But that's wrong. Because it assumes that when you start the game, you already have something to loose. Hence the "or die" part has significance. This isn't the case though. The supposed "game" is literally all there is. It isn't a game where you either play or die. It's a game where you play, dying is part of playing. — Echarmion
Uh, I am? — Echarmion
I just have this theory that anti-natalism is a secularised version of heaven. You see all the pain and suffering in the world and look for a metaphysical way out. Some way to fight all the evils at once, without actually having tofigure out a solution for anything in particular. — Echarmion
Yes, die slowly (by playing the game in various ways.. some leading to faster death than others) or kill yourself. Kind of strengthens the argument actually. — schopenhauer1
Sounds like a game.. challenges to overcome.. figuring out the key to overcoming the challenges. That's what I mean by you reiterating the game analogy. — schopenhauer1
I don't think we have any common ground on which to base an argument. — Isaac
Still wrong though. There is no "or" here. — Echarmion
So challenges are a game, and death is a game, and I suppose making an argument is also a game, since it's also challenging. Everything is games! — Echarmion
What I wanted to point out that for someone who can't abide smugness, your own position sure is awfully convenient. You get to feel morally superior to everyone else without actually having to address a single real problem. Because you're doing the much more important work of fighting the devil himself — Echarmion
I don't think it's a loophole though but a serious logical error to pull in consent in this discussion. It's gaming the issue by demanding that there should be married bachelors and then pointing out there are no married bachelors as a moral reason there shouldn't be any married people.
I do agree with you that it's not the issue necessarily but will point out the problem when it occurs. I also say this earlier :
It's not well-stated at all because consent cannot play a role here because this is once again personifying non-existence as if it has thought processes and a will. And consent isn't even necessarily important for moral questions. Actions can be moral or immoral without another person being involved. Unnecessarily cutting down trees because I like destroying stuff isn't right either. Gluttony isn't right either. Lusting after your girlfriend even when nobody in the world is aware of it, isn't right either. — Benkei
Anti-Natalism is basically a series of grammar mistakes themselves mistaken for substantive philosophy. A position lacking even the dignity of being 'wrong'. — StreetlightX
No the challenges are a game.. I guess death is a way out of the game. I'm calling it that.. Call it challenges if you want. Discreet things to overcome over a lifetime of surviving, finding comfort, entertainment in a society being exposed/impinged along the way by contingent harms. Stop trying to find "gotchas" and engage and maybe this will go somewhere :roll:. — schopenhauer1
That's difficult on this forum for whatever reason though.. Mainly due to personalities perhaps. — schopenhauer1
No, see I never said that. You can certainly address other problems I just focus on this one. It is the originator of all the other problems, so is one place to start. For people already existing, yep there is a shit of challenges to get your hands dirty if you want. — schopenhauer1
What does seem like moral superiority to me is chastising those who do not want others to live out the challenges but rather default assuming that the challenges are the be all and end all.. But that's just it.. Of course it is, because what else is there if we don't kill ourselves right away or die of starvation? Yep, of course we are going to buy into the challenges thing.. It's a must. Do or die.. I get it. — schopenhauer1
I am trying to engage in a new direction, but it's perhaps not clear that I do. I think there is an alternative perspective that you're not fully considering. That death isn't actually "a way out", but rather just another part of "the game". That there aren't ways out, and that the idea that there should be is really kind of absurd.
I think it's the same kind of problem that happens when people ask "what's the meaning of life?" The question contains a hidden assumption (that someone imbued life with meaning) that people who ask the question don't realize, and hence they don't realize that the question they're asking is nonsense. To ask for the meaning of life is to give someone else the authority to set that meaning.
The problem I see with your approach isn't the same one, but it's similar. You're trying to conceptualize life in a way that's not compatible with a secular, materialistic worldview. There is a hidden assumption here, something along the line that we're souls trapped in bodies that we could conceivably escape. — Echarmion
But, aren't the challenges the be all and end all? This kinda refers back to my remark about "the meaning of life". If there is no outside, metaphysical reason for any of this - and I assume you'd say there isn't - then why complain about the nature of life itself? There isn't any point of comparison, outside the utopias we can dream up. And dreaming them up of course requires that we exist first.
