observation and reasoning, we can combine these basic concepts into more complex concepts such as justice, buildings, tables, horses, etc. — RussellA

When looking at a set of shapes in the world, we are only able to recognize those parts of an object for which we already have innate a priori concepts. — RussellA

I've not been following this thread, just had a quick skim to catch up so apologies if I missed them, but this is a particular area of interest of mine, so I'd really appreciate some links to the research behind this, particularly that last section (it seems to contradict some of Seth's work at Sussex on perception, which I follow quite closely, so I'm particularly interested in that one).

Then they're useless. — frank

So why did you cite one from that period to make your point?

Now that I've worked with people who were in NY and got the whole holy fuck story, yes, I could tell you why the mortality rate was awful. — frank

Well, that would be really useful, from where would you get your data and what model do you think it's best to use to analyse it?

The point here, before we get sidetracked, is that if we're going to maximise our chances of preventing the next million deaths resulting from this thing, what's required is careful, dispassionate analysis of what's actually happening, and considered long-term responses, not reliance on poor quality or out-of-date data and knee-jerk, populist reactions just because they happens to fit this Hollywood disaster movie narrative everyone seems to be desperate for.

Right, I get what you mean by 'timeframe' now. No, none of these studies are from after July, but then I very much doubt the 60% figure is from after July either, we don't seem to be able to gather good data that quickly so if you've some reason to believe earlier practices gave an artificially low mortality, you'd have to explain the much higher mortalities of studies which preceded them by only a month or so.

None of the analysis I've read has mentioned an effect of changing the threshold for intubation, but if there were one, what could explain the much higher figures of early studies?

Wait, what timeframe did this study cover? I'm in contact with people all over the country and nobody is getting results like that. — frank

It doesn't say, but at Emory University in Atlanta they got a mortality rate among 165 COVID-19 patients placed on a ventilator of just under 30%, so it's not an oddity. Nor is it unexpected, as care treatment regimes stabilise (as well as some reduction in most vulnerable prior comorbidities). I'm not sure what effect you're thinking of which would be effected by timescale (as opposed to just sample size), perhaps you could elaborate?

I think it was in jama, but with all your time in the ICU, I'm sure that number doesnt surprise you. — frank

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765184

This one perhaps? There were serious methodological flaws (still struggling patients were not recorded, only survival vs death).

Personally, I'd hope anyone actually working in an ICU would be far too busy to analyse a range of papers and compare methodologies, range and applicability. If I wanted an overview I'd turn to a statistician or epidemiologist, not a random frontline worker.

Not all ventilated covid people have lung damage.

Put your spectacles on, Isaaac. — frank

Well if your figures only include a subset of all ventilated patients then the study you're extracting them from must be extreme indeed because prior to the Vanderbilt study the figures we were working with were around 65-80% of all ventilated patients.

Either your subset is not far off the full set or your study massively overestimated deaths compared to contemporary studies.

No. There's a 60% mortality rate for any patients who end up on a ventilator for covid related lung damage.

It's bad. — frank

According to the recently collated experience at Vanderbilt University Medical Center

[for] COVID-19 patients on ventilators in existing ICUs with experienced intensive care teams ... the mortality rate "is in the mid-to-high 20% range...

That's only a bit higher than the death rate for patients placed on ventilators with severe lung infections unrelated to the coronavirus.

As bad as it is is bad enough, there's no advantage in pushing a narrative, otherwise we miss dealing with the real problems.

Saying that only humans have a first-person perspective isn't saying that we (or someone) only think of first-person perspectives when humans are involved, it's saying that there's something incorrect about considering the first-person perspective of anything else. — Pfhorrest

I see. Then the problem is prior to this stage, as this stage already assumes there exists a coherent, well-defined metaphysical constructed set 'first-person perspective' and that the only task is determining which objects satisfy its membership criteria. I think the problem is that such a set is ill-defined, possibly even incoherent and that is the cause of the confusion.

you just pick the intuitions that have the most intuitive conclusions — khaled

What's the difference between an intuition and an intuitive conclusion?

And for antinatalists, antinatalism IS the most intuitive conclusion. — khaled

Well then it relies on intuitions which are very uncommon. I fail to see how whether the intuitions it relies on relate to the premises or the conclusion makes any difference to its philosophical interest. Either way, no one with a relatively normal set of intuitions is going to be in the least bit interested in the argument because it has nothing to do with them. The only people you're addressing here are those who already agree.

