There are things, probably lots of things, you would not like forced on you as an adult.

Now it seems your using the excuse of the child's initial non existence to impose these on someone.

For example I was forced to go to church several times the week my entire childhood which was a grim joyless environment and read the bible and pray every day. As an adult I have never chosen to do anything like that. It is something I would never chose but my status as a child meant I was powerless.

You are using the "nonexistence" status of the unborn so as not to have to accept that you are imposing on them a soon as they come to exist and mitigate your actions even though you can well predict potential preferences.

It is not acceptable to rape someone when they are unconscious because of the impact when they become conscious. The initial non existence of a person does not justify what happens to them after they start to exist.

Even if someone is not an antinatalist they can accept that the child did not chose to be born or did not state a preference for this life or sign a contract with society. I would be happy if people just recognized that dynamic and its ethical ramifications.

Again, it's environment/nature. — Harry Hindu

In the nature nurture debate I believe they are referring to human nature not how nature effects humans.

It usually refers to innate personal nature/inheritance versus nurture/rearing. Behavioral genetics is about genetic correlations as opposed environment. Dawkins Selfish genes is about inherited traits with primitive motivations and Plomin whom I mentioned earlier is concerned with polygenetic scores and deterministic genetic outcomes.
Stephen Pinker's Blank Slate is concerned with proving we are born with a specific quite deterministic nature.

I think it is a chicken and egg thing with genes but the theory is that genes arose in a primeval soup not that genes preexisted their environment which to me does not favor genes.

Important social policy and psychological theory hinges on this. The issue is that people who favor genes or personality as most powerful advocate different policies, ideologies and therapies but people who advocate nurture and environment are more likely to advocate changing societal and family dynamics.

I do think genes are important but they are important in context of nurture. For example you raise your child based on what is best for his or her genes or simply preferences and dispositions. But people like Plomin and Caplan will argue that parental intervention has limited effect which is implausible. One notable statistic is that people most often share their parents religion.

It's not an act of force on the child — Terrapin Station

It is an act of force that directly impacts the child and has lifelong consequences not of their choosing.

After you have been born you have experiences that you did not chose after you have lived for several years and when you reach the age you can think about suicide having to kill yourself to escape from a life you didn't chose is another things forced on you.

Another example is people who have genetic illnesses that will almost certainly be passed onto a child.The parents know before hand what condition the child will likely inherit and have to deal with.

Because the thing being created has volition and desires these can inevitably be thwarted as soon as the person starts to exist.

Forcing someone into existence is not forcing something on someone but it is an act of force to begin somethings existence without its consent. So any onus is on the creator.

I am not sure what rests on your quibble.

Racism can cause mental health problems. One attempt to tackle racism is to criminalize and prosecute racist actions. This is an attempt to tackle racism as a social problem regardless of whether we might have a biological tendency to racism. This is what I was referring to earlier concerning the actual nature of interventions.

Even if you think the nature-nurture dichotomy is a fallacy it is still alive and well and influential and I personally have a preference for nurture interventions over deterministic naturalistic perspectives.

I have highlighted the circumstances where ascertaining nurture problems is important which is when intervening in problem lives and dysfunction. You seem to be talking only from an abstract theoretical perspective.

It is not trivial or an obscene simplification to highlight when bad nurture is causing life problems for someone. I think examples such as skin color, height and diet are trivial compared to the outcomes of peoples lives in general. Not every genetic feature is relevant to someones quality of life.

So for example where skin color can be a problem is in a racist social context but in general it is not an inherent problem.

Just because there are numerous influences on someones life it does not mean you cannot isolate plausible specific causes.

Determinism does seem problematic for knowledge.

Do I believe 2+2=4 simply because my brain is in a certain state? That seems untrue because I can reflect on the logic behind 2+2=4 and am not simply forced to believe it.

To me reevaluating and testing beliefs is the reverse of determinism.

The point is that it is one thing to claim something is genetic or nature and another thing to have isolated and treated a cause. Maybe there are strong genetic causes to family dysfunction?

Possibly. In that case it would be hard to alter dynamics but we would alter our approach to the situation.

