Nothing is unclear, it's offensive. The idea that the only thing making disabled people's lives worth living is the difficulty of suicide is deeply offensive. — Isaac


It's not specific to disabled people. That's the case for everyone. Life is worth living because living it to the fullest is the best alternative once it has begun. — khaled

The example here was about disabled children, not children in general. You were implying that disability was a harm which it would be immoral to cause with foreknowledge. this is offensive to disabled people because many feel that their disability is a harm because of society's failure to accommodate them, not the circumstances of their birth. Turning it back into something which presents a good example of a harm which could be avoided undermines this project.

How are we determining what is and is not 'completely ridiculous' in this sense? — Isaac


That there are consequences that are not very intuitive if you don't believe in one of the premises. For example: If you believe that social goals should take precedence over personal freedom then enforcing a two child rule sort of like china did would be ethical. It would somehow be ethical to force parents to raise kids when they don't want to. — khaled

I don't understand your point here. Are you saying that a set of premises is completely ridiculous IFF they lead to consequences which are not very intuitive? You seem to go on to give an example unrelated to anything that's been said (some kind of legally enforced obligation to have children) as if that's what you were suggesting, but then that would without doubt include antinatalist premises in the same boat (since the conclusion there is the extremely counter-intuitive "we should end the human race". As I've said a dozen times before now unusual premises tend to lead to unusual conclusions. Why this continues to surprise people is beyond me. 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', yet you'd want to reserve the term presumably thinking it possible for some premises to be 'completely ridiculous'. The premises of antinatalism lead to a very counter-intuitive conclusion, so that can't be the deciding factor, so what is it?

it is only an attack if both parties agree that there is some measure of objectiviety so only one theory can possibley "fit". But since neither of us seems to agree that there is an objective morality, I can posit that it is wrong to have kids because x and y and if you disagree with x and y that is no longer an attack then is it? — khaled

As I said before, I think you've misunderstood moral relativism. A moral claim is a claim about how others should act, not a claim about one's personal prefernces. If you personally don't want to have children, but you think it's fine if I do, you're not an antinatalist. Antinatalism is a moral position, it states that other people should not have children (ie they are wrong if they do so). Otherwise what distinguishes antinatalism from just 'not wanting to have children'?

If I were to tell everyone I meet that they're fat and ugly, the social condemnation for that behaviour is not avoided by me saying "well that's just my opinion, if you don't think you're fat and ugly then no harm done". Stating to the world that you think anyone who has children has caused them an unjustified harm is an unpleasant thing to do, it needs at least some just reason to do so. But if there's no compelling argument (other than just "well that's what my unusual premises lead to") then I can't see any good reason why someone would repeatedly say something so unpleasant. It being their opinion isn't sufficient justification.

Yes, if I want to fell a tree I don't typically have to ask for the consent of every potential future person who might shade under it's boughs. — Isaac


But they have no right or special claim on the tree so although that is harmful, you are not responsible for it. And I doubt people would be harmed by the non existence of a tree they never saw. If the tree was in their backyard though....

But yes we do actually have to consider the consequences of indiscriminantly cutting down trees or else we get global warming. — khaled

You've missed the point. You asked about examples of situations where consent is not asked of non-existent persons for actions which may harm them. Finding no shelter from the rain where there might have been shelter definitely harms a future person. I did not ask their consent before removing that shelter. The specifics don't matter. the point is absolutely everything I do has the potential to harm future people by the absence of some resource which I've used that they might have benefited from. I do not ask their consent. Every structural alteration I make to the world might harm a future person who so much as trips over it. I don not ask their consent before doing so. Thinking of the consequences is not the same as asking their consent. Your argument fails if it becomes simply a matter of thinking of consequences. It relies on there being a general intuition that we should ask the consent of those who might be negatively affected by our actions even if they don't exist. We simply do not generally have that intuition.

What more is a moral judgement than a feeling of social or biological obligation? — Isaac


When I eat I don't do so because it is morally right or wrong. And from what I have seen that's most people's position on having kids. — khaled

So what is the difference then, you haven't answered the question, only shown that social or biological obligations are not sufficient. That doesn't in itself prove that the decision to have children is the same as the decision to eat. I don't think anyone would disagree that it is a moral duty to look after one's children, yet most people do so without questioning it out of a strong biological instinct. You'll have to provide some distinguishing feature if you want to argue that any decision made instinctively without question cannot therefore be a moral one.

this thread is intended as more just a general pessimism theme, yet you took this for an immediate defense of AN proper — schopenhauer1

Yet...

It's like if I threw you in a game and you didn't ask to play it, can't escape, and aren't particularly good at it. In fact, you have a defect that can prevent you from playing well in many ways. Then I say, "Well, it's justified that you are suffering based on your poor ability to play this game". Yeah, no. — schopenhauer1

Before the first page is even out it had become about antinatalism,

We cannot justify any harms on the basis of poor decisions => all harms must therefore be unjustified => we therefore must cause unjustified harms just by having children. You couldn't have made the garden path you wanted to lead us down more obvious if you'd have lit it up with neon signs.

You aren't attacking the topics at hand as much as characterizing a poster. In fact, you yourself are hijacking the topic by not actually posting much about it, but rather taking this as a chance to vent your feelings about my posts in general. — schopenhauer1

Pretty much, yeah. Although it's not you alone, it's a certain type of poster of which you're an example, The topic itself is ludicrous and engagement with it would have just fanned the flames of this fantasy that your position is somehow amenable to, or a result of, rational discussion. What interests me is the thought processes that goes into the defence you mount - the moves you make, the methods you use, where you switch between concession and repetition, which counters are ignored, which are woven into the narrative... The topic itself is dull and amounts to nothing more than "I have some unusual premises, look at the unusual conclusions which result from following them" - well, no shit! Who on earth would be interested to find that unusual conclusions result from unusual premises? No, the manner in which you defend them is the only interesting part here.

So now, anytime a fuckn' person posits a moral normative theory, they are ATTACKING some group of people? — schopenhauer1

No, but when they posit a moral theory which condemns a known group of people as having acted immorally, then that is exactly what it is doing. Kant condemned a nebulous group of people, those who couldn't universalise their maxims (apologies to any Kant scholars for what I'm sure is a crass oversimplification of Kant). Anyone could think themselves not in this group, nor could Kant know who the target of his condemnation was. Your position holds that anyone who has children has caused them unjustified, immoral harm. You know exactly who your position condemns, and everyone reading knows inescapably whether they fall into that group. You are declaring to the public "I think anyone who has had children has caused them unjustified harm which no amount of kindness can now undo". That's a horrible thing to say. If you feel that way but you have no reason to think anyone else would (ie the premises which lead you there are idiosyncratic) then why on earth would you keep telling people?

