I've been thinking about this whole antinatalism thing recently.

First, I don't know if it is really necessary to be actively opposed to birth (or, really, any position for that matter), unless of course one has the passion and dedication to do so.

Second, as I've argued elsewhere, there is no need to be a moral vigilante regarding birth because we live in a society that values liberty, and thus we must understand that there are limits in what a person can do. Furthermore, it is entirely unclear that, with most philosophical positions, that this debate is over.

However, I don't think that that's sufficient grounds for making it "alright". Bad is bad, and not alright, whether temporary and reversible or otherwise. — Sapientia

Agreed. I am not arguing that the majority's belief is the morality, rather, that the majority's belief allows permanent action based upon these beliefs. My argument is only concerned with executing the consequences of your moral view.

It's justified if there's good enough reason to act, and good enough reason doesn't require the consent of the majority. The consent is subsequent to there being just cause. And the majority are far from infallible and can also be wrong, so this mob rule could hinder or prevent justice. — Sapientia

It's a good enough reason to act so long as you happen to agree with the moral vigilante. A terrorist acting upon her moral vigilantism would probably not be seen as having a good enough reason to do so in our eyes, despite her passionate conviction that she does.

The Golden Rule may be well-used in some, if not most, scenarios, especially in a post-hoc manner.

But what about more extreme situations, such as vigilantism regarding the re-distribution of wealth? Suppose a radical communist has, in her heart, the belief that inequality of wealth is blatantly immoral, despite her living in a capitalistic society. Every day she sees disgusting inequality, immorality to be sure. She sees society as an immoral cesspool that requires her immediate intervention. She therefore goes on a spree of armed burglaries into the homes of the very wealthy, Wall Street, and conspires with underground mafia leaders to bring down the corporations of CEOs. She hacks into the databases of the Swiss banks and steals all of the digitized money stored within. She assassinates leaders of the capitalistic regimes, all because they are oppressing the proletariat. She does all of this our of her own compassion towards the common, working man.

Or perhaps there is an efilist, who believes that it is not only her obligation but her right to destroy the world and end the suffering of the countless suffering animals that exist on planet Earth. She dreams of the day that she can press the red button and instantaneously end all life...for the good of all life! Yes, she is doing is not because she hates life, but because she hates the suffering that life inevitably brings about! She genuinely believes that abstaining from pressing a button is to be immoral, to not follow the Golden Rule.

Or maybe there is a xenophobic Luddite, who believes that human expansion into the cosmos is the wrong thing to do, and that we will inevitably screw up other civilizations by colonizing their worlds. She follows the Golden Rule when she plants explosives on the rockets aimed at Mars. In her thought process, she thinks that if she was a Martian, she wouldn't want people intruding into her life, and so therefore she think it is perfectly acceptable behavior to violently stop this incursion.

What I am suggesting is that without the consent of the majority, there is no justification for participating in irreversible moral vigilantism, for you may be wrong in your appropriation of your ethical intuitions. Perhaps it is even the case that there is no justification for participating in irreversible moral vigilantism if this in any way, shape, or form harms another individual without their consent.

I don't think Bernie thought that he would get this far. As far as he is concerned, I think his ultimate goal has already been met: change. Hillary had to change the way she presented herself. Whether or not Bernie becomes president (which is near to none), he's already left a legacy that will last longer than a four year term in office

I'm not sure I agree with what you said. Taking morality into one's hands, being a moral vigilante, is sometimes seen as reprehensible behavior. A far-right wingnut blowing up an abortion clinic is seen by everyone else as immoral terrorism, and yet to them, it is being a moral vigilante.

I think that being a moral vigilante should be considered to be alright so long as your actions do not leave any permanent, irreversible outcomes. Like Bertrand Russell said, never die over something you believe in, because you might be wrong. Blowing up an abortion clinic is taking things too far, because it is clearly irreversible. Assassinating Hitler might be seen by some to be a good thing, but to some strict Kantians or Buddhists, murder is wrong no matter what. So the line between acceptable vigilantism and unacceptable terrorism is that the former can be reversed, usually without much difficulty, while the latter is the product of a god-head who thinks they can know what is best for everyone else.

Morals can change if the meme is spread thoroughly enough. Slavery used to be seen as morally neutral, now it is seen as immoral through the demonstrations of millions.

The egalitarian answer would appear to be a containment of everyone at the same level, so that everyone has roughly equal power over everyone else. There could be minor power differences, but there must always be the possibility of upward mobility. — Pneumenon

I agree. The liberty of every individual must be equal (excluding those who are deemed an unacceptable risk to the liberty of others).

