The conspiracy I am referring to is not necessarily solipsism but more like maybe a God giving you your life as a trial to master or some alternative reality hidden behind this one governing it.
Can this be disproved.

Other people's behavior often does not make sense — Bitter Crank

It is a case of "Is it me or is it them?" Am I mad or everyone else?

People sometimes respond to solipsism as if it is self indulgent but it can reflect an alienation of the individual as opposed to rampant ego or fantasy.

I feel it should be natural for most people to occasionally feel solipsistic.

How powerful you feel or how attached you feel could be linked to ego. Someone with a healthy ego might feel really connected to life and part of it. Low ego might be alienating and lead to a cycle of self reflection or self absorption. I wouldn't necessarily say ego and solipsistic feelings reliably correlate but that mental health might influence how one views one self in the world.

I suppose at one extreme is paranoia where someone believes everyone is out to get them for some reason which is like the ultimate conspiracy. I am on the Autism spectrum so that probably doesn't help me feeling like I understand others or want to conform etc.

I am not sure to what extent our mental health/emotions influences our philosophy or whether it might even be a product of philosophy. I think solipsism is a logical position to reach on its own via reflecting on nature of subjective consciousness and the object/subject divide. Our unique perspective and lack of direct access to other minds. But I am being cautious and allowing for ones mental health to distort insight I suppose.

We all need it.

This and Pascal's wager are quite useful tools for weighing up the cost of belief. I can't just believe anything but in a case of uncertainty or ignorance it seems optimism is more fruitful.

Philosophy might be a response to angst.

I can imagine a happy society were no one was interested in philosophy. Indeed philosophy seems to have a bad reputation for being associated with despair and people say things like it is to deep and serious.


But it does seem that philosophy could concern itself with any field as a tool for reason without emotional ramifications. But at the same time it does seem to lead away from certainty and to anxiety producing uncertainty.

I can't imagine genuine philosophy that suddenly made you feel better about life.
Maybe if a philosopher proved the soul and an afterlife existed or proved that we could improve society?

Apparently Camus said "The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not." I can sympathise with this. It is a case of finding something meaningful to live for and working out whether life is worth it. If your philosophy makes you continue living then maybe it has resolved that problem?

I am also sympathetic towards Sartre's quip "Hell is other people"

I think rationality is problematic without teleology or an inherent function or purpose for humans to violate.

I think rationality crosses the is/ought barrier. I think there can only be a wrong way to behave or think or react if their is a right way, but I don't think there is a right way.

I find reason leads me to anxiety whereas sometimes blind faith or unwarranted optimism might make someone feel better.

There is something of a paradox. Imagine if believing in or following a false religion makes you feel better, should you abandon this belief system even if it makes you feel worse?
Is it irrational to follow the "truth" if it ends up being against your self interest?

I sympathise with the idea that rationality would improve society and create better norms. However it could be that there is no good society to be had.
I think challenging norms can mean facing hostility even if you are in the right because you are trying to take people out of their comfort zone. I can't see an easy path out of this quagmire.

What will amount to the greatest amount of happiness? — Blue Lux

I don't think you can measure happiness and add it together. What exactly is being measured and how is it being added together?

Another issue non utilitarian values. If you stole from a huge multinational you could argue no one was being harmed. But people would like to say theft is wrong in principle even if no one appears to be harmed.

A general principle as opposed to a calculation seems more realistic. For example the principle never to hit a child. This means don't hit a child even if somehow in the long run it might be of benefit.

It seems almost as if humans are the only creatures to lack teleology because other animals and organisms have some quite fixed behaviours and a lack of cognitive and behavioural flexibility in comparison to the extreme diversity and possibility found in humans.

But paradoxically this freedom is not necessarily a good thing and it leads me to existential angst.

People might chose conformity to norms to escape existential angst.

I think normal when it applies to humans is based on problematic teleological conceptions.

For example a heart has a function so a heart can behave normally or abnormally. But ironically the human being kept alive by that heart appears to have no function. We have the existential problem of trying to make sense of our existence or to make it meaningful.

