Yes, but by whose standard?

But why don't we antinatalists just kill ourselves? That's what I want to know. Although how does anyone know anything?

It is. — DA671

Who says? How does anyone know anything? Everything's subjective. Concept. East.

If that makes you happy, it's fine. — DA671

No it isn't.

You don't seem to care about understanding others, which is tragic. — DA671

You're tragic.

What?

I think that to deserve something you need to exist.

So, to deserve a benefit, you need to exist.
And to deserve not to be harmed, you need to exist.

Nothing in my case assumes otherwise. You just can't understand the argument.

Shall I do us?

D-70IQ: Hello Bartricks Bank Manager, I would like a loan of $100m to start my Crayon Warehouse business. Giant hangers devoted entirely to selling Crayons. Red crayons. 'Just Crayons" it will be called. Or perhaps "Just Crayons (Red)".

Bartricks: I've looked at your projections for your Crayon Warehouses and the income you expect them to generate is very small, given that there's scant demand for Crayons and you're going to be building gigantic warehouses devoted entirely to selling them (and in some cases you'll be building 2 such warehouses within half a mile of each other). So, it just seems to be an absurd business and it'll never generate enough revenue to pay back the $100m you want me to lend you.

D-70IQ: but in the first year it'll generate $1,200 dollars. That's money. Money good.

Bartricks: yes, but the interest payments alone on the $100m will be $12m and replaymens will be another $12m. So you need to generate revenue of $2m a month to be solvent, not the $100 dollars you expect to earn. It's just an unbelievably dumb business. I don't really know why you're wasting my time with it.

D-70IQ: but my point is that it'll generate $1,200 a year. That's positive money. Money is positive. It'll generate it. $1,200 from crayon sales.

Bartricks: yes, I know that. I haven't disputed that money is good and that your business will generate $1,200 from crayon sales. That's not at issue. The point is that you need to generate revenue of at least $24m a year for the loan to make sense.

D-70IQ: you mean you don't think $1,200 is worth anything? That $1,200 is not worth having? If it's worth having, then it's worth racking up $100m of debt to generate it, isn't it!

Bartricks: no, it isn't. If you need to generate $100m of debt to generate $1,200 of revenue, then you've got a shite business.

D-70IQ: Clearly you are incapable of understanding me. I am going to take my trolley of belongings next door to Xtrix bank instead. They understanding me there. They lent me $8billion to start my chain of 'thump in the face' shops where you can get thumped in the face for a fee. It lasted a week and generated $20 from one confused customer who now suing me for $20m for broken nose. $20 good.

I never said that there was any denial. I was focusing on the point that if creating happiness requires prior deprivation, then preventing suffering should require the presence of satisfaction. Otherwise, all one has is an inconsistent framework — DA671

Why did you say that given nothing I have argued implied otherwise?

To be deprived of something, one needs to exist. That's something I think its true, not false.

To be deprived of something one deserves, one needs to exist. Again, that's something I think is true, not false.

To be benefited by something, one needs to exist. That's something I think is true, not false.

To deserve something one needs to exist. That's something I think is true, not false.

So why are you pointing these things out? Nothing i have argued implies otherwise.

You need to take a bit more time to understand the argument I am making and not decide it's equivalent to some gobbledigook of your own invention.

If one needs to exist in order to be deprived of something — DA671

Yes, one needs to exist in order to be deprived of something.

[quote="DA671;718976" them one also needs to exist in order to gain from the absence of harms[/quote]

Yes, where have I denied that?

Well, God once commanded ethnic cleansing, rape and genocide — hwyl

Unless you are begging the question, you're claiming those activities were once morally right, yes?

If they were never morally right, then he never commanded them.

If they were, then he did - but then they wouldn't be a counterexample, would they?

So what are you saying?

It deprives them of joy and happiness. — Xtrix

There's no them. They don't exist. Never have. To be deprived of something one must exist (or, more controversially, at least have existed at some point)

How about pretending to be an adult for a few pages? — Xtrix

I was pretending to be a professor frustrated at his lazy students. And I wasn't pretending..