The only thing you have posted of value here was this:

1. That it is morally acceptable to end the human race
2. That the rights of the individual trump the pursuit of other social objectives.
3. That absence of harm is a moral good, but absence of pleasure is not a moral bad
4. That absence of harm continues to be a moral good even in the absence of any humans to experience that absence.
5. That we ought obtain consent from others whenever our actions might affect them in any negative way even if they don't yet exist. — Isaac


If you JUST posted that.. we could have had some lucrative discussions. — schopenhauer1

No, on previous experience we could not. In fact that was the least useful thing I posted and I only did so because I felt to continue to refuse would be laboured.

All of those points have been made before, they serve only to cement the position which you already know - you have some very unusual premises, some very unusual conclusions result from following them. This is neither surprising nor philosophically interesting and, given that one of the main conclusions is quite offensive, continuing to repeat it in spite of this is cantankerous to say the least.

I've seen crazier things on this site tbh — khaled

Yes, using threads in this site as a measure of reasonable activity is certainly not advisable!

-

I'll deal with all the stuff about whether this thread (and others) are attacking natalists or not first.

The title of the thread is "Is our "common sense" notion of justified suffering/pain wrong?" - not "Here's another way of looking at our notion of justified suffering" - it sets, right at the outset, the idea that our position might be actually wrong.

I agree it's not directly about antinatalism at first, but that's the main reason why I responded in such an exasperated fashion, because we all knew it was going to end up that way. Virtually all of the other similar threads have done so, it's part of this whole insidious approach which I find obnoxious. The issue is sidled up to quite deliberately (I suspect) because we've had the actual antinatalism discussions a dozen times before and it didn't end well. There's a bunch of posters who do this on various pet subjects (nuclear weapons comes to mind) and it annoys me. I was on a long train journey at the time, so I picked up on it to pass the time. I might have chosen another, but didn't. As to whether I was right, I don't think the ensuing discussion with Srap was initiated by my comment, but before the first page was even done it had become about antinatalism.

You seem to have avoided the issue of how antinatalism atttacks natalists simply by positing a moral harm. It's not like two different positions on the trolley dilemma which no-one will ever find themsleves directly in. Claiming that creating conditions for harm without consent is always and in all cases morally unjustified makes everyone abusers of their own children. Having just established that this is not an inescapable conclusion but rather just a preferred set of axioms surely you can see how repeatedly announcing this opinion might come across as antagonistic?

-

I never intended to convince you of anything only to show that the position is not some nonsensical bs as you were making it out to be. That there is a set of beliefs which consistently lead to it which aren't completely ridiculous but all have real consequences if absent. — khaled

'The position' being 'it is possible to have some set of axioms which lead to antinatalism'? I don't think any such claim was ever at issue. If it was it seems trivially easy to defeat. It's possible get to any conclusion at all given the right axioms. 'The position' as it comes across is that antinatalism results from moral intuitions we all agree on, that it's a surprising but inescapable conclusion from widely shared premises. Otherwise it's entirely unremarkable and just odd.

That there is a set of beliefs which consistently lead to it which aren't completely ridiculous but all have real consequences if absent. — khaled

How are we determining what is and is not 'completely ridiculous' in this sense?

Can you think of any other exceptions other than having children? — khaled

Yes, if I want to fell a tree I don't typically have to ask for the consent of every potential future person who might shade under it's boughs. Examples are two a penny. I'd go as far as to say that the vast majority of the time we're not morally obligated to consider the consequences of our actions on potential persons. When such consequences are clearly negative, uncomplicated by weighing in a lot of uncertainty, and affect a very obvious single potential person then we'll often feel obliged to consider them. In most other cases it's simply too impractical to try to weigh all the issues.

you seriously think that people have an obligation to have children to keep their society afloat? — khaled

Yes. But my personal view is not the point. The point was that there's no logical method of deriving antinatalism. It's not the conclusion of a Modus Tollens or something, it's just a moral feeling (or set thereof). I raised this in opposition to the frequent assertions that there was some 'conclusion' which I just didn't like so I was denying the logic. Nothing like that is happening here.

People just feel obligated biologically and socially to have children and that's all the reason they seem to need. — khaled

What more is a moral judgement than a feeling of social or biological obligation?

The reason life is worth it when you're already here is because it is very painful to get out so continuing to live is the best option. The reason it is not worth it when you are considering bringing someone else in is because that someone else doesn't experience any sort of deprivation due to not having it. I don't see what's unclear. — khaled

Nothing is unclear, it's offensive. The idea that the only thing making disabled people's lives worth living is the difficulty of suicide is deeply offensive.

It would be as terrible an idea as is pedagogically teaching children about anything. Children are not mindless vessels to be filled with the 'wisdom' of adults, they are active, interested and insatiably curious. Sitting them down in a classroom to 'learn' about philosophy would be disastrous. One more subject matter which might otherwise have been interesting made hateful by association with imprisonment.

I thought we were done... — khaled

You're not obliged to respond, I won't be offended if you just don't.

You can ask "But why should we think that" ad infinium for any position ever. — khaled

You asked me to list the assumptions which were uncommon, I didn't just volunteer them. What was the point in that request if your response was going to be "well anyone can have any assumptions they like as long as they're consistent"?

If it's true that...

All antinatalism has to do is be internally consistent for it to stand on par with other moral theories. — khaled

... then why would one even start a thread on it (which was my original question). It would be akin to starting a thread on the fact that I prefer chocolate to ice cream. Bear in mind, because it's important, these threads are not antinatalists defending their position against accusations that they are wrong. These threads are started by antinatalists telling the rest of us that we're mistaken about some issue. The burden is on the OP to make their case, not on the respondents to withhold a defense of their position lest it be seen as offensive.

I think benetar's asymmetry (what you refer to here) is complete bs. Which shows, again, that you're arguing with a caricature not me. — khaled

You started this discussion by asking me about my objection to @schopenhauer1's positions. If you want now to talk about your personal position you'll have to lay it out for me, but that was not originally the topic of conversation.