Sure, there are reasons to find 'causes' for things and attempt to intervene; one wonders what good it does to place those causes into little pre-marked boxes labelled 'nature' and 'nurture'. If anything, such an artificial parsing of phenomena would be little more than a hindrance to investigation, not a spur. — StreetlightX

I have never heard of a non medical intervention into someones life or family where genes have been mentioned. You do not have to explicitly say nurture but it is clear that most interventions outside of genetic illnesses are nurture interventions and the intervention is not based on any knowledge of the peoples involved genetic traits.

I think social change needs to come about by changing environments and values and anything else is fatalistic.

The point is it's a meaningless idea now. — MindForged

I do not think it is meaningless to look at someones life or circumstance and work out how much is caused by their ingrained personality and how much developed through nurture and is being sustained by environment.

Here is an example of the dichotomy still alive:

https://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/parenting-doesnt-matter-or-not-as-much-as-you-think/

In this debate the Two female panelists who think parenting matters work with families and in therapy and the two men who have the opposing view are theorists working in university.

I didn't say they play an equal role. I said the whole debate is largely meaningless. — StreetlightX

I think it is far from irrelevant when it comes down to helping people flourish, family interventions psychology, mental health, criminality and so on.

If something is being caused by nurture it is important to discover this and change and improve the environment.

Every theory in academia about humans and society can be influential in policy and have a major impact on people and society. It is a battle ground for influence. So for example Robert Plomin and Bryan Caplan economist believe parenting has little impact on education and life achievement. And Plomin,a behavioral geneticists, thinks you can examine someones genes as soon as they are conceived and predict outcomes and give them a polygenic score.

The problem is analyzing and selecting which data is most important and how it is being interpreted. This process will be influenced by biases.

Nevertheless I think even if you believe someones intelligence is inflexible I think policies should encourage everyone to flourish and not be based on an interpretation of someones polygenic score.

Yep. Anyone who thinks there is an agonistic relation between nature and nurture is uninformed about both. — StreetlightX

I have noticed that most people who work with children and families and in psychology or social work can see how important nurture is through experience without depending on abstraction.

I think the weight you put on nature and nurture is important for policy and values and interventions. If someone has a genetic disability then clearly this is going to be a purely medical issue but with dysfunctional families and social policy I think we really need to distinguish the main influence.

I think the idea that nature and nurture play an equal rule is vague and unhelpful really it is a common slogan but if you look further into the literature or polemics you start to see a clear bias.

Genes have the primary influence on intelligence. — Walter Pound

A heart exists because of genes however the environment a heart is in determines its health.

Intelligence is an abstract trait that manifests itself through actions. Being intelligent in it self does not guarantee life out comes which is the claim by some pro genetics theorists.

Making the child exist is an act of force and then its experiences are forced on it (by its nervous system etc).

I don't see how you can describe the creation of a child as not an act of force.
To create someone who has his or her own desires and volition undermines their desires and volition because they exist based on the parents desires.

I just think it is forcing something on someone because once they start to exist experiences they didn't choose are forced on them because of a decision by the parent.

Now imagine I asked you "Do you want a massage"? You would likely not want me to start massaging you without your consent and you would probably want me to find out your desire. But a child does not have this luxury. The fact the child cannot express desires or preferences before you created it means that anything experiences initially is forced onto it.

Most people really value consent but then are happy to create a child knowing it did not consent to the things it inevitably experiences. I have had numerous experiences I didn't consent to, like having a dysfunctional family, going to church several days a week throughout childhood, going to school and being bullied etc. To me creating a child is the biggest infringement of consent with life long consequences.

I think the status of a child prior to birth is irrelevant and a quibble though. We are quite capable of imagining before we act. I don't have to rape someone before deciding rape is wrong. There are lot of valuable concepts including numbers that don't exist physically.

Man's dominance over nature is fundamentally subordinate to nature. But nature doesn't dominate anything, it selects for. Nature has selected for the adaption that dominates (makes a domain). — Nils Loc

I think the position that nature dominates is a deterministic perspective. Indeed many thinkers now claim not to believe in free will. So these people would attribute everything to either blind physical forces or mechanical forces.

However if you view nature as the same as nurture this is not a mechanical view of nature and there is no problem. However I think human dominance is problematic and could destroy nature by man made climate change, pollution or nuclear weapons.

It is ironic how much we dominate the rest of nature considering some people hold it controls us.

And give the same amount of water and soil to different seeds and the difference in genes will cause different outcomes in how they grow. It seems like an equal influence from both — Harry Hindu

The way you get to discover potential genetic causes is by trying to give two things an identical environment. However the environment equals nurture.

