'Default wrong' doesn't mean always and everywhere wrong. Sheesh, are you doing this on purpose?

It is often perfectly justified to do something to someone that affects them significantly without their consent. Often - though not invariably - it is justified to do something to someone without their consent if doing so is the only way to prevent them from coming to a significant harm, for instance. That's why it is morally justified to force kids to go to school. But a) it is regrettable that we have to do this and b) it is not justified to create a situation in which this has to be done. That a large portion of our lives will have to be lived under the paternalistic dictactorship of our parents and state authorities is part of what makes forcing someone into this existence such a significant thing to have done to them.

No, I mean by default wrong what I said I mean. Now address the argument not the label I have attached to it. The label is correct and all you're doing by disputing that is a) not focussing on the issue at hand and b) revealing your ignorance.
Engage the argument or go away and start your own thread in which you use whatever labels you want to attach to things.

Like I say, you're off topic. My argument is - for the umpteenth time - 'Kantian'. It is distinct from "Kant's ethics" even though a believer in Kant's ethics is, of course, a Kantian.
But anyway, those who are fundamentally uninterested in philosophical discussions for fear that they may discover something is true that they don't want to be prefer, in my experience, verbal quibbles.
I am not going to reply to you any more until you address the actual argument rather than the label I have applied to it.

And I am unclear why you have said that "your consciousness is not your soul". I know! Consciousness is not a thing, but a state of a thing.
The mind is the thing - whatever it may be - that is, or can be, in a state of consciousness.

The reason I am the same person - the same mind, that is - both before and after a period of unconsciousness is precisely because I am my mind not my consciousness. I am conscious, but I am not consciousness.

No, that's clearly false. The lump of cheese in front of me is casting a shadow and it is the sun that is responsible for that. Yet manifestly the lump of cheese in front of me has no mental properties. For while it makes perfect sense for me to wonder what the lump of cheese might feel, taste or smell like, it makes not a blind bit of sense for me to wonder what it thinks like. Thus, my reason and the reason of all sane people positively represents the cheese - and all other shadow-casting objects - to be lacking in mental states and thus not to be minds.
Anyway, good luck starting your cult.

There are no leaps in any of my arguments. Each argument is deductively valid - that is, its conclusion must be true if the assumptions are. And so in each case the only issue is whether the assumptions are true.

So, here is one:

1. No object that has sensible properties has mental properties.
2. All material objects have sensible properties
3. Therefore, no material object has mental properties
4. My mind has mental properties
5. Therefore, my mind is not a material object

No, the 'mind' is an object - it is whatever object is bearing our conscious states.
So, someone who believes that conscious states are being borne by some kind of extended thing - such as our brain - is someone who believes that the mind is a material object.
I am arguing that the mind is an immaterial thing. By an 'immaterial thing' I mean an object that lacks material properties, such as extension.

I have presented several arguments for this thesis, each one deductively valid and with extremely plausible premises.

For example;

1. Any material object is divisible
2. My mind is not divisible.
3. therefore, my mind is not a material object.

But they ARE near universal. Most people really do consider sexual betrayal worse than financial betrayal. You may not, but most people do - and most people consider it such a grave wrong they end their relationships because of it. Perhaps there is no moral aspect to it, but I think that's seriously mistaken as, again, most would agree.

But they are near universal.

No, it is a thing with which I am identical.

No, you were just begging the question.

What - they thought it would be good if we could solve every problem by masturbating? That's insane. Plus surely that would make many trivial problems harder, not easier, to solve?

That's what I assume, anyway - happy to be wrong.

No, I try to read as little as possible and, as I understand it, Freud was a psychologist not a philosopher, so I think that the odds are he will have nothing much to say that I will find relevant as fundamentally his concern was with making his patients feel better about themselves not with what's true.

Question begging. By insisting that it is irrational to view sex as ethically special you are assuming that reason does not represent it to be. Yet as my examples show, reason clearly does represent it to be ethically special.
And once more you are committing the genetic fallacy by providing a possible history of the intuitions.