You have yet to even bother to ask what my argument for antinatalism is because I doubt you care. Because you seem to just want to have a yelling match over the internet rather than an actual conversation — khaled

You've yet to ask me about my position either, do you feel like all you want is a yelling match? I've no doubt at all that I've mischaracterised your position on occasion, I've no doubt I've attributed beliefs to you which you do not have, and I've no doubt I've responded to positions I find offensive with a tone which belies that offence. It happens. Do you seriously think I could not look back over your posts and find examples of exactly the same issues? No. So lets drop the 'who wants to have the most serious conversation' crap. If you've got an actual concern about something I've said, raise it, with a quoted example, and I'll do my best to correct the issue. Otherwise characterising all opposition as just 'looking for a fight' is a weak defence.

That we ought obtain consent from others whenever our actions might affect them in any negative way even if they don't yet exist. — Isaac


Do you think it is wrong to genetically engineer a child to be disabled? Probably yes. Why is that? What about engineering them to be geniuses?

I have yet to see someone answer "No, it is not wrong" to that question. — khaled

So? The premise I highlighted was that it was "we ought obtain consent from others whenever our actions might affect them in any negative way", not " there are no situations in which we ought consider the effects of our actions on others yet to exist". The premise as it is used in antinatalism requires that there can be no exceptions, that thus rule is not applied pragmatically, but universally and above all others.

This is another form of the asymmetry which, again, you assume I use. Antinatalism has been around way before benetar. — khaled

As I said, you started this discussion by objecting to my response to schop. If you want to discuss your position you will have to lay it out for me.

if all said citizens were antinatalists then there would be no "social objectives" past a single generation. Heck if everyone on earth suddenly became an antinatalist "Ending the human race consentually" would become the social objective. — khaled

Yep. And? Again schop's objection (my original topic) was that we (natalists) cannot use the pursuit of a social objective to trump individual rights. It was not that he'd personally prefer not to himself and would like us to stop making him do so. No one is making him have children. Once more, the threads to which I object are started by antinatalists telling natalists they're wrong, not the other way round.

That everyone must have children even if they don't want to so that social objectives are accomplished, even if the parents don't want to pursue these apparently objective objectives? — khaled

Yes. This would indeed be the inverse of that premise. Should such a bizarre and unlikely situation ever arise then it would create such an obligation. Luckily for us our moral intuitions are not a randomly occurring set of rules drawn from a book, but a muddled and fuzzy set loosely connected to our culture and biology so we needn't really plan for such odd eventualities.

Most people don't think about the morality of it at all. — khaled

Wow. And you thought I was being harsh on schop? You're prepared to sit there and judge the majority of the human race as having given no moral thought to the decision to start a family. On what grounds?

If you see someone arguing over and over about whether or not Jesus was resurrected would you care to intervene? — khaled

Read the OP. It is not a investigative discussion about some philosophical issue. It is a direct, and at times pretty blunt, declaration that we (natalists) are morally wrong for seeing things the way we do, and wrong by way of inconsistency. This not only justifies a robust defence in itself, but is disingenuous when the poster has had it previously shown that we're not wrong by way of inconsistency, but rather simply by way of holding moral intuitions which he does not.

Had the OP been of the form "I hold X unusual premise to be true which you might not have heard of, what do you guys think?" I would have far less objection. All the antinatalist threads I've read have followed exactly the same pattern, they start off implying that natalists are inconsistent, they end up agreeing that we just have different values, then a few weeks later another one turns up, ignoring the conclusions of the first and declaring again that natalists are inconsistent.

Antinatalists aren't just people who've decided not to have children. They're people who accuse others of having unjustifiably harmed their own children. It's no trivial conclusion, it turns the majority of the world into child abusers. Just to be clear (since we've had thus trouble before) I'm not suggesting any antinatalist actually said this, nor even intended it (though I think some do), only that it is an implication of labelling the having of children as causing unwarranted harm to them.

Even if me and shope are lifeless irresponssible morons that doesn't make the argument any more or less valid. — khaled

Indeed, but it wasn't your arguments at issue here was it? The topic of the paragraph to which I was responding was your motives.

There is a difference between whether or not a life is worth continuing and whether or not it's worth starting. "Giving birth to people can harm them so don't do it" In no way implies "Your life is worthless because you're disabled". I am getting sort of tired of replying to willful misinterpretations like these so if I see one more I probably won't reply. — khaled

It is not in your authority to simply declare what a thing implies and what it does not. It is very difficult to see how you would get around the fact that avoiding a life (because it would not be worth the harm) and suggesting a life already lived is not worth the harm, seem to most people exactly the same proposition. Especially if you're suggesting you can do so without Benetar's asymmetry.

"The disabled life is not worth creating" and " The disabled life is not worth having" are different how?

Let's call whatever moral premises you believe in A. Why should we believe A. OH WAIT, don't answer, I don't actually care, let's call whatever you were about to say B. Why should we believe in B. OH WAIT, don't answer, I don't actually care, let's ca....

This is not an objection to antinatalism this is an objection to every belief ever. — khaled

I've no idea what you're trying to say here but it sounds vaguely like you're suggesting that my position might make all fundamental beliefs equally valid. Maybe. But you keep acting as if I voluntarily launched an attack on antinatalism. The thread (and others like it) are launching an attack on natalism, I'm only defending the position.

Antinatalism respects the individual person that will be created. That is what is being considered. It is not an abstracted third-party. Even if one doesn't mean it, one is then using the individual for some abstract reason. It is no longer about the person who will actually be affected by the decision, but for a cause. Antinatalism respects the fact that the person who will be born will inevitably experience suffering, and therefore, with NO negative consequences for that individual (by abstaining to have them), has prevented any negative conditions that will befall that individual. — schopenhauer1

Yes. You've made your neo-liberal individualism pretty clear a number of times already. What is absent is any reason at all why we should think this way. Why do the rights of the individual trump the pursuit of wider causes?

Most of philosophical debate, especially on something like a philosophy forum convincing people about the validity and soundness of an argument with reasoning and having a general dialectic about a line of reasoning. It is also about explaining ideas. — schopenhauer1

Yes, that's exactly what I'm asking for - the 'reasoning'. All I'm being given is the assumptions (the moral intuitions, the assumptions of priority) I'm not getting any reasoning or explanation at all, just "this is the way I feel". For which, I suggest therapy.

Oh and because it might lead to paths that are counterintuitive to what you find to be respectable doesn't make it not so because YOU think it isn't and it is odious, or whatever bullshit you're peddling as a defense to the "nefarious" antinatalists. — schopenhauer1

Nothing here is 'so' or 'not so'. These are not empirical matters. You're talking about moral intuitions. My feeling that is is not respectable or that it is odious is no less a moral intuition than your feelings about the rights of the individual.

knowing full-well that at some point the argument relies upon an intuition which is not commonly held. — Isaac


Again, why don't you specify what you mean? You are saying nothing unless you do so. And since when is an uncommon intuition false? — khaled

I already have, several times. I'll try to just list them here for convenience.