It's a pretty good crowd for a Saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
cause he knows that its me they've been comin' to see
To forget about life for a while
And the piano, it sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say, man, what are you doin' here?

That doesn't follow. — The Great Whatever

You see instead of just asserting that it doesn't follow, it would be kind of nice if you took the time to explain why it doesn't follow. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.

Yes you do, hold your breath for three minutes. — The Great Whatever

Why would I want to? I fail to understand what you are getting at here.

It doesn't matter whether my thoughts are determined or not to whether they're true. — The Great Whatever

But "truth" in this case is in accordance to whether or not we are coerced into anything. If you are a hard determinist, then you cannot be coerced! You are pre-determined to do and be subject to whatever you happen to be. To be able to be coerced is to have some sort of (free) will. The phenomenal aspect of having the impression of having control over your actions (a will) leads to compatibilism (soft determinism). A frustrated will is coercion. So you are essentially holding hard determinism to be true while simultaneously holding that for some reason our wills/desires are important because they are frustrated. It's absurd to ignore the phenomenal impression of having a will, and so hard determinism as far as I can tell is untenable.

But this thread wasn't supposed to be over hard determinism but rather its soft cousin, compatibilism, in which case the (illusion) of having a will is important, primarily due to the ethical considerations regarding a frustrated or externally-suppressed will.

I would say that for the sake of charity and to further the discussion without devolving into hair-splitting definitional semantics, I will grant that our bodily processes can be interpreted as being "coercive", or at least "forceful". However, I want to make a distinction between active "coercion" and passive "coercion". An active coercive act is immediately identifiable as frustrating someone's freedom. An example of this is blackmailing someone by threat of abuse or death. A passive coercive act is one that could be interpreted as being coercive but is not explicitly obvious. An example of this is your own body apparently "blackmailing" you into breathing by a threat of pain and death. The difference between the two has to do with whether or not the individual gives a shit about what is happening to them. Would I care about being blackmailed by another person? Yes. Do I care about that fact that I have to breathe to continue to live? Not really.

So I think that perhaps it's not necessarily a difference in kind but a difference in degree. The problem I see with your view in that you are equivocating one with the other. I follow the laws of the road when I drive not because I'm being coerced by the government but because I genuinely understand that to be safe requires me to follow these rules. I would not follow the laws of Nazi Germany, as those would be often oppressive and explicitly coercive. In each case you could use the world "coerced" to describe the situation, but it sounds more like an equivocation gone too far than a legitimate description.

This goes back to one of my original posts, which said that your positions stems from your (overly) pessimistic view on human life. Actually considering breathing as a coercive mechanism is not at all in line with what most people on Earth would consider it to be. It's a necessary act, often subconscious, that we must do to survive, but most people on Earth would say that they would rather continue to live. It's only when you bring into the picture the idea that we ought to die that the mechanism of breathing becomes coercive. If you don't bring this into the picture, then the "coercive" mechanism of breathing (the pain and threat of death), no longer are seen as coercive but rather as an alarm mechanism to alert the person that, hey, they should probably start breathing again if they want to continue to live. It may not be the most gentle mechanism but I'm sure many people appreciate the warning calls when they come.

I would say I'm a 'hard indeterminist' overall, but acknowledge (a) that certain local configurations for all intents and purposes can be modeled as hard deterministic, and (b) there may exist a certain kind of narrow freedom that arises in exceptional cases, but I'm not so confident on this point. — The Great Whatever

Some philosophers/cognitive scientists think that our higher-level cognitive processes allow our will to not initiate actions but rather suppress actions by formulating internal, private truth conditions. A devotee to Dennett would say that Popperian and Gregorian minds are capable of this internal formulation.

Decriminalize and then tax most drugs — Thorongil

By "most", what are you thinking here? Just the drugs that don't do too much harm? How are your views on guns (ban private ownership) compatible with your views on drugs (some violent acts have indeed been caused by drugs, alcohol, and the like). It seems as though if you are going to allow drugs then you have to allow guns as well. Both are supererogatory parts of life (well, actually some people depend on guns to survive).

Also, I don't think breathing is a good example because most of the time it is subconscious and only becomes a controllable function of the body if you focus on it.

Also, I would like to point out that if you reject compatibilism in favor of hard determinism, and then complain that there is no free will and that everything is coerced, then you have to admit that your own thoughts of being coerced were in fact just determined. There is no coercion at all in hard determinism, there is just the natural flow of causality.