I mean by 'default wrong' 'default wrong'. I do not know of another way to say the same thing more clearly. Defeasibly wrong? That seems less clear, but it means the same.

Question begging. I have just explained why it appears that sex most certainly is an appropriate subject for ethics as it would seem to be a feature, like pain, whose presence can make an otherwise ethical act unethical.

I just picked my nose. How on earth did that affect everyone? I just made my partner a cup of coffee after asking if she wanted one - how on earth did that affect another person without their consent? So your claim that every act affects everyone without their consent is patently obviously false.

And since when do barristers play bar tricks?

Wrong again. As I made clear by saying that I was making a Kantian argument, the focus is on the nature of the act, not its real-world consequences (ethically significant though they are).
If my case is a sophistry, show me.

No, it really isn't and you're the confused one. If you've tried to conceive a child then you're as bad as someone who actually did and you're being flung to the same circle of hell.

No, for although I believe we all existed prior to being born here, I think that is irrelevant. For even if the procreative acts that brought us here also created us, they still affected us.

Now, do you believe that it is default wrong to do something that will significantly affect another person without their consent?
If your answer is 'no' then THAT will be our focus. If your answer is 'yes', correct - you get a Kant-shaped cookie

not everything affects everyone, so that's false, and not everything that affects others affects them without their consent, so that's false too.
But anyway, the claim is that if an act affects someone else in a significant way then it is default wrong if the affected person has not consented to be affected in that way.
So not all acts that affect others without their consent are wrong, because some affect others in utterly trivial ways. And not all acts that affect others in significant ways without their consent are wrong either, because in many such cases there are other considerations in play that either cancel the wrongness that such acts would otherwise have, or countervail it with greater rightness.
For example, it seems self-evident that, again by default, we do not have obligations to do things we are incapable of doing. If, as you falsely claim, everything I do will inevitably affect another person without their consent, then this does not give rise to any obligation for me not to do anything, for that is not something I am capable of doing.

As said before, this thread is about whether procreation is default wrong due to blah did blah consent (can't be bothered to keep writing it). It is not about Kant.

I didn't say anything about what Kant means - look, you eat your picnic, I want a knife fight.

No I didn't. I don't think you understand this thread or much of anything really - certainly not Kant.

Off topic. This is not about what Kant did or did not say. This is about whether procreation is wrong due to the fact that it is an act that affects another in a very substantial way without their prior consent. An issue that, I believe, you have previously expressed your total lack of interest in.
So you're bringing a picnic to a knife fight.

Don't - don't, don't, don't - go to Wikipedia for insight. Wikipedia is not an academically respectable source, as your institution should itself have told you. It is shot through with mistakes. Nothing on there is subject to proper peer review. If you are at a university then read from proper peer-reviewed sources - that is, academic articles and books by respectable academic presses (not books by philosopher-wannabes with no academic credentials in the area).

As for the distinction in question, deontology is the name of a family of views of which Kantianism is a variety. So, Kantians are deontologists, but a deontologist is not necessarily a Kantian. (And Kant's own ethical theory would be a variety of Kantianism).

Crudely, actions can be said to have three components - the agent, the act itself, and the act's consequences. And the three major approaches to ethics - virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism - can then be understood as trying to ground our moral duties in one or other of those components. Virtue ethicists ground our duties in qualities of the agent, deontologists ground our duties in the nature of the act itself (so they differ from virtue ethicists in that a virtue ethicist would say that Xing is right because it manifests a virtue, whereas the deontologist would say Xing is right and so that's why performing it is virtuous), and consequentialists in the consequences of the act (xing is right because it has good consequences, and a virtuous person is someone who typically performs acts that have good consequences).

A Kantian is a deontologist who says something more specific about the nature of those acts that are wrong. But Kantianism itself denotes a family of views all of which analyse the wrongness of wrong acts in terms of them manifesting one or other of a certain cluster of features - such as, for example, being an act that treats others as mere utensils because they are acts that could not be consented to by a rational deliberator, or being an act that the agent him/herself would not have agreed to under a range of circumstances, and so on. They basically seek to ground the wrongness of an act in something to do with the autonomy and consent either of the agent or of others.