1. That it is morally acceptable to end the human race
2. That the rights of the individual trump the pursuit of other social objectives.
3. That absence of harm is a moral good, but absence of pleasure is not a moral bad
4. That absence of harm continues to be a moral good even in the absence of any humans to experience that absence.
5. That we ought obtain consent from others whenever our actions might affect them in any negative way even if they don't yet exist.

None of these intuitions are common. The main proof of which (among others) is that most people consider it morally acceptable to have children.

Or simply that the antinatalist does not think his premise is hidden at all or that his argument is flawed and just wants to talk about it on an online free philosphy forum? — khaled

This is not the first such discussion and all that I've been involved with have ended in the same way.

Since when does not having kids imply you don't want to bear any responsiblity for the world? — khaled

Pop psychology. It seemed de rigueur. I see a lot of threads from the same people about anti-natalism. I see few about economic inequality, environmental issues, prejudice, human kindness...

On the off-chance that Srap really is ducking out, I hope he won't mind me answering some of the points in that fork of the thread. Having listed the uncommon assumptions, we can just refer to them by number.

No one is benefited. But that is better than having many harmed. — khaled

Number 4.

forcing others into a state where coping is required just to exist is a different matter entirely. What other situations is it considered acceptable to deprive someone forcefully so they can cope (aside from raising children but even that is just done to help them cope in the future)? — khaled

Number 5

Doing an act in the present that will result in harm to someone in the future is wrong even if that person doesn't exist in the present. — khaled

Number 5 again

You can't know whether or not your child will experience a disproportionate amount of pain after they're born. So don't take the risk since you're not going to be the one paying the consequences. — khaled

Number 3

Is it moral for a couple that finds out that they both have hidden genes that will result in their child having a severe mental/genetic illness to have children? — khaled

Number 2 (most people find this approach repugnant for other reasons - namely that it implies disabled people are living worthless lives on account of their disability, when a lot of the time they're living difficult lives on account of our failure to accommodate them).

All of these also present an example of number 1 of course, because pursuing them will lead to the extinction of the human race.

What I've yet to hear is any support or justification for holding any of those five moral positions.

Believing in moral relativism and then attempting to mount an attack against a moral position is basically like a discussion of whether or not you prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream. — khaled

The attack I'm mounting, such as it is, is not against the moral position of 'antinatalism'. It's against the idea that such a position is somehow a logical conclusion from commonly held premises. If some odd people hold harm-avoidance to be more important than the entire human race (the only things that would benefit from this lack of harm in the first place), then they're welcome to such a notion.

My objection here is to the way clearly idiosyncratic preferences which lead to conclusions most people consider repugnant, are repeatedly (and I think deliberately) disguised as some reasonable argument from commonly held intuitions, knowing full-well that at some point the argument relies upon an intuition which is not commonly held. The only reason I can think of for such a practice is the hope of 'recruiting' people who've not noticed this hidden premise, or griping about the world without actually having to bear any responsibilty for doing anything about it. Either I find reprehensible.

As I said, by reasoning from even more basic axioms. For me "It is okay to risk harming others" is much harder to believe than "It is not okay to have kids". Therefore when it comes to procreation, the former win, since I consider procreation a form of risking harming others. — khaled

That's not 'reasoning'. There's no 'reasoning' taking place there at all, it's simply a declaration of how you happen to feel at the moment.

The difference here is that in the case of antinatalism the logic has been revised over and over and the premises do directly lead to the conclusion. — khaled

Nonsense. Are you suggesting that there's been no opposition to anti-natalist arguments on the grounds of faulty logic? The arguments simply seem to you to be flawless. To others they seem flawed. You can choose whether to consider yourself to have made a mistake or others to have done. One of the ways you do that (as in my timber example) is to look at the degree to which the conclusion you reach is in the range you expected. "We should end the human race" is, by anyone's standards, a rather extreme conclusion, one worthy of a thorough re-check of the calculations, and a presumption in favour of those who've reached a more moderate conclusion.

what you are proposing is changing the premises to get a different conclusion. Which is perfectly valid in ethics, but I would rather not do that (because as I said it reeks of self deception) — khaled

Why is it "self-deception" to choose one starting premise, but coldly rational to choose the other?

you can't just contradict one of your own premises in the conclusion. — khaled

Where have I contradicted one of my premises? I only have two premises in that argument - that is is a right to have children and that it is wrong to end the human race. Which of those premises have I contradicted in my conclusion?

No. A minute ago it was all: "You can't just tell yourself that 2+2 does not equal 4 just because you don't like the fact that it is even though the logic adds up." That's all I was saying. — khaled

Who said anything about 'liking' the fact. I'm talking about it being a moral intuition that ending the human race would be bad. If you equate that moral judgement with simply 'liking/disliking' (which I'm not opposed to) then your moral intuition that we shouldn't harm other is simply you not 'liking' to do so (or not 'liking' other doing so). You can't just ascribe some moral intuitions to mere self-deceptive preferences while exulting others as more important than the human species which created them.

Is that your only example? Because if it is then that's my problem. I can't live my whole life abiding by certain moral codes and then just make an exception in one spot because I feel like it. — khaled

Again, it's not 'because you feel like it' any more than the moral code in the first place was 'because you felt like it'. From where are you getting this sharp distinction such that 'not harming others' is some objective moral code divorced from your personal preferences, but continuing the human race is some trivial preference akin to preferring vanilla to chocolate ice-cream. There's no sense at all in humanity that people feel this way about those two things. They are on a par at least. either they're both trivial preferences, or they're both really important moral intuitions.

Mary knew everything that could be known in the third person about color vision.

She did not know what it was like to experience color vision in the first person.

This does illustration that first-person experience is not knowable from the third person. — Pfhorrest

No it doesn't. It simply declares it by the definition of the imaginary world in which the experiment takes place. We don't have an actual Mary who was actually told all there is to know about Red and who then actually reported a new sensation on leaving the room. We imagine such circumstances. All it tells us about is what we imagine to be the case. It tells us absolutely nothing at all about what actually is the case.

Even more base axioms. What shope is doing for example is clashing multiple intuitions against each. — khaled

And how do we decide which of these clashing axioms trumps which?