Basically, what this means is that you are clinging to an idea of an entirely free will in a universe that is devoid of it, and then wonder why it seems like you are being coerced. It's because it's not compatible with the way things are. It's as if you are not willing to let go of the experience of having control and then wonder why it seems like everything is out to get you.

I hesitate to endorse your idea that humans are like puppets that are thrown around the place by external forces outside of their control (even if control is phenomenal and illusory - which is still a contentious topic but I'd be willing to say that classical libertarian free will is not true).

I think ultimately a human being desires to continue to live (on top of other desires). So suicide is not a choice in the way I would choose an ice cream flavor. It's a way of escaping/solving something. It's not that life is inherently bad that warrants suicide, but that the current conditions are unbearable to experience anymore. And so someone is torn between their desire to live and their desire to escape their pain (psychache).

But a person who commits suicide is not coerced. They are torn between two options and decide to go with one of them. The pain of leaving the other option is what gives a person their psychache. But it is not as if the experience of pain is actually forcing us to commit suicide in the same way a person who pushes you off a cliff would be forcing you to die.

Perhaps you could argue that desires are themselves a type of "coercing" because they are so strong. The Buddha recognized this and advocated ceasing desires and living in a stable state of equilibrium so we don't feel this intense need for something. But again, many people, including myself (and presumably you as well) have certain desires that fall outside of this. I desire to write this response. I feel good by writing this response. So it's not coercing if I enjoy it and feel as though I am doing it by my own "free will" (a la compatibilism).

Someone killing themselves by their own judgement is not an example of coercion. An outside agent forcing the person to kill themselves on threat of torture is coercion.

A coercion requires the victim to not want to do something as well as preventing them from fulfilling their own personal desires. Take your example of breathing. This is not coercion. I don't mind breathing. I'm certainly under a kind of pressure to continue to breathe, but I don't mind it. It's a function of the body, a body that I identify with. Like I said above, humans have a desire to continue to live. Breathing is a necessary requirement for us to live.

I get your idea though that it seems like we are slaves to the whims of our bodily needs. But if you also look at yourself, that is, your psyche, you will realize that you have needs as well, needs that you personally identify with. One of these needs would be, to me, to be in equanimity with your environment, which includes your own bodily functions.

So in order to argue that we are coerced into breathing, you have to argue that we actually do mind breathing (it's a pain in the ass perhaps), and that we don't want to live a life that requires us to breathe. Sure, as both of us have contended, you are coerced into a life of breathing. But ultimately it is still your choice whether or not you desire to continue to live a life that includes breathing. For many of us, it would seem that breathing does not matter at all because it does not impede on our desire to continue to live (in fact it allows us to live).

The rest is about how people instill incentives against suicide. That doesn't mean suicide can't be possible or viable -- I've assumed it is this whole time because people, after all, do it (but then often in great pain or duress because of the mechanisms that act against them). — The Great Whatever

Dude, I have literally been saying this for the past couple of pages. The only reason I said it is because I thought you held the position that suicide was not viable (that we are "coerced"/"forced" to continue to live even if we do not want to).

Okay, there is such an incentive. If you don't do it, you literally die painfully. What more incentive do you want? — The Great Whatever

I'm interpreting this as meaning suicide is indeed not a viable choice.

It obviously doesn't, since I've explicitly included suicide among those possible actions. — The Great Whatever

From page 4.

There actually are coercive mechanisms keeping people alive to suffer once they are born, such as survival instincts, the general pain attending dying, guilt, shame and illegality of suicide (including censure from family members, government, and religion, sometimes threats of burning in hell for eternity), and so on.

You are simply wrong in your description; people go apeshit at the idea of suicide, and there are systematic and painfu pressures in place to keep the coercive institution going once in place. — The Great Whatever

From page 5.

Finally, even if suicide were completely free, birth would still be coercive, because one cannot consent to it. The fact that it might be possible to undo does not make it any less forced (and much of the pain endured happens before it is possible to kill oneself). — The Great Whatever

From page 5.

You responded by saying that suicide is not a viable option, which contradicts what you just said in your last response.

Then why were arguing previously that suicide is not a viable option (because of instincts, pain, relationships, etc)?

and all 'decisions' made while alive are within the context of that coercive establishment. — The Great Whatever

Pretty sure that means that society/instincts are keeping us from killing ourselves (the "coercive establishment").