Not even that interesting; rather boring, actually. — Xtrix

But how do you know it is boring? Says who? You? I think you just resent the thread.

Ok— so there goes your argument. — Xtrix

No, the act of procreation creates a person - a person who deserves more than they can possibly be given and who deserves no harm (yet will be harmed).

So the act of procreation creates injustices - bads - that an actual person will suffer. And that's a feature that, when an act has it, operates as a moral negiatve.

By contrast, the act of not procreating creates no person and does not deprive a person of anything they deserve.

Up. Your. Game.

From what I can glean from the unreliable internet, there are several new Testament references to the trinity, none of which seem puzzling.

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"

There's nothing puzzling here. The suggestion is just that there is one named person who qualifies as the Father, the son and the Holy spirit. It's no different from saying 'in the name of the chair of the board, the founder of the company, and the major shareholder (titles shared by Mr Rich Boss).

Another one:

"May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."

Again, if I said "you have the permission of the chair of the board, the support of the founder of the company, and the good will of its major shareholder" - and all of those were one and the same person - that's fine. No puzzle. No contradiction.

Here's another:

"There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work"

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Chairperson distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same company founder. There are different kinds of working, but everyone is working for the same majority shareholder.

And so on. No puzzle. Note, even if it is true that the Chairperson has powers that the founder does not necessarily have, or that the majority shareholder does not have, even that is not puzzling once one understands that these are roles that one and the same person can occupy at the same time. It just means that Mr Rich Boss cannot, qua majority shareholder, do things that Mr Rich Boss, qua Chairperson, can. And so on.

It seems to me, then, that any impression of a puzzle here has been generated by curious use of the word 'person' and an insistence that the trinity involves there being 'three persons in one [person]". That's manifestly incoherent. But it is not called for by any of the quotes from the bible (assuming the internet sites from which I got them are reliable).

I suggest to Christians concerned to be coherent that the trinity be understood either as one person occupying different roles - just as the founder of the company, the chairperson, and the majority shareholder can all be the same person - or that it is one person who has had three incompatible sets of properties at different times, or some combination of those two.

:vomit: :vomit: :vomit: :vomit:

Who says?

By who's standard?

How do we know anything anyway?

What about eastern ideas?

If your sensation represents the event that happened in the past to be happening in the present, then the sensation constitutes an illusion. For what it represents to be the case is not, in fact, the case.

But if you are very tiny and stood on a giant ball, then nothing your visual sensations are telling you is not, in fact, the case. That you can't see you are on a giant ball is due to your location, not a failure in sensation.

Tell me, what tune started playing in your head halfway through that second paragraph? I'm betting it was "Ding dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead dobidobidoo, do do be dobedoobedoo"

“Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” — tryhard

Why couldn't those just be three names for the same person?

If this is the case, why does each form of the trinity act as if it were its own distinct being in the Biblical narratives? — tryhard

A cube does not have the same properties as a pyramid. And a pyramid does not have the same properties as a sphere. They have contradictory properties: if something is a cube, it is not also a sphere etc.

But one and the same lump of clay can be all three at different times. It can start out a cube, become a pyramid, and then become a sphere.

Why couldn't it be like that? (I"m not a Christian and haven't read the bible, so I don't know).

For example, the term God is typically used to denote a person who has the properties of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. But the person is distinct from the properties. They 'have' those properties. THey are not constituted by them. To qualify as God they have to have them. But they'd be the same person if they gave some of them up, just as the cube remains the same lump of clay if it morphs into a sphere.

Zinger.

A lot of the basis for your current argument with DA671 is deontology versus consequentialism (seemingly here of the utilitarian variety). DA671 is only using consequences and population statistics as a criterion for moral behavior. In this view, a little bit of murder justifies a greater outcome to "someone doing the moral calculation it seems?", etc. and relies heavily on the netted population's view on life at any given moment for whether an act is deemed ethically good or bad (so cannibalism is good as long as 58% of the population thinks so.. same with slavery, etc.). — schopenhauer1

Yes, crude utilitarianism can be refuted in many ways, one of which involves appealing to desert (a utilitarian doesn't recognize that innocents do not deserve harm and thus will not count the fact an innocent is suffering any differently to the fact a guilty person is suffering). It probably isn't worth debating with someone who thinks like that, as they're an ethical idiot and not a source of ethical insight (or a dogmatist more committed to a theory than to following evidence).