What do you think about the line of reasoning that life is the universe experiencing itself? Useless drivel or important insight? — Echarmion
What do you think about the line of reasoning that life is the universe experiencing itself? Useless drivel or important insight? — Echarmion
Behaving morally is done for its own sake. — khaled
You laid out the common ground. You summed it up very well. Then refused to actually apply it. — khaled
You'll have to point me back to where you think I did this. — Isaac
There is some benefit A which carries a risk B to person C. If I'm under no duty to provide benefit A then it is not appropriate to take risk B if I cannot get the consent of person C to do so. IF, however, I'm under some responsibility to provide benefit A and still can't get the consent of person C, I might well take risk B because failing to provide A would be no less of a risk - be an equally morally relevant outcome — Isaac
Not quite sure how to take this. Are you implying that moral behaviour has no objective. It's just series of arbitrary rules we follow just because...? — Isaac
Another antinatalism thread and another case of the same arguments being re-hashed or going nowhere :roll: — Albero
You'll have to point me back to where you think I did this. — Isaac
Here: — khaled
The objective of moral behavior is moral behavior. I don't know how many ways I have to restate this. And this isn't some fringe belief either, Kant thought that way. — khaled
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that the supreme principle of morality is a standard of rationality that he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI).
a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free, in the sense of being the author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is none other than the law of an autonomous will.
It was the refusing to apply it bit I was confused about — Isaac
None of that sounds anything like an arbitrary set of rules which are simply followed for their own sake. — Isaac
Knowing this, I see it as paternalistic to think that another person should be born, because I deem life's negativity/challenges sufficient to bear the burden of. — schopenhauer1
Antintatlists will either take the metaphysical stance that it is a "good state of affairs" (a sort of absolute axiom) that all cases of harm were prevented in one inaction OR, simply that AT LEAST the bad situations of affairs of all/any harm befalling a future person was prevented. — schopenhauer1
Similarly, antinatalists often view impositions on other people as wrong. Starting someone else's life by having them is seen as an imposition. This is where the facts on the ground are seen as different. Natalists don't see starting someone else's life as an imposition. They see individual instances of challenges to be the impositions. Antinatalists don't understand why these individual instances cannot be summed up as a general category of negativity/harm. Thus instead of 1, 2, 3 instances it is X[1,2,3] that is being prevented. — schopenhauer1
Well there is no alternative for us. We exist. However, as long as a capacity exists where someone in the future can be prevented from challenges, then it is incumbent not to start X[1,2,3] challenges for that person (that is to say all harms/challenges that come from existing in the first place, which is caused by procreation of that person). — schopenhauer1
I do think that antinatalism has implications for how to act as a community. If you want to discuss that, let me know. — schopenhauer1
But given the scenario we are dealing with, it's not obvious why paternalism should have a negative connotation. We can imagine a fantasy scenario where we time-travel to ask all out future children on their opinion about being born. But then the question is, what more right does any one version of me have to decide on all of my existence with all its consequences? Is some moment of me empowered to make the decision for all moments? And what about the consequences for everyone I have and will meet?
This sounds like a scenario where I'd welcome some paternalism. — Echarmion
But where do you even get the moral weight of harm from? That's a problem for all utilitarian ethics, but it's especially problematic here, because you square absence of harm with absence of existence. But aren't harm and it's absence judgements by existing minds? How then could there be an absence of harm without minds? — Echarmion
My view here is different insofar as I don't even see why impositions are strictly negative in the first place. I am aware the word has negative connotations, but are they warranted in this scenario? — Echarmion
Why though? I can see the argument being made for particular sets of challenges, but what right does the "future person" have to not have challenges "imposed" at all? What rule, based on what philosophy, would be broken? — Echarmion
What I'd be interested in is how you view the relationship between the individual and the community. Does the community only exist to facilitate the purposes of it's individuals or is community a more fundamental element of humanity? — Echarmion
It was the refusing to apply it bit I was confused about — Isaac
In my comment I told you how I apply it to get the conclusion “You shouldn’t have kids”. What do you think of that application? — khaled
I said Kant didn’t care about consequences. If you had the option to lie to save some innocent’s life from a killer, he would say don’t lie. Period.
