You give up on your lines of argument rather easily. — apokrisis

No I haven't. You never really addressed what I said. If you can't carry a big stick, at least speak clearly and softly.

A consistent atheist committed to a logical problem of evil seems, on pain of inconsistency, to be required to endorse some form of antinatalism as well. — darthbarracuda

Indeed.

And once again antinatalism is not concerned about paper cuts and minor boo-boos. — darthbarracuda

When I was a full throated antinatalist, I was concerned with such things, however ridiculous they may seem. Even the most remote and minute amount of suffering in the world is enough to ignite the problem of evil. An antinatalism based on the notion of a strict duty to reduce suffering in toto cannot countenance even trivial examples thereof.

Finish the thought. What would that reasonable prediction actually be in real life? — apokrisis

Quite reasonable.

If we are reasonable people, we could make reasonable judgements about whether on average those babies will later feel grateful. — apokrisis

Just as the torturer could make reasonable predictions about whether, on average, his victims will develop a Stockholm Syndrome such that they feel grateful to him. You dodge the salient point pessimists make about the world and which leads them to conclusions like antinatalism.

If my perspective is "wrong" no ONE is hurt by it. If your perspective is wrong, someone is always hurt by it. — schopenhauer1

Yes, in the absence of a soteriological or metaphysical framework in which procreation would be viewed as a supererogatory good (which I myself don't rule out but don't presently believe in fully), this is an irrefutable piece of metanormative reasoning, it seems to me. I say "metanormative," as it doesn't presuppose or commit one to the normative position of antinatalism and yet still conforms to the praxeological implications of antinatalism, namely, childlessness. It is the precautious, morally humble stance to take.

I thought you were trying to ask who Trump's top philosophers are. Someone should ask him that.

here's an idea. What if procreation is nether moral or Immoral. — hachit

You don't read, do you?

Baroque. It contains the best of everything in some form.

What are the reasons birds want to fly, fish want to swim, dogs want lick their own balls, my mouse nibbling on my shoes and humans want to procreate? The biological answer is not going to satisfy you. You are looking for a spiritual answer -- or basically a philosophical answer. You don't want an explanation, you want a justification. A philosophical normative case to procreate. — Kitty

Indeed.

But I do not foresee a fruitful discussion based on the premises you have provided. All "Reasons" can be taken down as mere rationalisations. For example, even if you accept my first sentence, you could still reject the notion of human flourishing, by questioning the idea as to why we would want humans to flourish in a non-selfish way beyond any subjective rhetoric. As long as the context of the debate remains in the restrictions of subjectivity, the result of the discussion will be inevitable, namely nihilism. — Kitty

That's fair. It is true that I need to sort out my metaphysics before ultimately deciding this issue.

I can see that you disagree. And that you failed to provide a counter-argument. So yes, you have bowed out as far as any conversation goes. — apokrisis

Yeah, I don't feel like going down the rabbit hole of disputing the claim that the self is "socially constructed." Social constructionism tries my patience severely.

Yes, do double down on your misinterpretation. I see you're killing time before deleting the thread.

My, what a literalistic irritant you are.

A religion of one is a religion of none.

If Being is intrinsically good, then Hume's Guillotine fails. In fact, Hume's Guillotine basically is a denial of the idea that Being is intrinsically good. — Pneumenon

But that still doesn't get one to an ought.

but a perfect nature — Lone Wolf

On theism, only God is perfect, though. A perfect nature would be incapable of sinning.

"Being a good parent", for the utilitarian, is something that does not have value independent of the principle of utility. This is nonsense, in my opinion. — darthbarracuda

Yes, good point.

Maybe you are making the point that all choices serve the interest of some ego - even the desire to be egoless. Ah, sweet paradox! — apokrisis

In a way, yes. You're using another person for your own benefit. Why have children? "Because I want to be a more selfless person." That is inherently selfish. Now, it may not be strictly wrong to use another person for one's own benefit, but that only makes it amoral, not positively morally justified, which is how I have characterized selfish actions.