I am obviously not denying people don't have different genetic outcomes but these occur embedded in environment/nurture.

It seems the genes only act after they are in an environment and being nurtured.

One thing I do not believe like some thinkers argue is that genes determine a child's outcomes. Also one thing about human society is that it is deeply artificial. So our genes are not a created to negotiate modern society. Only in a truly primitive state can our genes beside to be fulfilling a truly biological niche in my opinion.

This is a false dichotomy, read up on epigenetics. — MindForged

It is a dichotomy that still exists in discussion and literature.

I am compelled by the seed example because it seems to me that genes definitely require an environment and nurture and these can be very variable.

If you view a plant as invasive and damaging you can alter its environment to kill it or if a plant is seems as valuable you can improve its environs.

I am not trivializing the role of genes but it seems to me they rely to heavily on environment to dominate environment unless you consider genes as part of the environment in some sense.

I think the genetic stance is far more deterministic personally even if nurture and societal influences can be hard to overcome.

Which is dominant? It probably depends on the exact scenario at hand, just what variables we're talking about. — Terrapin Station

I am thinking of life outcomes and personality outcomes and not including unavoidable genetic illness.

For example you could say someones choice to smoke cigarettes caused them to of die of lung cancer

Or you could say someones genes predisposed them to nicotine addiction.

Or you could say stresses from family and society drove them to smoke.

Or you could say it was a combination of all that.

You might say someone has a gene that increases their tendency to aggression but you might also say this gene is easily controlled by nurture and that a genes bad characteristic will only manifest in bad circumstances or can be redirected productively.

Yes, but that's not using force on someone — Terrapin Station

I didn't make that claim but I think this is a semantic quibble. Physical Force including biochemical aspects is the only way to create a child.

There is no sense in which the child is choosing or that nature is forcing the parent automatically or that the child has expressed a preference and made a contract.

There is also hypothetical preferences and probability about the future. I don't need to throw a brick at a window to make a safe assumption it will shatter. A child does not need to exists for you to make hypothetical about the nature of existence based just on prior peoples experiences.

I think my own preferences are completely irrelevant to my hypothetical offspring preferences.

I think if your offspring share your values and preferences that is either, coincidence, indoctrination or genetics.

I do not belief my own desires and values are adequate grounds to make someone else exist.

You are causing them to exist. Combining your DNA and you partners is using physical forces to make someone exist.
Like the way a potter forces preexisting matter i.e. clay.

Surely the antinatalist must concede that they simply don’t have access to the experience of others. It is the pinnacle of arrogance to prescribe extinction by extrapolating one’s own misery, which of course is already nested in this particular existential orientation. — Roke

You do not need direct access to a persons experiences to make a plausible claim about other peoples suffering.

Also there are peoples own reports of their suffering, suicide attempts and successful suicides, statistics on depression and famine etc. I don't know of any antinatalists who does not measure their position only using their own personal suffering and their own speculation and intuitions.

I think the real pinnacle of arrogance is assuming you deserve to be able to create someone else, to force him or her into existence and control them and to decide standards for them and decide how much suffering and dysfunction they should tolerate.

One argument against a God is that if he exists he must be evil for creating all the suffering in the world or allowing all the suffering including children dying of bone cancer.

However, even if a God does exist he/she /it is not forcing people to procreate so people are choosing to bring offspring into a world they would condemn a deity for creating.

I think having a child is endorsing everything that happens in reality as suitable for your child.

I think both the religious and non religious can use God or Gods as a scapegoat for problems they are actually perpetuating themselves.

I know that if I create a child I will be responsible for all his or her future suffering and the possibility of grandchildren and further descendants suffering.

To me it is most brave to confront your own death and see what happens not to try and create some kind of immortality by having children.

What about experts in child welfare and child psychology?

Having a child is doing something to someone else and it is not a case of personal freedom. Bad parenting effects someone else, the child potential for a lifetime.

We have thousands of laws saying what people can and can't do so you must really object to everything about society or is it only regulating reproduction you object to?

It is already the case that thousands of unfit parents have there children taken into care so why wait to make this judgement of unfitness until after a new victim has been created?

You don't believe in experts?

You would allow a random person to do heart surgery on you?

(...)because birth brings more experiences of pleasure and we should maximize this apparently. — schopenhauer1

I have found that people who claim life is so desirable because of pleasure do not advocate forcing people to have children to increase levels of pleasure rather it seems like an ad hoc justification.