It's not directly relevant to my desert based argument - which assumes the reality of desert, something utilitarians are committed to denying - but even utilitarianism seems to imply antinatalism.

First, by any objective standard, humans create far more misery than happiness overall. So, if our one moral task is to maximise happiness and minimize suffering, then stopping breeding would seem to be enjoined (of course, so would suicide - but that's utilitarianism for you!).

Second, if one arbitrarily excludes animal interests from mattering - and as utilitarians are typically very stupid and crude, one imagines that many of them will see no problem with making such arbitrary exclusisons - then it looks as if the theory will imply the opposite: that we ought to start breeding voraciously as 40 billion lives that are barely worth living will achieve in aggregate more happiness than, say, 1 billion much happier lives. And it's the totals that count for these berks.

There's the idea that one doesn't need religion in order to be moral. — baker

No one thinks that. That's a straw man position invented by atheists so that they can avoid addressing the fact that morality itself requires God.

Aristotle said that you should not support the stronger with the weaker and that the job of the philosopher is to follow the appearances.

So, if an argument has as a premise that 1 + 2 = 3 and someone seeks to dispute that premise by asserting that 1 + 3 = 8, then one does not need to bother with that person. They have not raised a reasonable doubt. They've just asserted something obviously false. It may not be obviously false to them, but that says something about them rather than about reality. And there is no point trying to argue with them, for any argument in support of 1 + 2 = 3 would appeal to premises less plausible than that 1 + 2 = 3. We have reached bedrock, so to speak.

Similarly, if one has as a premise that, say, sensations are mental states, and someone seeks to deny that premise by just contradicting it, then again, one should simply ignore that person. There is no point arguing with them, for any argument to the contrary would appeal to premises less apparent than the premise they are being used to support.

Likewise, if one has as a premise that, say, those who have done nothing deserve no harm, and someone seeks to deny that premise by just contradicting it, once more one should ignore that person for any argument one might try to give for the premise in question would have premises less clearly true than the premise itself.

Needless to say, virtually nobody here understands this.

No. Why are you asking these questions? — Isaac

Because they're directly relevant.

No, a sensation is a mental state. This:

A sensation is the response from a sensor. — Isaac

is circular and uninformative.

Look, you're clearly just a dogmatic materialist who hasn't got any interesting arguments to offer, just nay saying. It's boring.

Don't be sore, Hugh. Just read the OP and try and engage with the argument.

Look, if you want to insist that a person who has done nothing is not undeserving of harm, that's fine. YOu haven't refuted the argument, you've just demonstrated what grossly implausible claims one is committed to making in order to avoid the conclusion.

You can resist the conclusion of my argument by insisting that newly born babies are not undeserving of harm.

That's fine. Now you've got a really stupid position that in any other context than this one everyone else would recognize to be stupid.

You can resist the conclusion of my argument by insisting that if an act will create an injustice, this doesn't - other things being equal - count against it.

Again, that's fine, because it's obviously false. In other contexts everyone recognizes that if an act creates an injustice that's a black mark against it. But if you want to insist that it is no kind of mark at all, then that's fine: you've lost, because now you're committed to a really stupid view.

One could resist my argument by insisting that it is solely in the context of procreation that these features cease to operate as moral negatives.

That's fine: for that's an obviously dogmatically stupid view.

One could try and 'defend' that view by arguing that we - most people - have a faculty of reason that tells them that procreation is morally okay. And that's then default evidence that it is.

Which is correct: it is. That's really the only way to respond to my argument that wouldn't amount to rational suicide: that is, that would not commit one to a view that has nothing whatever to be said for it.

But while that response gets out of the starting block - it doesn't amount to saying "I refute you thus!" and blowing your brains out - the problem is that there's really no reason to think those particular apparent representations of reason are accurate, given that virtually everyone has been brought up in the cult of the family and told repeatedly that procreation is a good thing to do.