Wait, so when you argue for a conclusion, one of your premises has to be "This conclusion is acceptable?". So if you want to find the sum of 2 and 2 but you think "2+2=4" is an unacceptable conclusion then 2+2 does not equal 4? — khaled

Yes. If you were working out the length of timber needed for a table cross brace using trigonometry and you got the answer 204m would you unquestioningly proceed to the timber yard and ask for a 204m length of timber for you furniture project, or would you presume you'd makde a mistake somewhere in the calculations?

You start with premises and you reason through them. And whatever you get at the end is true as long as the premises and logic are true. The truth value of an argument does not change because one thinks the conclusion is unacceptable. — khaled

OK, so let's start with the premise that being allowed to have children is an inalienable right and that the human race has an intrinsic value and ending it would be wrong. Having children causes (by your principle - not one I agree with) harm without consent. Therefore it must be OK to cause harm without consent. The premises are true the logic flawless so the conclusion must be true, right?

So how come the 'true' conclusion changes depending on which intuition I start with?

Why would a clash of intuitions somehow lead to a logical inconsistency? Our intuitions are not non contradictory. Our brains are not as brittle as a logical system. They can handle some amount of internal inconsistency. — khaled

Hang on - a minute ago it was all "2+2=4", now you're saying the our intuitions can all be right or all wrong even if they're contradictory. Which is it - calculus or para-consistent? If the former then how do we know which intuition to start with as that seems to affect the 'truth' of the conclusion, if the latter then (as I said earlier) the whole project is pointless as you can't show one intuition to be false using another.

The argument is that my right to have children provided by the intrinsic value of human life is trumped by the child's right not to be harmed. And I think most people would agree that in MOST cases, the right of an individual not to be harmed trumps most other "rights" unless said individual is harming others. Tell me of a situation where harming others is considered acceptable other than self defence, and when the alternative to not harming a few individuals is harm to many individuals. — khaled

Having children.

This is essentially your argument over and over. — schopenhauer1

Yes, that's correct.

They also ridiculed Galileo. — schopenhauer1

So. Some people are deserving of ridicule, others aren't. I'm not seeing the relevance here. Your starting premise is odd, you've given no reason at all for preferring it over more commonly held ones, and it leads to a conclusion which most people find ridiculous (if not outright repugnant). So why should we take it seriously?

You have to start somewhere. — schopenhauer1

That's not a sufficient justification for any given starting point. Notwithstanding that, you having personally chosen such an odd starting place is also not sufficient justification for trying to convince others of it. You've not answered my question (not that you're obliged to) as to why you've decided to persist with this odd premise despite the magnitude of the conclusion.

if you follow my argument's premises, you literally create no new lives of suffering in the world. If you follow your argument's premises, more people who will suffer will be created. To then say, "But in an interview, the person born said 51% of their life was good, not bad!" is not a justification for thus creating the conditions for suffering for someone else. — schopenhauer1

Why not?

The basis is on the idea that preventing harms are more important than whatever other excuse you have to procreate someone. — schopenhauer1

As I said right at the beginning (and indeed the last time we discussed this) if one agrees with your idiosyncratic axioms then maybe one is indeed compelled by logic to agree with your conclusion. My question is, given such a massively counter-intuitive conclusion, why would you persist in holding such an heterodox premise?

the actual operation of morality isn't "visions of humanity", but "What is this going to do to someone else?". — schopenhauer1

From where did you get this notion of what morality really is?

Why is my view that humanity should be preserved "obstinate assertion and indignation", but your view that "cause[ing] harm to someone or a negative" must be avoided at all costs not similarly unsupported assertion?

They're both just moral assertions about what ought and ought not be done.

It's just that I don't think the sadness that I will feel over human extinction gives me a right to have a child to prevent it. — khaled

I'm not sure many would, but I don't see that's relevant. It's quite an unusual principle that one's personal emotional response is what provides the basis for rights, so if you did have a 'right' to have a child to prevent the extinction if the human race it would be because of the intrinsic value of humanity, not because you might be sad about something.

Using moral relativism to undermine an ethical position doesn't really work because it undermines all ethical positions not just the one you take issue with. — khaled

I think you've misunderstood moral relativism. I still think you ought to behave a certain way, it doesn't stop being about how others ought to behave. I just don't think there's a logical method by which I can derive that feeling.

And what shope is trying to do is trying to debate whether or not a shared axiom is correct. I don't see a problem with that. — khaled

How do you propose to debate whether an axiom is 'correct'? What measures would we judge it by?

As I said before (and you conveniently ignored), the axioms antinatalism needs are not unpopular at all. — khaled

It needs the axiom that annihilating humanity is an acceptable conclusion, that not having children is an acceptable conclusion. I've not done the surveys but I think that's about the most unpopular axiom there is.

Whatever intuition(s) you start from you've arrived at a conclusion which clashes with one of our strongest intuitions. You're faced with either a) intuitions can be very wrong - in which case your argument is built on air, or b) intuitions like the ones you start from are to be taken seriously - in which case the clash involved in your conclusion should indicate that your logic has gone very wrong somewhere.

We know of no way to alleviate suffering 100% ... If you offer an antinatalist a button that makes sure no children will ever be born again and a button that makes earth a utopia he would pick the utopia without hesitation — khaled

I didn't mention 109% or utopia. It is only necessary that suffering is outweighed by pleasures unless you hold to something like asymmetric valuation, which brings me back to the question of why anyone would maintain such axioms.

We have no right to force others to seek alternative methods without even knowing if they are possible just because we want said methods.

How would you feel if you were born into some dystopian society forced to work to the bone, hating your life and it was all justified by: "Your great great great grandchildren MAY not experience suffering". A bit of an extreme example just to illustrate the point. — khaled

Fine. How would you feel about the prospect of the entire human race becoming extinct? I expect your answer to that question will seem as unlikely to me as my answer to your question does to you.

The point here is that you can't use some human intuitions to base an argument on (here, rights of autonomy) and then later when your conclusions clash with other intuitions (here, that annihilating the human race is a bad thing) claim to have demonstrated those second intuitions to be thus wrong. If intuitions (no matter his strong) can nonetheless be wrong, then the whole project of applying logic to them to get sound conclusions is a complete non-starter.

This is the case for every single ethical argument. So why do you have such a problem with this one? — khaled

Because it leads to the annihilation of the human race. That you personally might have no issue with that says more about your own psychology than it does about ethics.

"Why not?" is a possible answer. — khaled

See above.