I don't think pain and pleasure can be strictly measured or accumulated in a utilitarian calculation. But I find it troubling that people are willing to coexist with lots of other peoples suffering
. And I don't think things like the Holocaust are a statistic to be manipulated but rather a qualitative experience to be reflected on phenomenology..

I'm not talking about the issue of criminality I am just examining the reasons people have for having children and what the characteristics of these reasons are.

Your positions amounts to anarchy if you don't think people need to justify their actions.

On the theological issue I am referring to my actual parents beliefs prior to and during having children and not whether I believe them.

I think it is part insane and part terrible to create children you think of as broken and to threaten them with hell, expose them to the hell doctrine and expose them to the hell they claim to believe in.

I cannot see a commitment to child welfare in your stance.

It is pragmatic to arrest people that plan to harm others or prevent harm rather than let the plan go to fruition which creates victims.

There was a case in America where a couple had a child with the explicit intention of sexual abusing it. They received very long prisons terms and I believe the child was taken into care however what if the child had not been rescued?

This is the most explicit case of a parent planning to torture a child and I cannot see how anyone could or should have the right to do this.

I think having a child to mend a relationship is also irresponsible and not in the child's interest.

I am interested in your response to my example of people who believe in the fallen nature and hell doctrines.

I could probably come up with a thousand arguments against having children or reasons not to, yet I can't think of a compelling reason why someone should.

Among the basic reasons against having a child famine, poverty, pollution over population, physical and mental illness, stress, work, war, the weapons industry including the nuclear threat, exploitation, death, possible pointlessness and meaninglessness, survival of the fittest, consent issues,inequality, injustice, religious doctrine (see my previous post).

Each issue has many layers. For example exploitation might be mutually beneficial however there are very many different cases and structural issues. In order to give yourself and your child what they want it relies on other people having children and working on behalf of your goals.

So for example if you want your child to see a Doctor and receive medicine then someone else has to have a child and that child has to train to be a doctor. It is not just a case of having a child in a bubble of independence but you implicitly have to demand other people procreate and work to create the society you want.

I wouldn't at all want a society wherein people are required to "justify having a child," and then other people judge their reasons. — Terrapin Station

Why not?

Do you think pedophiles should be allowed to have children. Drug users and Alcoholics?

I can give a common personal example here. As Christians my parents believe that all humans are corrupt through Adam and Eve and basically worthless and deserving of hell. So they had six children that the had a default low opinion and exposed them to the threat of eternal damnation.

I think you can logically challenge a person reasons for having a child or lack of reasons.

Unless you believe no one needs to ever justify having a child and can have a child for incoherent, illogical reasons.

Sometimes the reasons people give for having a child are very disturbing. I think most people believe that not everyone should have children such as abusive people, drug addicts, pedophiles and such.

If you can accept that some people shouldn't procreate then it is not far to go to scrutinize everyone's parenting suitability.

How are those two things equivalent? You don’t need to give birth to survive. — schopenhauer1

Maybe he means psychological survival?

Most of us can agree with the fact that everyone should have a right to live. — rayofsunshine

The right to live seems problematic because we can die at any time from illness of accident. You could restate it as the right not to be murdered.

It seems that rights are an expression of humans desires. We can define what we think are reasonable desires and then make a commitment to help further this desire.

I don't think they exist outside of human communities though.

I think it is pointless having children for one main reason which is death.

If there is no afterlife everything you did in life will be forgotten and become irrelevant.

We cannot imagine this because we all currently exist and cannot seriously imagine ceasing to exist altogether. I think with proof of an afterlife my stance would be slightly different.

Also the fear of death and the uncertainty of death and its specter is one of the many reasons I am an antinatalist. If I fear death and deprivation myself I don't want anyone else have to.

But there are numerous arguments people might give for antinatalism from death, disease through famine and war, via consent issues. There is not just one reason to be antinatalist. There is mental illness being bullied and other victimization, sexism, homophobia, religious persecution et al. I find it puzzling that all of these perils would not deter people.

When I was a child I was led to believe life was ultimately just and presided over by God but that was just a way of comforting or justifying things to someone in the presence of chronic problems, I think. The more you study history, the news, crime mental illness, cancer the harder it gets to feel optimistic I think.