The more I think about it, the more this entire thread looks like a giant expression of resentment towards one’s parents because life didn’t turn out how one wanted it. — Xtrix

Yeah, that's because you can't address the argument so you need to tell yourself that the arguer has a problem. Whatever helps.

They don’t “deserve” anything. Things happen in life — Xtrix

Yeah, shit happens. Good point. I'm certainly being out classed.

Deserves got nothing to do with it— to quote Clint Eastwood. — Xtrix

Er, it's a premise in the argument. Christ.

It’s self evident that if a person has done nothing, they deserve the chance to live. — Xtrix

Er, when it comes to procreative acts the person does not yet exist. A non-existent person can't deserve anything. So: fail. Try again.

The line of your debate:

You: "Don't say x, y, or z -- only tell me which premise is false!"

Interlocutor: "Premise k is false."

"No, premise k is true."

"How?"

"It's self-evidently true."

"I don't see any reason to believe it."

"That's because you're an idiot." — Xtrix

Liar. Which premise do you think is false then, eh?

Your reason tells you that if someone has done nothing they deserve to come to harm????

It is self-evident to virtually everyone that if a person has done nothing, then they do not deserve to come to any harm.

That's not remotely controversial.

And it's not remotely controversial that if an act will create some undeserved harm, then that's a bad feature of an act - a feature that can be expected to create reason not to perform it, other things being equal.

It's not remotely controversial that procreative acts create a person who has done nothing.

It is the denial of any of these claims that would be controversial and apparently contrary to reason and thus that would require defence.

So the argument is valid and apparently sound. That's the very definition of a good argument.

If you are driven to having to question the very nature of morality itself or to question how anyone knows anything - the whole 'who's to say' point - then you've lost. Those are last resort 'nuclear' options for those who can't directly challenge any premise. They don't engage with the argument, for they can be made against any argument whatever that leads to a normative conclusion you happen not to hold.

Now that - that's - dogmatism. What I'm doing is arguing for a conclusion you dislike. That ain't dogmatism. Dogmatism is not about the view, it's about the manner in which it is held. Something a lot of you folk don't seem to understand. It's not what you believe, but how you believe it.

This is now too tedious for words. Have I denied that the benefits are good?
Try and understand the argument. Try and understand why, despite being good, the benefits do not generate any reason to perform the act that creates them. Try.

Now we need to start again, don't we?

You accept that this is true: innocent persons deserve benefits and no harms.

They not get that.

That bad.

They get some benefits and some harms.

They deserve no harms and lots of benefit.

That bad.

Act that makes bad is bad.

Procreative act bad.

Benefits good, but not enough. Not enough is bad. Bad when person who deserve lots get little. Harms all bad as none deserved. That bad. Bad and bad.

Acts that make bad are bad. We not do bad acts. They no no unless make more goods or demand too much from us.

Then try and think of an example of an act that deprives a person of a benefit they deserve and where that fact about the act does not function as a moral negative.

Then admit you can't.

And then admit that the fact procreative acts are acts that have both of those features is a fact about them that functions as a moral negative.

Resist the temptation to ignore this argument and say something dumb like ' but benefits is good'. For then we will have to start all over again

That's not an example. Provide an example of an act that creates an undeserved harm and where that fact about the act does not function as a moral negative.

Admit you can't.

What is your case? Give me a non question begging example of an act that creates undeserved harm and where the fact it creates undeserved harm does not function as a moral negative

So you accept that 1 and 2 are true.
You realise that means you need to accept that 3 is true or qualify as thicker than a thick thing on national thick day, yes?

And now you are saying stuff. What is your case?

It quite obviously has the same form.
So, that means you need to deny 1 or 2.
Which one do you deny?

Answer my question.

I think you mean "mummy!!!! The nasty reasoning man is doing things with arguments again!!! Arrrgh!!! Run away!!"
Yes?

Answer my question.

Don't just say stuff. Answer the question.

Yes was sufficient.

Do you see how this conforms to that valid argument form:

1. Innocent persons deserve benefits
2. Innocent persons deserve no harm
3. Therefore innocent persons deserve benefits and no harms?