Same for me. I don’t care about the consequences. — khaled
These rules just seem right to me, that’s why I follow them. I don’t see how “embedding” them in deeper, yet still arbitrary rules helps. Though everybody seems to like that for some reason. — khaled
It's just an axiom, no unnecessary harms and challenges are taking place versus they are taking place. — schopenhauer1
Finally. This time it only took you sixteen pages to admit the same point we get to every time...
"I have some weird axioms, look what weird consequences arise from following them"
Summarises all these threads in on sentence. — Isaac
I'd say 'moral' obligations we those obligations which related to creating a more harmonious community (we live together with less conflict and suffering if we follow them). That seems to encompass what most people are trying to get at - even Kant. — Isaac
Problem is all you can say about these axioms is that they’re weird. That’s not really important, it’s like saying you don’t like vanilla ice cream. But this thread is an attempt to say they’re wrong. — khaled
I remember hearing that Kant was asked: If there were 2 people male and female, left alive on earth but one of them was a criminal, should she be executed or should the couple try to rebuild the human race and he answered: Executed for her crimes. I don’t know if this actually happened, I only heard it from a friend. But that was Kant’s philosophy. It doesn’t matter what the impact is on the community, it only matters whether or not the act is right — khaled
It's not that the 'deeper' rules are arbitrary, it's that they're definitional. Obligations which count as 'moral' ones (as opposed to just any obligation) have to be defined, in order to be in that class. — Isaac
that one could reasonably define it as 'an arbitrary set of rules one sticks to for no reason at all' — Isaac
For me, I'd say 'moral' obligations we those obligations which related to creating a more harmonious community (we live together with less conflict and suffering if we follow them). — Isaac
There is some benefit A which carries a risk B to person C. If I'm under no duty to provide benefit A then it is not appropriate to take risk B if I cannot get the consent of person C to do so. IF, however, I'm under some responsibility to provide benefit A and still can't get the consent of person C, I might well take risk B because failing to provide A would be no less of a risk - be an equally morally relevant outcome — Isaac
'Moral' is a word in our shared language. — Isaac
It can't be a term which you apply to describe absolutely anything — Isaac
'Moral' is a word in our shared language. — Isaac
Well considering how many debates we have about it, maybe its meaning isn't as "shared" as, say, "dog". It has some flexibility. — khaled
Yeah, I think that's right. So what kind of evidence would one bring to bear if one were to make an argument about the parameters? Say if we were talking about 'dog', you might argue some new creature was a type of dog by pointing to similarities with other dogs (physiology, genetics etc). You might argue that my toaster isn't a 'dog' by the opposite method. — Isaac
Whatever the evidence is, it is not hard and fast. The line gets blurry at foxes and wolves. — khaled
you seem to me to be asking for hard and fast. — khaled
What makes "Moral acts are for the benefit of the community" so incredibly different than the moral rule we outlined that the former works as a definition and the latter becomes "arbitrary rules followed for no reason"? — khaled
The equivalent for the antinatalist would be something like "Moral acts are to minimise suffering". — Isaac
I can raise evolutionary, cultural, linguistic, psychological and sociological reasons why moral acts might be those which benefit the community. — Isaac
If by this statement you mean that we should follow this or that moral intuition because they are culturally and biologically evolved that would be a natrualistic fallacy. — khaled
So, given we both agree that they have not arrived in our heads by divine force, then their origin is natural, hence it is not a naturalistic fallacy. — Isaac
There is no 'should'. — Isaac
The relevant task is only to try to describe and predict that process. — Isaac
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