No antinatalists are not just people who don't have kids. They're people that see it as morally incorrect to have kids — khaled

I know. But if someone does not have children they are not concerned about the survival of a part of themselves. they don't feel the need to have children. They survive without having them.

so I don't understand why you would allow the exploitation of living people for your purposes (forced labor food/clothes producers for example) while not allowing childbirth — khaled

I am not allowing it. The only exploitation I can realistically control is not exploiting my own child. You can attempt to limit how exploitative your life style is nonetheless.

The way to minimize harm is to not reproduce. The person who is forced into existence cannot be reasonably blamed for attempting basic survival to evade the harm for starvation and injury etc.

The kind of exploitation now is nothing like what early human societies were like.

I cannot see how any of my actions mitigate or promote creating millions of more humans. Even as an antinatalist we don't usually believe someone having one child is the equivalent to someone having 8 children.

There is mutual and neutral exploitation. Division of labor can be mutual or neutral exploitation. Likewise friendships, family and social groups.
Also you can exploit the environment in a sustainable way sharing it with other organisms and not monopolizing it.

However what we have is China an undemocratic country that commits numerous human rights abuses manufacturing a lot of the world goods. We have the UK proving the arms that Saudi Arabia uses in the war in Yemen which has led to famine deaths of babies.

Children and adults caught up in current and former war zones in places like The Congo, Angola and Liberia mining for minerals with no wage whilst being held hostage and these minerals are turning up in our mobile phones.

There are jobs that are robotic and unrewarding and underpaid as well, and unfair distribution of resources based on luck of birth etc

I can link you to a wide range of sources of evidence.

However in most cases in the modern economy it is very difficult to know where exactly goods are coming from so it is hard for anyone to assess the level of negative exploitation involved. I think the best way not to endorse inequality and corruption is not reproducing. In some cases children are just destined to become canon fodder metaphorically and literally.

You forget that the PRIME REASON we have a reproduction instinct is EXACTLY so that we would survive. Forcing some else to survive IS how you survive — khaled

You don't need children to survive. There are hermits that live and die away from civilization.

When most people had children throughout history they were unaware of gene theory.

You are saying then that if someone brings into a highly exploitative world the child is responsible for that exploitation? That doesn't make sense. In hunter gather society you could see the people and resources you were exploiting. The fact that now there is a massive complex web of exploitation cannot be blamed on every new child.

Antinatalism is the solution to suffering and exploitation. We gradually die out and completely end the cycle of suffering and exploitation.

Do you think everyone should be forced to have children? I think anyone who does not have children qualifies as antinatalist because they are making their unique set of genes extinct.

That's false. There is plenty of reason to have children. If no one gives birth for 10 years you will suffer a slow and painful death of starvation due to not having enough people to work. — khaled

There are lots of people that die prematurely or suffer life long illness. Having a child does not prevent you dying of cancer, having long term mental illness or becoming paralyzed.

For example I have suffered most of my life from various things including anxiety and depression and my oldest brother has been paralyzed for 10 years or so and he has had MS for over 20 years and pneumonia at least 6 times.

People do consider suicide and commit suicide.

Eating food if you are a meat eater may cause temporary suffering until you eventually die but it does not cause the perpetual cycle of suffering and death. Hunter gatherers eat animals that have already reproduced.

I think there is a big difference between being forced to survive because someone else created you and creating someone else who is then forced to try and survive.

I don't think there is any reason to have children. Lots of people do not have children.

It is quite possible not to have children and it is not inevitable to have children. Having a child or more will not prevent your inevitable death.

I think having children compromise any moral stance one takes. It goes against the ideas of do no harm and the ideas of consent and freedom. Someone can have twenty children to defy an antinatalist but they and all there children are going to die anyway.

i cannot think or a morally good or coherent reason for having children. What upsets me and other antinatalists is that the cycle of suffering will continue and responsibility will not be attributed correctly to the cause of this suffering. To me a compelling argument for having a child should explain why it is necessary and valuable and why you can justify imposing life on someone or forcing them into existence.

I think you can meaningfully measure suffering and I think that is substantially difference than recording opinion or preference.

I am not sure what you believe exactly whether you think morality is a purely mental subjective like pain. Like I have probably said I don't think private pains and other sensations are the equivalent of thoughts and opinions.
You can be wrong in belief and idea but you can't be wrong about having a pain experience or red experience.