But by no means all deontologists would take themselves to be restricted to analysing the wrongness of wrong acts in this way. A good example of a deontologist who is not a Kantian would be W.D.Ross. This has become too long, but to give an example of a way in which one might be a deontologist, but not a Kantian, take breaking promises.
Ross thought that acts of promise breaking are prima facie - that is, default - wrong. But he didn't think we need to say any more about why they are wrong. They are wrong because they are wrong. It is just the nature of acts of promise breaking that they are prima-facie wrong. (Ross, who was an expert on Aristotle, was no doubt influenced in his ethical thinking by Aristotle's dictum that it is unwise to try and explain the more obvious in terms of the less - it is more obvious that breaking one's promises is wrong than that it is wrong for this or that reason, and thus the wise person does not seek to analyse why promise breaking is wrong but just accepts its wrongness as a basic atom in the moral, er, molecule).
A typical Kantian, by contrast, would seek to explain the wrongness of promise breaking in terms of it being an act that expresses a policy that we could not agree to everyone else acting on, or in terms of promise-breaking being something that the affected party could not have agreed to, etc.

I think most of you are approaching this the wrong way. You are attempting to explain why it might have come about that sex appears to us to be morally special. But you (most of you) are saying nothing about whether it actually is or not.

Perhaps you think that if you can explain why something appears to us to be the case, that constitutes evidence that it is not in fact the case - but without further explanation you'd be committing the genetic fallacy in drawing that conclusion.

So I think most of you are missing the point, which is that sex appears to be morally special in and of itself. So sex is a bit like pain in this respect. Many acts that are wrong are wrong precisely because they cause someone some pain. (Not all, obviously, and not all acts that cause someone pain are wrong, but many are wrong and wrong precisely because they cause a person pain). Many acts are wrong precisely because they involve sex.

Stop label munching and address the argument itself. Just know that I am not misusing the term 'Kantian', whatever you may think about it.

I should also say that you seem fundamentally to misunderstand Kant's ethics - so, you say that Kant places supreme value on one's own value and that it somehow follows from this that therefore Kant would be in favour of promoting the existence of more people.
No. Kant is all about respect - respecting that which has value, rather than 'promoting' that which has value.
For example, Kant is all about respecting free will. How does one do that? Well, not by creating lots and lots of creatures who have free will. That's what a consequentialist would do - they figure out what's valuable and then seek to create as much of it as possible. That's precisely NOT what a Kantian - or Kant - would do. You respect the intrinsic value of free will by allowing others to make their own decisions. What your free will allows you to do - make decisions - you should allow others to do with theirs, otherwise you're not respecting their free will because you're acting as if your free will is special.

So, the fact you think that, having established that X is valuable, Kant would then proceed to promote that value shows that you don't understand Kant's view, or a Kantian view.

Anyway, let's put all this blither blather to one side and just focus on the actual argument. I mean that was the point of this threat - to focus on the argument, not discuss what label to put on it or what some long dead Prussian might have thought about it.

At what point have I said that Kantian ethics and deontological ethics are one and the same? A Kantian ethics will be deontological, but a deontological ethics will not necessarily be Kantian. Where, exactly, have I said anything at all to suggest otherwise?

I have noticed that you like to throw the word 'logical' into what you say a lot. Yet you seem to mean by 'logic' 'what Echarmion says'. Why not express yourself in logical arguments?

If you cannot affect someone by creating them, kindly explain how you can affect someone by destroying them - and explain in a way that will not allow me to say the same about creating someone or that will not just involve making some arbitrary stipulation that has no support from reason.

As you think you like logic, here's an argument and you tell me which premise you dispute, or the first premise you dispute if you dispute more than one of them.

1. It is default wrong to do something to someone that significantly affects them without their prior consent and wrong because it significantly affects them without their prior consent.
2. If people exist before they are born into this world, then procreative acts significantly affect others without their prior consent.
3. Therefore, if people exist before they are born into this world, then procreative acts are default wrong and default wrong because they significant affect others without their prior consent.