But remember my ultimate position is that the self itself is a social construct. — apokrisis

Well, I disagree, so I don't see this conversation going any further.

The ethics come before the metaphysics. — Moliere

This is indeed a disagreement. I would reverse this order.

The point of contention between ourselves, I think, is more or less how we parse goodness vs what is amoral. — Moliere

Yes, probably.

You're floundering. — unenlightened

Come off it.

Actions are actions, and are motivated by selfishness or compassion. The cause of the action is the motive, and the motive is an imagined consequence. — unenlightened

Now it's my turn to accuse you of being confused. Specifically, you seem to be confusing a motive with an intention. One could intend to act for the sake of another or to build a house without that being the motive. The motive may not line up with the intention at all. Our motives are not always clear to us and we often lie to ourselves about the reasons for our actions.

In fact, many people have children without intending to at all, but that doesn't mean there is no motive, no reason, for the action. Clearly there is. Moreover, it is in part precisely because most parents do not intend to cause harm or suffering by procreating that I don't morally condemn them. But procreation in this case not being wrong does not thereby make it right, as I said in the OP.

And the action can have the motive of creating a new person that does not yet exist, for one's own sake or for theirs. — unenlightened

Yes, but if the action cannot be compassionate then the motive cannot be either. In the case of procreation, because the action cannot be compassionate, for the reason that the cause of the action doesn't exist, then the motive cannot be compassion, even if the procreator claims it to be.

think you are confusing motivation, which is always future directed to that which is not yet, with the cause of action, which must be already in existence. — unenlightened

Right, I get this. There is no confusion. I have spoken of procreation, the action.

I've come to see consequentialist theories as inherently intra-worldly and incapable of acting as any fundamental ethic — darthbarracuda

What is it about an ethic being "intra-worldly" that makes it insufficient?

hence it would fall in the middle category of your schema. — Moliere

Right.

But it wouldn't be for some end-goal that I do philosophy. Whether I attain truth or not is irrelevant to my motivation of doing philosophy. — Moliere

Your second sentence above doesn't negate the first. You do have a goal in pursuing philosophy: the truth. That makes philosophy instrumental. Whether you obtain the truth as a result of doing philosophy is irrelevant as to whether philosophy is instrumental. You could fail to obtain truth and philosophy would still be instrumental, as per your own definition.

Actions are the bearers of the terms "good", "amoral", or "bad". What seems to be the case is that actions which fall in the good category are actions which are motivated in a particular direction: for-the-other. Categorically bad actions are against-the-other. Amoral actions are for-the-self. — Moliere

Yes, great summary.

Also, the basic argument is that good actions are for-the-other, before birth there is no other, therefore the act of having children before there are children can not be good. That all follows definitionally from what I see. — Moliere

Yes.

The question is, is there some kind of rejoinder to this argument? — Moliere

That is effectively the question of the thread!

One might say that, prima facie, if being is intrinsically good, then it is good to procreate. Thinking about it here, what is lurking behind my objection to this reasoning seems to be Hume's guillotine: that one cannot derive an ought from an is. So my objection is that one cannot go from the claim "being is intrinsically good" to "therefore, one ought to procreate."

If Hume's guillotine fails and it is licit to derive an ought from an is, then I will have to admit that procreation is a supererogatory good (morally good, but not required, as in a duty), assuming that being is good. I don't assume that, though.

I'm not a theist, but I would suggest reading Romans 9.

You can plant a tree and you can save money for yourself (since you already exist), but you cannot do anything to what which doesn't exist.

Alright, but then you do agree with the point that the instrumentality of action is not something intrinsic to self-interested action, right? — Moliere

No? I'm not sure I'm following this.

So what say you about life? Intrinsic worth or naw? — Moliere

I said this earlier: "my natalist interlocutor needs to establish that creating life is good, not that life is good. I could grant for the sake of argument that life is intrinsically good (or that happiness is intrinsically good), but that wouldn't in itself prove that creating it is good."