You cannot on one hand stress how moral interpretations are subjective and baseless and on the other hand try to imply that this particular interpretation should be changed to a "better" interpretation. — khaled

Yes, I absolutely can. That's the whole point of moral relativism. I don't have to present an argument from some God-given objective moral code in order to make a moral argument. Morals are not 'found' by mathematics, they are the reason we do the mathematics.

It is very common for people to post on this site to debate the beliefs they already hold. — khaled

You can't debate a belief, that's the point. You can debate the validity of a conclusion presuming shared axioms and an agreement as to what constitutes a rational step and what doesn't. Absent of such an agreement one is persuading, not 'debating'. That is the issue I have. One might persuade others of a course of action one is sure is for the best, but the more sketchy the argument, and the more serious the consequences, the more careful one should be about pursuing such rhetoric. Here the argument is based on some flimsy logic applied to unpopular axioms and the consequence is the end of humanity forever.

It has nothing to do with intuitions at this point. The intuition that we are not upset about the lack of life on Mars is uncontested (though it could be). It's about your interpretation of that intuition (and others like it).

to change perspectives on these things which only SEEM counter-intuitive. — schopenhauer1

Why? This is the question I'm really getting at. Why would you do this. We've just established that the axioms which lead you here are chosen voluntarily. Yes, if you choose to look at things a certain way you could logically end up with anti-natalism. Why on earth, then, would you choose to do so, let alone try to get other people to look at things that way too?

I have a different perspective on how to look at ethics than what you have stated. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, and this sums up exactly what I'm saying. You're not compelled by unassailable logic to look at things the way you do. Absolutely every single one of your arguments proceeds from some unusual axiom which you have simply chosen to hold despite being free to choose otherwise There are any of a dozen different ways to interpret that silly 'life on Mars' intuition, for example. You've chosen a set of frames which leads you to the annihilation if the human race as an answer. Anyone in their right mind would see that as a sign they might have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

The strain on the hospital was caused by symptoms too serious to leave untreated, with a 30% mortality rate for those admitted to the hospital and very long stays compared to a 6% mortality rate for the flu when admitted to the hospital and much shorter stays and much more cases requiring treatment than the flu as well. — Benkei

Where are you getting those figures from? I can't find a source newer than the sources for CFR, and it seems rather short-sighted to counter the implications of estimates of fatality being wrong by using data from the same cohort as has just been shown to contain (albeit inevitable and understandable) estimation errors. We'd need a newer, preferably similarly collated, estimate of critical care pressure to properly support such a counter argument, should such a source exist.

Obviously the case for increased pressure on critical care in general is a no-brainer, but with shutdown of 'non-emergency' services to factor in, critical care capacity is not a blank cheque for any and all lockdown strategies to be considered justified.

Where is this implied? — khaled

I can't speak to all anti-natalist arguments, obviously, it was lazy of me not to specify. The argument here, and in previous such posts, is that we cannot alleviate suffering by our actions toward each other sufficiently to overcome the advocacy of doing so by avoiding procreation. That either implies that avoiding birth is the only way to alleviate suffering, or the human life is so trivial a thing that we need not consider its extinction a good reason to seek alternative methods.

I'm not going to just keep repeating myself here. I'm not talking about what anti-natalism actually says. I'm talking about the implications of their line of argument. So the fact that it doesn't say "that non-existence is the ONLY way to avoid suffering" is irrelevant if that's what the arguments imply. The fact that it doesn't say "we advocate suicide" is irrelevant if that's what the arguments imply. The fact that it doesn't specifically mention the sanctity of human life is irrelevant if undermining it is what the arguments imply.

It advocates no discrimination, harm, or violence on any particular group of people. — schopenhauer1

What it advocates and what it's philosophical positions end up encouraging are two different things. As I said, it's not your motives I'm talking about.

If you are implying it's causing teen suicide, that seems a straw man you pulled out of your ass. — schopenhauer1

I'm not implying it's causing teen suicide, but if you can't see a link between that and a cult advocating that non-existence is the only way to avoid suffering then you really don't understand the issue at all.

to dispute these commonly held notions and to chip away at them. It is also to present things people might not consider. — schopenhauer1

You're doing neither. The arguments which have been presented you just leave hanging and then open a new thread. You're not 'chipping away' at anything, you're ignoring contrary opinion that cannot be disputed and hunting for 'fresh blood' who might be more gullible. That's why it comes across as recruiting. The arguments you make have already been made, the counterarguments have already been made yet rather than think of new angles on those difficult positions, you hawk a new thread with the same flaws hoping someone new might not notice them.

If real:
A) Genocide is not passively not having children.
B) Solution to suffering isn't a solution to teenage angst. — schopenhauer1

As I've said, it's not what you intent, it's what's implied. If I were to strongly advocate that immigrants should be steralised and imprisoned, do you think I can really wash my hands of any violence against immigrants which then ensues by claiming "well, I never actually advocated violence"?

Your arguments are undermining the basic sanctity of human life, I find it very hard to believe you can't see the philosophical consequences of arguing that all human life is worth less than nothing.

Playing the role of concerned mother at a PTA meeting, isn't philosophy. — schopenhauer1

Nor would I claim it is, that detracts neither from the point I made nor the justification for posting it. If you'd have posted neo-Nazi propaganda I would have responded likewise with a non-philosophical opposition.

Make an argument or don't. — schopenhauer1

It's already been made, yet you persist, are you suggesting that your previous (I'm going to go with hundreds) of posts on the subject have gone uncontested? An argument with which you do not agree doesn't cease to be an argument simply by virtue of your disapproval.

It's not meant for any demographic to commit suicide to anymore than any other philosophy or art or form of communication that may convey negative views of existence. — schopenhauer1

It's not your intentions I'm imputing it's your presentation of genocide as a solution to teenage angst.

It’s not the interesting part, it’s the novel part. — Pfhorrest

Same thing. Metaphysical novelty is just a human construct. We don't bring a thing into existence by our treatment of it. The idea of the Scrabble tiles is that a new thing 'a word' has arisen randomly from the casting of the tiles, but this 'thing' is a human construct, words don't exist outside of human minds, so the casting process hasn't done anything we should find unexpected, or odd.

Likewise with first-person experience. The fact that we find some cellular interactions significant enough to provide them with their own language game does not mean in doing so we've brought anything into existence. We don't need to answer the question of how this arose because we put it there.