Let me limit harm to "Psychological or Physical damage done to an innocent party (not self defence) that is not done with the intention of helping that party (not surgery, vaccines, etc)" — khaled

Why are you adding that particular set of limits and not some other common constraints such as harm done in the pursuit of wider social objectives (like punishment for crime), or harm done where the harm is considered 'character building', or harm done where a greater harm would befall if not done... All common caveats to the definition of 'harm' in this context, many of which could be used to mitigate the harm of conceptions, all of which you conveniently leave off your addendum.

Resonable? If so, and assuming giving birth to someone is harming them, that harm is done on an innocent party and is not done to help them (because they didn't exist to want help) so is not permissable. — khaled

No. I know antinatalists have this weird idea that you can't do anything for a person who doesn't yet exist, but tell that to the parent who's saving up children's toys for their as yet un-conceived grandchildren, or planting a woodland, or putting money into a trust fund. Who are they imagining will enjoy these things? Of course you can do things to help people who don't yet exist. The idea that you can't is ludicrous, you do so on exactly the same grounds as the surgery. As @Srap Tasmaner has already highlighted, the emergency surgery we might perform on an unconscious victim of a car accident is done with exactly the assumption that they probably would like to be kept alive. We might, perfectly reasonably, have a child on the grounds that they'd probably like to enjoy some of what life has to offer. Neither can actually consent to this (one is unconscious, the other doesn't exist yet), but in neither case do we have any trouble imagining what their feelings might be, as and when they have any. I'm not going to re-hash the arguments Srap has already made, but it comes down to a very convoluted treatment of not-yet-existence which is neither intuitive nor useful so one is left again wondering why the antinatalist would create such an edifice.

It uses all the same caveats except "Ending the human race is to be avoided at all costs". — khaled

Yes but why, is the question. Once you accept caveats to your overarching principle, why select out one of those and discard it? (Oh and it's not "...at all costs" - this superfluity is the real problem here. It's like absolutely every other moral feeling - complex and full of caveats. I'm sure if, somehow, the entire human race became infected with an awful disease passed on to the next generation which rendered life unbearable and all agreed it was so, then ending the human race would become a viable moral option).

what caveats would YOU put on "You should ask for consent before harming someone". I'd rather you answer that first even if you don't reply to anything else. — khaled

1. That the person exists, is conscious, is able to respond, and is judged to be of their right mind - absent of either you have to guess what they might want done (where the harm might be weighed against benefits).
2. That no wider important social objective is undermined by avoiding that harm, if so a balance might need to be made - we're a social species, not just a bunch of unrelated individuals.
3. That you don't have good reason to believe you already have consent - I add this one because the 'before' bit is ambiguous - how much before, to what specificity?

I am not here to say that antinatalism leads to intuitive conclusions. I was saying that not believing in its premises also has consequences so that is the justification for why you would believe them. It then becomes a matter of which is the least counterintuitive which is of course subjective. — khaled

Yes, but this is part of the main point I'm trying to make. You seem to have this sharp line between a moral intuition used as a premise and a moral intuition used to reject (or choose between) counter-intuitive conclusions. I can't see any justification for such a divide, they're all just moral intuitions.

I think we'd both agree that regardless of whatever criteria I use to determine whether or not consent is required that requiring consent when you're about to harm someone is pretty reasonable no? — khaled

No, not in the least bit. Self-defence, emergency surgery, corporal punishment, vaccinations... And that's just physical harm, which doesn't cover the definition of 'harm' used in antinatalist arguments. If we extend 'harm' to any discomfort there's punishment of criminals, all laws affecting under 18s, all laws affecting anarchists, any use of shared resources, walking in the same space someone else wanted to walk in... The number of situations where we 'harm' others without their consent vastly outnumbers the situations where we ask for consent. As I said earlier, none of these maxims are applied in their simple form, every single one has a huge list of caveats and addendum. Treating them as simple is what leads to odd conclusions.

That antinatalism an in internally consistent system that doesn't rely on premises that are too unpopular. — khaled

It isn't. It relies on premises (moral intuitions) taken without the usual caveats which is not at all popular.