Would you say there are motivations which do not fall into these two categories? — Moliere

There is a third category of action, yes, which refers to malicious actions. Thus:

Compassion = moral.
Self interest = amoral.
Malice = immoral.

The motive behind such actions is better described as "I do them because I like them", and there ends the chain of reasons. — Moliere

But then they are by definition self-interested and so disagree with you when you say they aren't. However, the object of such pursuits may have intrinsic worth (e.g. philosophy is done for the sake of finding truth, which is intrinsically valuable), so in that sense I agree with you.

I don't think the urge to procreate is necessarily egotistical in the least. It's often subliminal or unconscious — Wayfarer

Just because a motive is hidden to oneself doesn't mean it isn't selfish.

Are you an Objectivist? To say that selfishness can be morally good is the move Ayn Rand made. To me, that obliterates meaningful distinctions between different motives. If all actions are selfish then no actions are compassionate. The latter becomes a meaningless category. Or, if you admit of the category but not of the word to describe it ("compassion"), then we're missing a word to describe a certain class of motivated actions. And in that case, I would say that compassion is already a fine word for that.

My understanding of a selfish action is that it is inherently instrumental, being performed for the benefit of oneself. Your definition of selfish action is far too literal, being "that which is performed by a self or ego." Seeing as all human actions are performed by human selves, it follows that all human actions are selfish. But again, this fails to disambiguate the real difference between actions performed for the benefit of oneself and those performed for the benefit of others.

As I have said, procreation cannot (at least on naturalism) ever be performed for the benefit of another, since there is no child on whose behalf one is acting. The objection raised earlier that one could act for the benefit of one's wife who wants to procreate doesn't work, since her reasons cannot but be selfish.

So you really didn't deal with my argument - that even pre-conception, a reason for having kids is that you could expect it would make you less egotistical as a result. The desire to be less selfish could be a valid reason. — apokrisis

Reread that last sentence.

Huh? I'm not disputing your moral right to hold absolutist antinatalist beliefs. — apokrisis

You're not following the plot here, it seems. I'm not an antinatalist. I'm just showing how your objections to antinatalism don't actually stick.

when selfishness is defined in this way, I'd have to say that selfishness is not a defeater to goodness. — Moliere

Sure, but I don't accept that definition. Our basic axioms disagree, so I don't think we're going to get anywhere.

NO-no-no-no-no. No. — darthbarracuda

You were a utilitarian, though, weren't you?

Not a good argument. To procreate is to have kids. But perhaps you are not seeing it from a mother's point of view. The male can pretend it is all rather more abstract. — apokrisis

This doesn't address what I said, and I suspect you don't understand what I said. I didn't give an argument, I made a distinction, one that refutes the alleged nonselfish reason for procreation you tried to give.

You and others may be interested in the following responses to the same question of this thread from a pregnancy forum:

I'm due in 3 weeks with our first and before we decided to breed, I went through a period of trying to find a 'pre-conception' reason to have kids. Everything I could think of were 'post-conception' reasons (these are my made up terms), like to love them unconditionally, raise them to be independent, etc. And reasons like adding to our own loving family, having a legacy, etc seemed to be 'selfish' reasons - selfish in the very literalist sense. 'Self-focused' might be better.

Anyhow, I don't think I ever came up with a 'selfless', 'pre-conception' reason. I was 95% sure I wanted to do it (my husband was cool with it, too) but I just couldn't make that last part of me certain.

If you intentionally get pregnant, then no, I don't think there is a reason that isn't selfish. I think that's OK though - I think it's OK to be a little selfish occasionally.

I asked my mother this question and she said no! There is no selfless reason for making babies because the act of making them is selfish in the first place i.e sex..someone always gets pleasure out of it so there for is done for selfish reasons...

I love my mother always straight to the point!
My self I think no we have babies to because we want them in our bellies we want to be pregnant we want to love them and care for them..we make them smile for our own selfish reasons(who doesn't love to see a happy smiling baby)!