The latter can either be because metaphysically boring material stuff, arranged the right way, magically gives rise to something metaphysically novel (strong emergence); or else that whatever it is that a real human is supposed to have that a philosophical zombie wouldn't -- which is not anything functional, because a zombie is functionally identical to a human -- is just something that everything has. — Pfhorrest

Why would you be surprised at the sudden emergence of something metaphysically interesting? What's metaphysically interesting is just a function of human minds giving it meaning. If I randomly threw Scrabble tiles onto a board some of them would spontaneously become linguistically interesting, but that's nothing to do with the tiles, but rather the observer of them.

I'm still not sure I understand what you're arguing for or against. — Srap Tasmaner

Have you ever heard a teenager complain "I never asked to be born!" when asked by their parents to carry out some chore? Schop has unfortunately found a medium for dragging this pubescent whine into four and a half thousand posts.

Then what we "experience" is made entirely of sodium ions. — Isaac


Or the photons that mediate the chemical interaction with those sodium ions, sure; at least, if you draw the border between “self” and “world” at the edge of the brain, rather than the edge of the whole body as I was doing earlier. Exactly where to draw that border is a fuzzy question to begin with and I don’t have a hard opinion on which of those is the more appropriate place. — Pfhorrest

But you said that humans are doing what other matter does, in that it experiences this interaction. So you've decided on the unit doing the experiencing. Otherwise you're left with "The universe experiences itself". To have an experienced and an experiencer you have to divide up the universe into at least two parts. If this division is arbitrary then you've not defeated solipsism by any means other than say saying 'let's not' (which, incidentally, is my own argument against solipsism).

Once that photon 'hits' the retina, as far as our 'experience' is concerned it could be registered, ignored completely or made-up. I don't then see how something unique about the information it contains constitutes the final experience we have.

Interesting questions, but I think a discussion of conscious vs sub-conscious processing would be too far from the topic of this thread.

the question of whether the universe is "actually" deterministic is ill conceived. It makes no practical difference to our ability to make predictions. — Echarmion

No, but as we have seen in both 'free-will' threads, it makes a difference to our default positions in the face of uncertainty.

Physical causation is an interesting term. Is causation physical? Because causation doesn't actually seem to describe a physical process. It seems more like a value judgement by which we identify some part of the web of physical processes as the "cause" and another as the "effect". — Echarmion

Yes, I think that may be true (certainly if one has a grasp on some of the physics around time - which I certainly don't) I imagine it would seem very much that way. By physical causation here I just mean that some event in our physical universe can be assigned as the cause with reasonable grounds. It's justificatory rather than an holistic claim.

It's unclear to me what it means for "indeterminism to resolve to determinism at a cellular scale", except as a statement on our ability to predict outcomes. Physically, what actually happens always happens at the micro scale. The macro scale is a human construct. Not some arbitrary fantasy, of course, but still an abstraction based on our particular sensory and mental apparatus. — Echarmion

That's right. Basically we seem to be able to ignore whatever weirdness takes place at a quantum level because when it gets to a scale we actually experience it's almost all gone away even in those experiments which we can measure with high accuracy (classical physics). As such, when faced with much larger errors in, say, psychology, it seems unwarranted to me to suddenly assume this micro-scale indeterminacy is responsible rather than factors like experimental degrees of freedom, complexity etc.

So, insofar as we don't know what the source of our uncertainty is, it seems odd to invoke new mysterious mechanisms when the ones we already have explain it perfectly well. — Isaac


Could you explain what you refer to as "our uncertainty" here? I don't really follow. — Echarmion

Hopefully explained above. Just that if the cause of error in our experimental results can be explained with what we already know - complex systems dynamics, experimental degrees of freedom, hidden variables etc., and in experiments where these factors are lessened we do indeed see a lessening of error, then it seems unreasonable to invoke some other cause.

Thanks, I will have a read.

I don't think the gun-to-head analogy works here. If it were a matter of free choice that would have to lead to acquittal it seems to me, and not leniency which already implies some guilt... — ChatteringMonkey

Interesting to consider why though. If someone forces you at gunpoint to rob a bank, you've still robbed the bank, you're still guilty of that crime. The law may have provision such that in those circumstances there's no actual crime (I don't know the law on this one), but I still see that as leniency, just written into law. The spirit of that law (that stealing is wrong) has still been violated. And it's not as if you had no choice - you could have just let them shoot you, you could have tried some Jason Bourne style disarming manoeuvre. We simply accept that, although you did actually rob the bank, and we can envisage a way in which you could have done otherwise, any normal human being in those circumstances would have done the same.

I could give other examples, like age-exemptions to responsibility, which also don't necessarily align with the self/non-self distinction and free choice.... but seem to be more a matter of an assumed lack of knowledge of the consequences etc. — ChatteringMonkey

Don't get me started on age exemptions. Most are either draconian or ridiculous (or both). All are just pragmatic tools to cut down on court time. The degree to which children can understand the situations they find themselves in can be judged to no less a degree than can that of someone with mental health issues or learning difficulties. To suggest that an eleven year old understands rights and wrongs enough to bear some criminal responsibility and yet withhold from them a say in the creation of those laws for a further seven years is barbaric. There's one scrap of science behind any of this, and that's that people's capacity for judgement is still developing until maybe their mid twenties, there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever for any of the nonsensical stages in between and all it does is institutionalise young people for being young....[continues rant safely away from keyboard].

the lack of clarity of which moral intuitions are applicable when. — ChatteringMonkey

Unfortunately we live in a world of 7 billion with probably 7 billion slightly different moral intuitions. expecting clarity here is a lost cause.

We'd need to nail down what we mean by "awareness" and conscious vs subconscious. — Harry Hindu

Conscious processes would be those we experience the stages of, sub-conscious processes would be those we experience only the results of, and infer the stages from experimental investigation (such as lesion studies, fMRI scanning in various forms of aphasia, etc). That's how I'd separate them, anyway.

what is the attempt at scientific-style objectivity here? — ChatteringMonkey

I just mean a move away from individual conclusions on the matter, supported by nothing but convention, toward investigation, testing, increased rigour, etc. I say science-style because I don't think most of psychology can quite call itself a science yet.

I wonder if "we can't not" because we have some kind of a priori moral intuition that this is the right way to judge these matters... or if this moral intuition comes from our notions of identity and agency. If it's the former, maybe there is some merit to just calling it what it is, a moral intuition, and not to try to fabricate some theoretical post hoc justification. — ChatteringMonkey

Maybe, but by saying "we can't not", I was actually aiming to be much broader than that. In the context of this discussion, I think it extends out to simply that we make assumptions about how changes we make to the environment affect the behaviour of others. The very premise of criminal punishment is just such an assumption - that an environment in which criminals are punished will alter the behavior of would-be criminals to deter them from such activities.