I think society functions based on unreflected norms and then occasional as the case with slavery and racism these norms are challenged.

Being abnormal in a dysfunctional and unethical society can be blamed on society and not the individual depending on how you isolate a cause for behaviour and pathology.

I think to be authentic you have to explore the intellectual basis of societies values and take nothing for granted.

↪Andrew4Handel the question of why pleasure or pain is good or bad is irrelevant. People prefer pleasure to pain. — Blue Lux

I don't see how it can be irrelevant. If you claim pleasure is good then fail to give a reason for this claim then it is foundationless

My example is how pleasure can be bad for you because the things you are doing are destructive.
For example these Auschwitz personnel seem happy

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/laughing-at-auschwitz-1942/

I think it is hard to justify the claim that any pleasure or happiness is good. one the reasons is the dubious exploitative circumstances these things arise from. It is hard to imagine a circumstance where pleasure was being derived in an ethical way in a fair society and where pleasure was not overwhelmed by the presence of suffering including just suffering present in nature like predation and disease.

There are thus 'higher' pleasures; that is, rolling around in the mud for a pig is a lower pleasure than, say, listening to Mozart, Bach or Beethoven — Blue Lux

I don't think Mill justified the concept of a higher pleasure.

But that is not what I was referring two. Higher and Lower pleasures were invented to prevent the criticism that people could reach a state of pleasure doing trivial things so that you couldn't differentiate between high and low culture.

What I am referring to is pleasure attached to destructive things.

I think there still is the problem of justifying why Mozart is Better than the worst pop music however.

If pleasure is your metric and foundation of an ethics then that ethics cannot rely on other metrics like differentiating between sources of pleasure and quality of pleasure and still be the same utilitarian ethics.

Utilitarianism has a lot of problems, and has been exposed as an inadequate moral theory — LD Saunders

I agree with this.

I think the idea of a utilitarian calculation is problematic for various reasons. I don't think pleasure and pain are similar things to reach an equality with.

Pain is almost indisputably bad even just by basic definition (outside of sadomasochism) which makes Negative Utilitarianism and pain minimisation most realistic. This is a negative morality.

On the other hand pleasure can be attached to dubious things like overeating and causing obesity and heart disease and even Nazis and slave owners experienced pleasure. So I don't think pleasure can outweigh pain in a meaningful ethical way or that pleasure equals the good.

Another issue is how you make the measurements and what boundaries you set and what things you include and all these things appear arbitrary. For example we can consider the welfare of unborn children,we could include more and more animals and even plants and environments or planets in a calculation. Adding and subtracting things arbitrarily skews the equation.

We might conclude what is good for us now is not good for people in the future. (climate change etc) The future itself is unknown so how can we know what the impact of an action will be long term?

I think minimising pain and increasing pleasure are fine but not really moral issues. There is meta-ethical issues to go through first (Why is pain bad & pleasure good? etc)

How do you know that?

Here. — Banno

I agree with you. But I don't know where that is.

I don't know where I am in the universe or in a body or a material word.

We are probably on separate sides of this world wherever it is but maybe we are actually on separate planets light years away?

The causality works the other way round. Life and mind rely on the functional trick of getting an informational grip on the material flows of the world. — apokrisis

I don't know what you mean here.

Are you saying that life and mind are not emergent properties and or that they preexist basic matter?

What is getting a grip on what? Is it matter getting a grip on itself? What is an information flow precisely?

I don't think life and mind have anything in common.

I don't believe that most life has mind or is conscious, most notably plants and also amoeba,bacteria or individual cells. Or that life entails mind in any way.

Life and physics are concepts of the mind so it seems unlikely mind emerges from concepts. (as opposed to isolating specific causal relations and mechanisms) (Where do mechanisms come from)

I don't think complexity implies mind either, although it may allow for the impression of life. By the "impression of life" I mean activity we interpret as life. I don't think you can isolate one process and call it life. Is life just complex processes?