Regardless of how you interpret your own OP, this is how it came across and furthermore, you have responded to me defending the position that we cannot commit suicide because of this coercive establishment.

Your OP is specifically about not only birth but also being seemingly coerced into a continued life.

Well, now you are talking about birth. Before you were specifically mentioning how someone is coerced into continuing their life.

Okay, but the part after the Absurd, where the mind sees true the rationality of suicide while the body resists?

But you replied to my post (that I spent some time writing out might I add) with a simple "no", which presumably means that you have a different definition of what "coerce" means. I would like to know what it is that is different, unless of course you wish to continue to dodge questions.

Then please enlighten me to your exclusive definition of what coercion means to you.

From Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus:

"In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must we
conclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one has
about life and the act one commits to leave it? Let us not
exaggerate in this direction. In a man’s attachment to life there is
something stronger than all the ills in the world. The body’s
judgment is as good as the mind’s and the body shrinks from
annihilation. We get into the habit of living before acquiring the
habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us toward death,
the body maintains its irreparable lead. In short, the essence of that
contradiction lies in what I shall call the act of eluding because it is
both less and more than diversion in the Pascalian sense. Eluding is
the invariable game. The typical act of eluding, the fatal evasion
that constitutes the third theme of this essay, is hope. Hope of
another life one must “deserve” or trickery of those who live not
for life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it,
give it a meaning, and betray it.
Thus everything contributes to spreading confusion"

It is the contradiction between the body's will and the mind's will that leads to the Absurd. Is this the kind of "coercion" that you are speaking of, that the mind sees true that suicide is rational yet the body prevents it from annihilation?

No human action takes place in an environment without the presence of some sort of force which limits or threatens the actor involved. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is an excellent point. Without adversary, without need, humans would do nothing or perhaps die of boredom. The very existence of an adversary to our wants and needs creates a system of value.

I would say that the institutions of society as well as the general impulsive fear of death (the self-preservation mechanism) is influential and typically enough to keep people from even considering death as an option (see: Becker). But it is not in the sense absolutely coercive as there are methods to get around these blocks if one thinks their life is truly not worth living. They might not be perfectly clean or easy but they are still viable options that can, and in fact do, work.

I would hesitate at your (seemingly) assumption that the only reason people continue to live is out of instinct. I would say that those who have not analyzed their lives sufficiently do indeed continue to live out of instinct and habit. But there are people, more rare though, that continue to live out of spite and out of rebellion (re Camus) or because they feel they have an overarching purpose behind their lives.

If you would argue that these too are indeed merely psychological walls to keep us entrapped, then I would hesitate and ask you if you believe that a person ought to end their lives. This does seem to be the deciding factor in whether or not instincts and society are indeed coercive. Because if there is no impetus to end one's life, then clearly this means that the influential forces of instinct and society have no weight as they aren't contributing to keeping you from ending your life.

Additionally, I would also argue that these instincts are not necessarily bad in themselves. I believe Becker himself argued that one thing humans need are better, sturdier psychological walls in which we can live our lives in peace without the looming threat of death always on our shoulders. This goes back to what I was saying about the normativity of death. If these psychological walls not only shield us from thinking about death but also give us bountiful purpose and meaning from culture, art, music, philosophy, scientific inquiry, relationships, etc, then surely there is no inherent problem with the implementation of these walls. They may distract us, sure, but they work. Even Zapffe knew that there was a fourth option for those who cannot seem to attach, distract, or isolate themselves: sublimation.

And so we can live Absurdly and change these "coercive" "influential" modes of thinking into something that we simply accept and move on. We can treat it as one would treat the ability to fly: ultimately not possible for a naked man but given his intellect and ability to use tools, actually possible if he does so desire. It only seems coercive if you have never tried or have tried and failed due to poor planning, but it's not coercive in the way a jail cell is. The ones who have succeeded are proof that our instincts are only "coercive" insofar as we allow them to be. And sometimes if we give in to our instincts, they can lead to some great things (mentioned above) that doesn't make it seem like it is "coercion".

So the question here is whether or not it is in the best interests of an agent to die, and if so, then the instincts and societal institutions do indeed act as some kind of barrier, obstacle, or Catch-22 that a person must overcome in order to perish. But let us not forget that the existence of a barrier does not prevent one from breaching it, nor does it prevent one from living a life peacefully and in harmony.

but literally anybody has the right (and moral entitlement) to forcibly stop you if they see you trying to? — The Great Whatever

I never said I agreed with governmental enforcement of life. Straw man...