I have never found a selfless reason.

These responses are so interesting! Yes, striving to be a great parent is selfless and I know so many of us who are even just expecting are already doing that to an extent ... but I'm talking pre-conception. I still can't think of anything! I think the closest thing I've seen is adding productive members to society - but even then, that's selfless for society to an extent (because you just never know how your kid will turn out - nature vs. nurture) but that's not selfless for the life you're creating, right?

So in light of you asking your mom, I asked my dad ... he said "because God commands us to." It sounds so simple, and of course religious (he's a pastor), but I think that's a pretty compelling selfless reason. God tells us to be fruitful and multiply, so I guess if you take it literally then parents who procreate aren't being selfish.

Well after I thought about it God Commands Us would be my answer also...

- https://www.whattoexpect.com/forums/hot-topics-1/topic/selfless-reason-for-having-children.html

This tracks what I've been saying throughout this thread.

Is it quality or quantity that is the issue here? How many is too many? How few is enough? — apokrisis

Quality. And one is too many. It's an argument from principle, as I said.

Existence is the wound that can't be healed. — apokrisis

In a certain sense, yes, this is a presupposition of mine, I admit. But I also admit the possibility of redemption, though it isn't achieved by means of having children.

In nature, wounds heal. — apokrisis

Yes, but not metaphysical wounds!

And some folk believe that. Which makes antinatalism another religion. In the face of all the evidence to the contrary about nature, it requires an act of faith to sustain antinatalism as a system of belief. — apokrisis

Poppycock, I say. But if you really believe this, then you implicitly allow antinatalism in through the backdoor, for if morality is inherently subjective, you have no means of disputing the antinatalist on moral grounds.

the only way that you'd be able to get away with mere good intentions is to equate existence with love. — Buxtebuddha

Yes, in a godless, materialistic universe, there is no nonselfish reason to procreate. This thread has solidified that opinion.

I do not, however, equate being with love, which explains why I'm not a Christian and why I don't find it justifiable to procreate. — Buxtebuddha

I am not a Christian either, but neither do I rule out Christianity. Following where the truth might lead can sometimes lead to conclusions one finds unpalatable. Christians are often castigated for believing in Christianity merely because they want it to be true. Wish fulfillment is certainly a danger for the believer, but no less a danger is its obverse, what one might call dislike fulfillment, whereby one lacks belief in something merely on account of not wanting it to be true. As a nonbeliever, I must keep this in mind when pursuing the possibility of truth in religion.

Lastly, the picture that comes to mind for me when thinking about procreation is children falling into an ocean. Some will learn to swim, some will drown. Some will swim and find dry land, some will swim a ways but give up. You can give the child a rope, a life vest, a granola bar - things that can represent good parenting - but none of it, in my opinion, is enough to justify the throwing of children into an ocean in the first place. Suffering will find you whether you learned how to swim, found land, founded an empire. I think it is Schopenhauer who argued rather peculiarly that suffering, not happiness, is what marks the world for compassion. In this way, or at least how I view it, one rather paradoxically lives for suffering in order to love, as opposed to loving so as not to suffer. To me, that puts everyone in the same "boat" or ocean. The fact that some find love and compassion doesn't actually matter if suffering is the mean. — Buxtebuddha

A most vivid analogy. :up:

but I don’t comprehend how mankind could have any value to anyone outside of self-interests in the wellbeing of others — javra

Well, there goes that reason, then.

Am I missing something here? — javra

I don't know. I don't feel your response addressed my concerns, but we could be talking past each other.

Don't kids give you a reason not to be selfish? Aren't they an antidote to egotism? — apokrisis

This is a post-natal contingency. I'm talking about the selfishness of procreation itself, not the possible lack thereof as a result of having children. Besides, if this is true, then one can simply adopt, so you still haven't said anything about procreation proper.