It's actually a very curious experience going over things like fractions and exponents with someone who has a very rich conceptual apparatus — Srap Tasmaner

Not sure if this is the same thing you're talking about, but the thing I found with mine is that they never took anything for granted everything was questioned and everything was 'tried out' in a whole bunch of different conceptual frameworks. I think that's why each had a different experience with maths, one saw it as a game, the other as a tool. From the latter I'd get things like "why don't we just use decimals instead of fractions, then we could do all the sums on a calculator? It's not like we're ever going to measure anything accurately enough for it to be exactly 1/3 and not 0.3333... stopping at some point?". To her it was like learning how to use a hammer which was specialised for nails no-one ever encountered. But English GCSE was the worst with both, by a long way, the whole experience was like pulling teeth. Something about the ambiguous nature of language and literary expression did not sit well with mine when asked to provide the 'right' answer for an exam. With regard to the OP, I dread to think what irritation an attempt to pass a Philosophy GCSE would have initiated, but I'd be surprised if the examination centre emerged unmarred!

I don't know if it's still the case (nor even ever was outside of the UK), but we found most universities to be really quite accommodating when it came to alternative educational routes. Mine only did two GCSE's (English and Maths), but places asking for five almost all accepted two (plus interview) when they learned the kids were home educated. In hindsight I felt we might even have been able to get away with less.

Interesting what you say about music and maths. I'm learning music theory at the moment. I think it's fascinating how the addition of one note can change the mood of a piece just because of a mathematical relationship between it's sound wave and those around it. Kind of like experiencing maths, in that you're quite viscerally responding to some fairly unadulterated mathematical patterns, but like many of these 'ways in' you hear a lot about in education they only get so far. You could probably link it to wave functions, but start to draw a tenuous line to simultaneous equations and you'd be on very shaky ground. One of the things I've found in self-directed education is that the topics of conventional schools are non-existent. It's more about getting some objective met. Learning to build roofs requires learning trigonometry, it doesn't then lead to learning calculus just because that's in the same school subject. The job's the subject, not the tools we use for it.

Cool. I did a bit of 'group work' with my local home-ed group too, much the same experience (but without the religion - more 'yoga and yoghurt' - curiously similar obsessions with candles and incense though...). Very different to teaching in a more academic setting, much more challenging as you can't rely so much on prepared lectures, but I like that.

It was fun for me, but I have my doubts any of them caught the wonder of math I was trying to get across. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, it's not for everyone, but I'm sure it was a damn sight better than most kids get in conventional schools.

Lately my oldest son and I have been filling in his math gaps so he can get a GED. At the moment it doesn't look like any of mine are headed for college, but you just never know. Life is twisty and unpredictable, and there's no one right way to do it. — Srap Tasmaner

Absolutely. Good luck with the GEDs, I find myself more and more of the opinion that the 'standard' academic path is becoming less of a necessary route. It obviously opens some doors, and academic life was good to me for a while, but a lot of employers now are recognising that it's such a 'factory line' that the certificates don't really distinguish potential employees in the way they'd like.

This assumption isn't a conclusion that needs to be there. — schopenhauer1

How do you judge which conclusions 'need' to be there?

Completely agree! My youngest son even learned how to read with no formal instruction at all. Reveal


The trickiest thing is math because it takes training. — Srap Tasmaner

Excellent! My two both learned how to read without any input from teachers too. Neither have had any formal lessons at all prior to university and both have degrees, one doing her doctorate right now. Only trouble is one then has absolutely no call for self-congratulation as I played no part at all in their success.

Maths is tricky. My eldest found it really hard yet my youngest found it easy - but the books are out there. Ian Stewart was the key (wrote a lot of popular maths books), great intro to the subject.

What I was actually looking for in asking this question was the grounds on which you'd claim the premises of antinatalism were not 'completely ridiculous', — Isaac


Letting go of them invidividually causes problems. Example: We shouldn't do something to harm people in the future even if the affected party doesn't exist in the present. NOT believing this will mean malicious genetic engineering is fine. Etc. Each premise leads to some unintuitive conclusions when not believed. — khaled

But if believing them leads to antinatalism then each premise leads to counter intuitive conclusions if believed too. You haven't removed the counter intuitive conclusions by believing them. The only way to remove the counter intuitive conclusions is to accept the fact that moral imperatives are not simple rules which can be universally applied but rather are complex multi-faceted guides which must be carefully interpreted in each case.