I am just trying to get clear whether, for you, the success or otherwise of the Kantian argument I have made depends crucially on whether people pre-exist.

Yes it is. Like I say, it is common to draw a distinction between 'Kant's ethics' and 'Kantian ethics'. The latter is a broad term reserved for any kind of deontological view that emphasises - a la Kant - the centrality of the agent's autonomy in determining the morality of an act. So, for example, Rawls and Regan would be described as Kantians, even though their substantial views are not identical with Kant's ethics.
Anyway, I do not want to get embroiled in a pointless debate over labels. I have not incorrectly used the term 'Kantian' in referring to the argument I am focusing on in that way. But by all means put whatever label you like on the argument - called it 'Terry' if you like - just focus on it.

Hume was quite wrong. Morality is not made of feelings. If it were then we could change the morality of a deed by changing our feelings. For instance, we could eradicate world injustice by just learning to lighten-up about it. That's absurd though and someone who thinks that is a way of eradicating world injustice is about as confused as someone who thinks morality is a type of cheese.

Moral truths are truths of reason. For instance, virtually all of us recognise that if we feel approval of an act that does not necessarily entail that it is morally right for us to perform it.

And we recognise, most of us, that it is by reason that we are primarily aware of morality, and that it is by consulting our reason and engaging in reasoned debate that we resolve moral problems.

And we recognise, most of us, that if an act is morally required, then we necessarily have some reason to do it. Yet clearly if I approve of something it does not follow of necessity that I have some reason to do it.

So Hume's individual subjectivism about morality is just plain wrong and confused.

I do not understand your point. Yes, there are consequentialist arguments against procreation. But there are also deontological ones. The one I have presented here is squarely deontological.

Labels ultimately do not matter. But 'Kantian ethics' and 'Kant's ethics' are not the same, the former being far broader than the latter and not held hostage to the letter of what Kant's writings.

An argument, such as the one I have made here, that focuses squarely on the nature of the act rather than the character traits of the agent or the actual consequences of the act is deontological and, because it focusses on consent, is Kantian in spirit.

How is that a false assumption? It's exceedingly obvious both as a matter of logic as well as general language use that only something that does exist can be affected. If you want to argue otherwise, the burden to establish that logic is on you. — Echarmion

Er, the person you will have created exists at the time you create them - and can thus be affected by the act of creation.

People - lots and lots of people - are grateful for having been created. Are they irrational? (No) If being created is not something that affects you, what are they grateful for?

Again, assume you know that any person you create will live a life of immediate and unending agony. If you create that person the first moment of pain negatively affects them, yes?

Imagine Jane knows that if she ingests a certain drug prior to conception, then any person that results will be deaf and blind and mentally retarded. She takes the drug. Has she negatively affected the person she creates? (Yes, obviously).

Presumably you would agree that killing someone affects them - yes? So if taking someone out of existence can affect them, then so too can bringing someone into existence.

But really this is beside the point. I mean, just imagine that those who procreate are not creating new persons but rather bringing into this realm persons who already exist in another. After all, that's possibly true. Well now even you would surely agree that procreative acts significantly affect someone without their consent, yes?

Now we do not know whether acts of procreation genuinely create a person who did not already exist or whether they force someone who already exists to live a life here. But it seems implausible to think that the morality of procreation hangs on which one of those possibilities is actual.

Why might that be? I suggest it is because either way, the act of procreation significantly affects someone without their prior consent and that is the morally relevant feature of such acts.

Prove I haven't.

Well if you don't care, don't participate. And you can't refute an argument by being indignant about it.

Yes you can. There's a distinction to be drawn between 'Kant's ethics' and 'Kantian ethics'. I am not talking about Kant's particular view - this is not an attempt at Kant scholarship. I am not saying that Kant himself was an antinatalist.

By a Kantian ethics I mean one in which it is the nature of the act - as opposed to its actual consequences or the character of the agent who performs it - that is the focus, and additionally where consent plays a central role in determining the ethical quality of that act.