I don't see how "cost free interactions" entail no need for a rigorous explanation of a property or emergent property.

The definition of information is controversial or multifaceted. I think there is a difference between conscious & symbolical information and physical non-symbolic interactions. You could say that the physical interactions involved in making a cake were information transfers but not the kind involving awareness just alterations in properties. Non-conscious information leads to the zombie hypothesis. Or panpsychism with any info becoming conscious.

I also don't think that the problem is solved concerning which process are adequate to give rise to minds

If the processes are vague or broad like computation or energy transfers it does not offer a restriction on what can be conscious or a true rigorous causal account. For example if I said I am a mixed race male that would describe me loosely and not be false but it is not a causal description or something you could identify me with. You would need more precise, specific or detailed info.

I am one of six children. I am the 4th of six children my parents had and this is who I am aware of being. Other specifics include being male and born in the late 1970's UK.

There are obviously many different conscious subjective locations but I ended up in this precise one out of all the alternative consciousnesses "being "created".

So what makes someone suddenly become aware of being one precise person?

Conscious has the effect of making you somehow occupy just one persons body arbitrarily.

The causal chain of the body is explicable from DNA copied and passing on systematically through space and time with some alternations but consciousness is something new not passed on like that and it is the only part of the entity that is aware and is even not describable in physicalist terms .

I think deliberate failure to accurately describe consciousness or denial of self and conscious states is simply a position of gross ignorance and delusion. The equivalent of a backward fundamentalist religion creating a perpetual dark ages and state of irrationality.

I think questions like why am I conscious of being a human and not a whale are perfectly valid also. If whales are conscious that is another conscious location that was open to be inhabited.

I am here. — Banno

Where is that?

I have raised a similar issue to this myself. It is a location issue. Where am "I" located and how?

I don't believe I am identical with my brain but I experience a united location as the centre of experiences.

I am always at the centre of experiences and they are located around me. There is a continuation of myself as I travel say from the UK to Australia as the experiences and landscapes change..

It could just be the same location as my brain but still the question is how does my particular self awareness at this location in time and space arise? Why didn't other brains or bodies become my location?

In a related issue I believe perception is solipsistic and we only know and perceive through ourself there is no objective access tor reality.

There is also a causal of issue of what caused "me".

I agree that why we are the specific person or consciousness we are is a deep puzzle.

How do you come to inhabit this one particular conscious sphere out of billions that exist and have existed.

I view it as a central issue in the study of consciousness.

I think creating a new child is endorsing the world as it is.

That means endorsing the good and bad things. You are exposing your child to all the dynamics and perils of life including their certain death.

The world is easily shown to be not good enough especially historically by looking at levels of inequality, war, famine, genocide, physical and mental illness which challenges any claim that life is more good than bad.

It is hard to have a child that does not become involved in the exploitation and inequality and natural lottery of health and well being. Ironically increased personal prosperity has come at the price as being more deeply able to exploit others at a great distance.

But rational discussion of procreation and parenting is not encouraged so I imagine it is easy to bypass reason when indulging in ones reproductive desires.

I think parents have the primary responsibility to make the world better at the very least for the sake of their children and their children are less likely to thrive if they live surrounded by inequality, exploitation and suffering.

If we are going to give the parents the "No Free Will" type get-out-clause for reproducing it should be applied every persons every action.

However it is most widely used in this domain where wild uncontrollable forces are invoked in sex and child making.

If you except we have some free will or ability to reflect and change then I don't think you can invoke the aforementioned forces.

But the beginning of the universe is just a tad remote in comparison with the sexual intercourse of our mommies and daddies — Ciceronianus the White

Parents are the immediate cause of children, The big bang is a hypothesised, remote, insufficient cause.

Causality has played a big role in science. We find the appropriate causes for events and can manipulate or just understand them better.

Having no interest in the things caused by procreating smells of basic ignorance. I find too much literature uninteresting because it fails to mention the dynamic of parenting creating new generations. It is all about society and life after the act of procreation. The creation of more people is either completely ignored or figures as an inevitably which it isn't.