Why not? — apokrisis

Because civilization merely puts a vice on vice, so to speak, and so exists instrumentally.

why isn't a civilised self a better self? — apokrisis

It is better. But to paraphrase @schopenhauer1, by having children you are creating a state of affairs whereby more people will need to be civilized, when they didn't need to be civilized in the first place by never having been born. The project of civilization is wonderful, but its value comes ex post facto, the aftermath being the rapaciousness and violence of human beings. It is a small band-aid on a large wound that need not ever be opened again. To procreate for the sake of the band-aid is therefore irrational, as the band-aid only exists to heal the wound, which it can't ever completely do.

But then secular thinkers would have the least need of reasons here. They would just do what comes naturally - which includes making fairly rational choices about the situational pros and cons of having kids. — apokrisis

If they are moral nihilists, this may follow, but antinatalism tacitly assumes moral realism, for it regards procreation as immoral in principle, not merely according to the individual's subjective inclinations.

By having more people you are creating a state of affairs whereby more people will need to be helped, when they didn't need to be helped in the first place. — schopenhauer1

Well said. I agree.

Thus, the best choice of all is never having been. — schopenhauer1

Here, though, is where I might offer some disagreement. There is a sense in which this choice can be made, namely, by committing suicide. If, as tends to be the case, the antinatalist regards the state of being before birth as equivalent to the state of being after death, then one can choose never to have been born by ending one's life.

This is a criticism I now level against Schopenhauer, who asserts the same equivalency. For Schopenhauer, consciousness and thereby one's personal, empirical identity ends with the death of the brain, so there can be no afterlife or reincarnation. The will's manifestations after one's birth will not carry on that identity. Nor is there any transcendent mind that might retain knowledge of the life one had, so all the suffering and tribulation one experienced in life is, in death, as though it never existed at all.

the child also inherits an amalgamation of the two parent’s worldviews — javra

This brings to mind a cheeky objection to antinatalism, which is that antinatalists should have as many children as possible to spread the message and accelerate the goal of humanity's extinction. A paradox, but it fits the sort of utilitarian calculi that antinatalists tend to employ.

ethical for elevated selfishness — javra

Selfishness isn't ethical, though. This is a category mistake.

Because some would rather term elevated selfishness “non-selfish”, — javra

That would be equivocation.

for the benefit of mankind (a category which does not exclude the very parents of elevated selfishness/selflessness which given birth … nor the very offspring themselves). — javra

Now here's the makings of a nonselfish reason. What do you mean by mankind? It sounds Platonic. What is it about mankind that it needs maintaining?

If I remember correctly, some Buddhists (?) see procreation as a necessary evil that prevents souls from regressing into "lesser" states of being. Paradoxically, if humans do not procreate, they doom everyone to an endless cycle of rebirth in lesser forms of life (which do procreate). — darthbarracuda

Yeah, this is what I had in mind when I mentioned Indian religious traditions in my other post. That said, though they appear to be in the minority, there are some bhikkhus who advocate something very near to antinatalism. See here: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/fuang/single.html

It also seems to me that Buddhism has as a global goal the elimination of all procreation, even though locally and proximately, it advocates procreation for the reason you gave. Once all sentient beings are enlightened, birth ends. This is the bodhisattva's goal. In fact, the same holds true of Christianity, with the world having a definite end and Jesus saying that there is no marriage in heaven (and therefore no procreation) in Matthew 22:30.

Any reason to have children, in my opinion, must either be religious or intra-wordly, the latter being things like economic stability (such as government incentives to procreate). Intra-wordly reasons seem to me to almost always be selfish and immoral, since they necessarily use a person as a means and not as an end. — darthbarracuda

Yes, this is exactly how it seems to me.

Yuck, utilitarianism — darthbarracuda

This isn't facetious? I thought you were a utilitarian of some kind.

In that case, it may not be selfish, but it certainly isn't wise or prudent. And it certainly contradicts everything that goes into being a good parent - try explaining to your child that you had them with the sole intention of grooming them to be providers of utility. That's a shit parent. — darthbarracuda

Agreed.