And the "relativism" bit means that there is no moral claim that applies to everyone. So why do you care what I think you should or shouldn't do if I don't try to enforce it (which I won't because I recognize that my view isn't objective) — khaled

Ah. Then we have different ideas of what moral relativism means. That explains it. I'm not a moral relativist in the terms you're using. I don't think that my morals don't apply to you, I think my morals do apply to you. I just recognise that you will have different morals that you (might) think apply to me and that there's no objective means of determining who's right. I don't really understand this conception of morality that you're describing, it sounds indistinguishable from just doing whatever you feel like and letting others do the same? If so I don't understand...

For something to be a moral judgement it has to be reasoned about. — khaled

But maybe a discussion of your moral framework is too much of an aside here. Point is It's not like mine. If I interpret your saying something is immoral as just meaning that you personally wouldn't do it but you don't care if I do then I'm certainly much less offended by your defence of antinatalism but then you weren't really the target of my inquiry...

But if there's no compelling argument (other than just "well that's what my unusual premises lead to") — Isaac


Again, how can you have a MORE compelling argument than this? — khaled

By using premises which are not so odd, then your argument will apply to the people reading it. "If all unicorns are white then my pet unicorn is white" is a compelling argument, but of absolutely no philosophical interest whatsoever

Again for the 100th time. Shope didn't make this abount antinatalism you did. — khaled

I've already demonstrated that he did, and others reading the thread got that impression too. One only need look at previous threads to see the same trend. I'm not tilting at windmills here, this is a real trend.

Once again, not all harm done is your responsibilty. — khaled

We weren't talking about responsibility. You asked about consent-seeking. The two are not at all the same. If you're claiming that your premise is actually that we should seek consent from those potentially harmed by our action where we have a legal responsibility to do so, or some legal right may be infringed, then your premise no longer leads to antinatalism.

-

There seems to be a general trend, which that last issue picked up on, but earlier ones have too. Some moral imperative is announced "Do not harm others" and then extreme cases of this are examined to see if they lead to counter-intuitive consequences. When they do, the imperative is modified. When applying "Do no harm" we found that would prevent us from defending our own lives, we add the caveat "...unless in self-defence". When applying this new rule we find it would prevent us from carrying out life saving surgery we add the caveat "...unless it's for their own good and you can reasonably assume they would consent", and so on until we end up with "Do not do harm to others... unless it is for their own good, and they can consent to it or would consent if they could but have no choice to not be put there in the first place, and don't have any legal rights which contravene the harm, and not more people will be harmed if you don't and and you're not defending yourself, and...".

To me this just points to the naturalism of morality - we already know what's right and we just try to make maxims to fit it. But I accept that to others we're refining some set of rules to get at 'the truth' or whatever. That's neither here nor there. The point is that everyone does this. Except antinatalists. Antinatalists do it to a point but then seem to reach "end the human race" as a conclusion and instead of adding another caveat to avoid such an obviously wrong conclusion, they just accept it. We didn't do that with any previous counter-intuitive conclusions, why this one?

I'm surprised to hear you of all people asking for a justification to physicalism. Aren't you hard-core all-there-is-to-the-mind-is-the-brain?

In any case, you've already seen my arguments against the supernatural, as you were engaged extensively in the thread where I presented them. And by "metaphysically special" I mean pretty much "supernatural" — Pfhorrest

Ah, then we have crossed wires somewhere. Here's what I get thus far from your argument...

1. There exists a metaphysical construct called 'phenomenal consciousness' or 'first-person experience'.
2. This appears to be unique to humans (or sentient life)
3. It cannot not be there because otherwise we'd be philosophical zombies
4. It cannot appear out of nowhere simply by the action of some cells coming together otherwise that would require supernatural intervention.

So it must have been present feature of the cells (and other objects?) all along, just weakly expressed.

What I don't get (and I think this is @Luke's question as well). Is why you're concerned about a metaphysical construct emerging out of nowhere. It has no implications for physicalism at all. Metaphysical constructs are aspects of the human minds which hold them, they can be attached to absolutely anything by any rules whatsoever. If we want to attach 'first person perspective' to only humans, then what is preventing us from doing so? We made it up after all, we can attach it to whatever we like, surely?

everything has a first-person perspective, because the alternative is either that even we do not, or that something is metaphysically special about us. — Pfhorrest

Yet you've not explained why you have an issue with there being something metaphysically special about us. We are perhaps the only species to engage in metaphysics. Why on earth would you be surprised to find that it becomes anthropocentric in it's constructs?