It is not a blame game but a rational exploration of the provable causal relationship between procreation, the society and the individual.

I think one reason people don't want restrictions, assessments or reflections on reproduction is because they are worried they might be condemned in such as system. This can lead to mediocre parents making excuses for terrible parents with platitudes like "we all make mistakes"

The unexamined life is not worth living.

The problem with not realistically examining the causal ramifications of parents actions is building a fake society on a delusion Remorselessly trying to resolve remorseless problems being cyclically created by unreflective reproduction.

False ideologies and power structures should always be challenged. I don't believe in "freeing" ones self by psychologically weak conformity. This probably leads to disease of the unconscious anyway lol.

I think like most or all antinatalists I despair for the current and future generations undergoing unnecessary hardship. The solution to all problem is not to create more people, but even if you don't go to that extreme you can at least rationally procreate in moderation

Some people claim everything started at a big bang moment.

The truth is existence starts when our parents create us. Then we grapple with existence.

Some people are here because their parents condom split. From thence the profundity of life.

I go more for Freudian explanations

Questions occur once you start to exist. They appear not to have answers.

But as I say,

underlying these questions is the nature of our parents bringing us into existence

What is morality when you factor in the ethical ramifications of reproduction? How does the meaning of life relate to being thrown into existence by our parents and governed by their motives?

I think to many dialogues academic and social ignore the role of parents in creating existence and societies.

It is a long time since we could claim to be brute animals solely acting on instinct and obeying basic biology with no reasoning ability or knowledge.

Primitive societies often have controlled population levels anyway. This level of massive population growth has come late in human history.

Some people might model humans as machines obeying natural laws or as determined or as swept up in biochemical impulses. But this completely ignores decision making in families , between parents and influential ideologies.
It is easy to invoke these deterministic or wild forces rather than acknowledge parental responsibility and parental dynamics.

I would describe humans as being forced into existence and forcing others into existence, unless we have willfully created someone else we have no responsibility for our existence or anyone else's.

Allowing people to forces others into existence is a different dynamic then a society based on consent and individual responsibility

It seems to me that if you believe that our parents should not have had children--that if they acted morally none of us would be alive--you would think a great deal if not all of philosophy is, like life itself, of little worth; merely something to be borne due to our parents' failings. — Ciceronianus the White

Well yes probably.

The kind of philosophy we do is answering questions left unanswered by our parents.

What is meaning of life, what is morality and so on. Some questions are an existential burden.

As to that which makes it a religion, which I understand to be the inaccessible aspects, it - they - cannot be true. — tim wood

The problem is that they can't all simultaneously be true. I suppose any religion or ideology could contain some isolated truths but as a whole belief system they challenge each other.

I am a general agnostic and I think we should acknowledge when we don't know something and look for false beliefs. To me an agnostics stance helps protect against false beliefs and ideologies.

The stronger claims a person makes the more they invite challenge and scrutiny, but not compromise and fudge and appeasement, and political correctness.

I find the idea of pandering to peoples beliefs that you think are false or are even totally opposed to is servile and degrading. (Of course if attacking these beliefs you need you need your own good reasons.)

I suppose one person could be right in his or her view of reality.

There might be right answer but we don't know it.
I don't think any of the mainstream ideologies I have heard of are right.

I think it is not good to compromise and have a meaning fudge or abandon the truth. I don't think it should of a survival of the fittest idea/ideology.

Here is bad example of compromise. Christian and Muslim groups came together in the UK to oppose gay rights including gay marriage. They forgot their differences temporarily to unite in prejudice. There may be positive examples of similar collaborations however the principle is the same.

It a principle of compromise of integrity and coherence.

Because what and who you are is the protagonist of a life-experience-story, then it would be meaningless to speak of you not being in a life. — Michael Ossipoff

I do feel solipsistic and think the nature of consciousness is solipsistic. So not so much one of many life stories but the center of some kind of game where I am the central protagonist.