People also have the right to intervene if they see something that they feel is morally problematic. Hence why if you were to decide to commit suicide in public, you shouldn't be surprised when people try to stop you. What they think they are doing is helping you, and perhaps they actually would be.

But this thesis more resemble a philosophically loaded nihilistic view of human existence than it does resemble a truism that one can simply "point out". — Pierre-Normand

Exactly what I've been trying to say this whole time.

Well then today I learned. I doubt all companies do this, though, and let us not forget that helium tanks are not the only way of going out.

Actually, many cars no longer work for suicide, and people generally want to find ways to stop people form killing themselves (making helium tanks non-lethal, etc.) — The Great Whatever

In those cases these measures are not taken to prevent intentional death but rather accidental death; preventing intentional death is an addition.

And I'm sure if you really wanted to kill yourself, money would not be an issue for you if you wanted to buy a cheap car that could kill you.

Suicide is almost always committed under great duress and in extreme pain. — The Great Whatever

Sure. But the act itself does not require extreme pain. You're grasping at straws here.

Okay? Then why are you arguing with me? — The Great Whatever

Because you're wrong in other areas.

In many cases, yes, they will physically prevent you from killing yourself if you try. Psychiatrists nd psychologists for example are entitled to have you interred against your will if you intimate that you are thinking of killing yourself, and suicide is also literally illegal in most places (with illegality always backed by force). — The Great Whatever

Not all places, though. And it's sad that suicide is illegal. In many cases these preventative instincts will stop you from killing yourself. But they are not 100% failproof in the way a jailcell is. You can actually commit suicide quite easily these days if you just sit in the garage with the car on and some classical music playing.

In addition the many unofficial social mechanisms that serve to shame, bully, threaten, etc. the suicidal are coercive in that they inflict large amounts of pain as a mechanism for preventing suicide or making it impracticable. — The Great Whatever

Not always.

Finally, even if suicide were completely free, birth would still be coercive, because one cannot consent to it. The fact that it might be possible to undo does not make it any less forced (and much of the pain endured happens before it is possible to kill oneself). — The Great Whatever

No shit, I've been saying this since day one.

There actually are coercive mechanisms keeping people alive to suffer once they are born, such as survival instincts, the general pain attending dying, guilt, shame and illegality of suicide (including censure from family members, government, and religion, sometimes threats of burning in hell for eternity), and so on. — The Great Whatever

These are manipulating mechanisms but not inhibitory (coercive) mechanisms. They can manipulate you and make it harder to end your life if you do so please, but they do not prevent you from doing so (as evidence of the rising percentage of suicide rates).

You are simply wrong in your description; people go apeshit at the idea of suicide, and there are systematic and painfu pressures in place to keep the coercive institution going once in place. — The Great Whatever

Well, of course they go apeshit, because they're scared out of the minds of death. But it's not coercion.

What options worth the name does someone in prison have? Seriously? — The Great Whatever

Well, if they had all the options of that we enjoy outside of prison, then there really wouldn't be any point of prison now would there?

I'm not telling you to kill yourself, what a straw man! I'm telling you that you are free to kill yourself if you desire!

Furthermore, it's kind of odd that you are complaining about being "coerced" into living, and yet take offense when someone points out that you actually aren't and that you have the ability to end it if you actually do think you are being coerced. If you actually did think that you were being coerced into living, you wouldn't take offense by me pointing out that you have other options.

Perhaps you don't care about dying? Who said you were coerced into continuing living? Nobody has you strapped up in a gurney preventing you from ending it peacefully and painlessly.

Okay, that says nothing about whether you 'mind' doing it. — The Great Whatever

But...it does...if you don't mind doing something, than you either have no preference or you actually want to do it. If you do mind doing something, that means that some kind of incentive must be made to make your do it (i.e. coercion). Otherwise you wouldn't do it.

Get used to it, this happens a lot with him.

What do you think 'coercive' means, exactly? I'm pretty sure what you just said is not what it means. — The Great Whatever

To force someone to do something that they do not want to do.

We're talking about jail, right? Prison, rather? — The Great Whatever

Yes, we are. Prisons are not concentration camps.

Of course you are; no one choose to be born. It's not even possible. — The Great Whatever

You are not coerced into continuing living. Again this is just devolving into your negative view on life. Insofar that you do not desire to continue to live, then the various institutions in society surrounding you as well as your own self-preservation mechanism are indeed nudging you along to continue your life. They aren't coercing you, though, nor are they prohibiting you from ending your life if you do so wish to.