All psychology is, when it gets involved, is a more formalised and better tested collection of these assumptions. Not perhaps the strength with which Geologists can tell us the earth is round, but significantly better (I hope) than whatever some random judge happens to reckon.

So when I say "X's free choice was constrained by his circumstances such that he should not be punished for his actions to the same extent as someone less constrained" I'm not really saying anything about morality. I think the moral intuition is already assumed (that someone with less free-choice is more deserving of leniency - think gun-to-the-head). I'm just making the case about the existence and strength of such constraints.

“Observation” in a quantum mechanical sense happens even in a universe full of nothing but gas. Our human observation is just a complicated form of that. I mean “experience” here in precisely the same way. — Pfhorrest

Then what we "experience" is made entirely of sodium ions.

I'm thinking Moore of Quine and Wittgenstein. — Banno

Nice 'anticipation shift'. You should put it in your malapropisms thread.

The high necessity of working memory indicates that learning how people use words is very useful for survival, so extra energy that is used to extrapolate what is communicated from sounds and scribbles is necessary for survival. — Harry Hindu

Maybe true, but how we interpret what other people say is a completely different process which takes place in a different part of the brain. I was talking here about how we construct expressions. @Srap Tasmaner asked a question, so I thought it might be helpful to answer, that's all. I see now that the question was probably rhetorical, so we can ignore this diversion.

The comparison of sounds, and their similarities and differences, happens within consciousness.
— Harry Hindu

According to whom? — Isaac

According to conscious beings, like myself. It is not only observable in my mind that sounds are compared, but logical in that you can only compare what appears in consciousness. — Harry Hindu

Not getting this at all I'm afraid. Not sure it's relevant to the discussion though so unless it is you can leave off answering my query, but - how can you use what you're consciously aware of to judge what does or does not happen in your sub-conscious? I really don't understand this "you can only compare what appears in consciousness". Why? What prevents neuronal networks from comparing things without your conscious awareness but allows then to when they involve conscious awareness?

if something can be said to not be caused by the self, the agency is lacking for attributing responsibility... — ChatteringMonkey

Yeah, that's basically it.

But this all seems build on very shaky grounds, because there is no objective measure for selfhood as you said... but more than that, identity is also ever changing and not entirely disconnected from how the world will react to certain presentations of self. — ChatteringMonkey

True, but it's not as if equally difficult to judge aspects of psychology are not also (necessarily) addressed in court - things like intent, state of knowledge, genuineness of religious belief, capacity to make decisions... Some crimes are only possible to even commit in a given state of mind. So assessing the origin of constraints on choice as self/non-self is just run-of-the-mill practice. It may be shaky, but we're going to do it anyway (we can't not) so we either do it with some attempt at scientific-style objectivity, or we just make it up.

I am skeptical that such simple, exceptionless organizing principles could underlie most humanistic notions, such as responsibility or freedom, so to me the more obvious approach would be more in the line of stamp collecting than grand theorizing — SophistiCat

Absolutely. I can't think why anyone (except perhaps the religious) would expect a process like evolution combined with a chaotic-dynamic process like societal interactions to result in a set of mental processes which could be described in any universally generalisable way at all.

This approach is characteristic of the relatively new field of experimental philosophy ("x-phi") — SophistiCat

I've not heard of this, do you have any names or reading to suggest?

Oh, interesting. Yes, that's just the sort of example that I had in mind (and how such attitudes can vary, change, be contested, etc.) — SophistiCat

Yeah, the thing about court is that the right and wrong of the action has already been set (the law), so the only leeway allowed is the extent to which constraints on free-choice were external or not. Really, really liking strawberry ice-cream places a constraint on free-choice when at the ice-cream parlour (one is more inclined to choose strawberry) but it's not a defence, nor a reasonable plea for leniency in the case of stealing some strawberry ice-cream. Being forced at gun-point is. So the only issue here for psychology is the extent to which certain constraints from inside one's brain can still be seen as external to one's self such that they count more in the gun-to-the-head category and less in the really-like-strawberry-ice-cream category. That's why I get so cross when people want to take that argument away on the purely ideological grounds that they feel more comfortable about the idea of free-will. It's fine on a random internet forum, but in the real world such nonsense actually threatens years of progress dealing with the mentally ill and socially deprived defendants.

We are our mental states, own them, identify with them. — Olivier5

There are many, many people who do not identify with some of their mental states. Depression, anxiety, paranoia, PTSD, schizophrenia, stress... People experience mental constraints which they do not identify as arising from their free choice and which they report having little or no direct control over the initiation of.

We'd commonly consider someone with a gun to their head as having had their choices constrained. Why would we consider any differently someone who uncontrollably experiences a belief that they have a gun to their head?

if you Isaac are completely and totally determined as you seem to think you are, is what you are saying still philosophy, or is it instead just the product of some molecular machine that can't think otherwise? — Olivier5

I don't see a logical issue there. You're just phrasing the conclusion in a way that sounds undesirable. The desirability or otherwise of a conclusion is not a logical issue.

I think my word choice has caused some confusion. I introduced the notion of preferred simply to be clear that there aren't any objective measures of selfhood we can use to distinguish external (non-self) constraints on choice from internal ones (like preference). In some cases it will be obvious (a gun to the head is obviously an external constraint) but in some cases we have to take a clients subjective judgment into account (anything from feeling depressed without cause to actually hearing voices which do not feel part of oneself).

So one's environment creates external constraints in obviously external ways, but also in ways which are subjectively external - mental processes which are not identified with the self, which one would prefer not to have, but are present nonetheless.

I never said anything like that. — Olivier5

we assume that she could indeed have acted differently — Olivier5

Since no-one here is arguing that single mental states lead predictably to single behaviours, I can't see how to interpret your disagreements in any way other than advocating full responsibility, because the alternative is that we have some force you're calling 'free-will', but it is acted upon by other mental states. Yet if this is the case, then it's not free, it's constrained. You'd then have to make a separate argument as to why those constraints (on a case by case basis) do not thus constrain 'the will' sufficiently to remove any choice at all. But if this is the case then your statement above is false, we cannot assume she could have done otherwise.

To put it a clearly as possible - either mental states do not constrain our free choice at all (which means no one has any diminished responsibility), or mental states do constrain our free choice, in which case there's no logical problem with those constraints being absolute.