So what’s the difference between kidnapping and having a child? — Michael Ossipoff

I think if there is a difference it is in attitude, where someone loves a parent and is grateful to them and has a fulfilling life so they don't feel imposed on.The problem is once someones life goes bad it can seem like an imposition. I don't know if there is a correlation between parent-child bond and value of ones own life.

I think a kidnapping is partly condemned because of the distress caused.

The distressing thing for me is amount of people not providing a fulfilling life and environment for their children.

This is why I think we really need to take action to change the dialogue on having children and enforce greater children's rights.

It's probably no consolation to say this, but it may well be that they had those terrible beliefs indoctrinated into them so early in life that they could not resist and could not shake free of them later. — andrewk

I think the problem is more with their personalities. I never believed in the religion the way they did and I spent 17 years in the same church and considered myself a Christian.

I would just reject clearly unpleasant doctrine even though I had many anxieties created by it.

I grew up in a similar environment to my mothers but I left at 17 despite the massive stress it caused me. The dishonesty and stress of following false doctrine in a cruel environment was worse than leaving and facing homelessness. I felt trapped in that church and still dream that I am trapped in it to this day.

I think some people embrace a religious doctrine because it serves their personality and desires and they don't even attempt to critique their own belief.

But nevertheless why have children if you have such negative beliefs? I feel society does not challenge parents and allows this to happen.

I think people conform because it appears easier than the alternative and self analysis. Anti-natalists in general have had to or just do that analysis and face the conclusions.

As I said, you're the reason why you were born. — Michael Ossipoff

I didn't understand that entirely.

It's difficult to believe that it was supposed to be for me. But for whom then?? — Michael Ossipoff

I think the problem is that your parents probably aimed their parenting towards you but had no idea who the real you was.
There probably is a tension between natural parental concern and the rubbish parents learn from society and their own childhood etc.

I think the dysfunctional relationship with my parents is probably still a mental drain on me. One therapist did suggest I tried to recreate childhood relationships with new friends (ie replacing failed dynamics and relations)

Would I feel equally coerced if I had great parents and more self esteem?

They should have parenting classes along with commonsense classes.

I find it hard not to feel coerced.

It seems hard to be free when you do not feel like you chose this life or your parents.

Some antinatalists use the Kidnapping metaphor. What is the difference between kidnapping someone and having achild?

No one thinks your kidnapper has rights over you or that you have responsibilities to your kidnapper or that you should be grateful to them. But society completely misrepresents this coercive dynamic.

In a way suicide is a form of protest but in a sense it's self defeating. But maybe one can try and change the world before one leaves it or protest whilst alive.

That sounds like social studies in the UK. I didn't do that.

We had a one lesson about the welfare system from our craft and design teacher which asked about the prices and costs of things and benefits values. (If I remember correctly)

I think school should probably only be about Human Flourishing. It was more like prison.

I think we are forced into existence and I think there needs to be a really good reason to do that.

When we realise we exist then we have an array of puzzling questions. I think the reasons our parents give for creating us is important for us to make sense of our life.

My parents reasons are confused and sadistic. For example they believe in hell and damnation, they told their children since they were born that they were fatally flawed sinners that deserved hell (due to the original sin).
And that used to be a widespread belief.

Also they probably believed God commanded them to go forth and,multiply. However there are lots of contradictions in the bible that have been well documented for many centuries so they didn't examine their beliefs
but forced them on their children in a fundamentalist Christian childhood were we went to church up to 5 times a week.

No one can seriously claim they had good intentions for their children because they created people hey sort were inherently fatally flawed and exposed them to hell and damnation. They also believe billions of people will be in hell. Unfortunately for most of human history this ideology has not been seen as malevolent like it should be.

So it is not like I am here because of my parents rationality and positive intentions and I think anyone has a justifiable right to be angry and resentful about being born especially if they had an abusive childhood.

People should have provide more justification for having children. I certainly feel victimised and discontented.