You're right, science is not a specific belief system, it's many belief systems. That is to say, it is an evolving historical tradition which has seen one scientific belief system( theoretical framework) replaced by another
There is no consistently distinguishing feature between philosophy and science other than the fact that one discipline chooses a more narrowly pragmatic vocabulary than the other. Methods of science have constantly changed throughout its history, in parallel with the methods of philosophical inquiry. In fact, it was often the philosophers who changed the methods that scientists adopted. It was also in many cases the philosophers who contributed the mathematical descriptions that became the centerpiece of science.

questions should be asked about why traditional culture failed — Bitter Crank

Insufficiently gnostic, in my view.

Evolution should not lead us to think of ourselves as soulless creatures of deterministic processes. — Bitter Crank

Well, that’s my only beef with it. Insofar as it doesn’t do that, I don’t have any issue with it.

Two very good philosophical OP’s on the topic:

Anything but Human, Richard Polt

It Ain’t Necessarily So, Antony Gottleib.

It was also in many cases the philosophers who contributed the mathematical descriptions that became the centerpiece of science. — Joshs

True, that. Science is of course constantly changing, but it’s the ‘scientific worldview’, which is the idea that scientific discovery can be generalised into an overall world story, that I take issue with.

To reiterate, T Clark said:

"Do you really believe that discussions of value have no place in philosophy?"

To which you said:

Obviously yes. — charleton

But value discussions need to recognise that values require a valuer.
Please go further back and try to understand what we were ACTUALLY talking about.
If you but in half way you are bound to get confused.

Do you know that I typed out this response?

I don't follow exactly what you mean here. — Agustino

No, but many believed that the deliverances of mystical experiences were affective insights or intuitions that could be conveyed to others through means other than faith (like meditation, prayer, asceticism, etc.) — Agustino

The kinds of knowledge (In the Biblical sense of familiarity captured in the Biblical expression for sexual intercourse: "a man knows his wife") I was referring to just are "affective insights or intutions". But I don't think those operate independently of faith. (i.e. meditation, prayer, ascetism, etc will not work absent affective insight and intuition and the faith they give rise to).

The kinds of knowledge (In the Biblical sense of familiarity captured in the Biblical expression for sexual intercourse: "a man knows his wife") I was referring to just are "affective insights or intutions". — Janus

Ah okay, I see what you mean. The term "familiarity" threw me off a bit initially, couldn't quite grasp what you meant. I've written on this in the past but this sort of familiarity can often be cashed out in the form of practical knowledge. And many times we gain practical knowledge about something by doing, and only later translate it into discourse. And in fact, discourse alone can never be sufficient to completely reveal the practical knowledge from which it emerged. Rather discourse offers signposts, but it's up to the listener to creatively appropriate the signposts as he is trying to practically do - he still needs to relate these signposts, the words, to elements from within his own experience.

Say someone teaches you how to play tennis - they may explain scientifically to you what you should do when you hit a forehand, but you have to learn to use and control the appropriate muscles required to execute it yourself. The discourse never translates directly into practice, without that creative and intuitive appropriation of the words.

An analogy to computer vs human action is useful here. When you write computer code for example, this can be frustrating. Because the computer is like a baby. You have to tell it step by step, in a way that you actually would never use to explain to a human being, since the human being can access intuition. The computer can't. So all instructions have to be given in what is actually an absurd way.

To illustrate. If you write a short function to find the largest number in a set of numbers you feed the computer, you have to tell it as follows:

Store a value (zero) as the max. Go through every element of this set. For each element, if the element is greater than max, then set max equal to the value of the element. Return the value of max after going through all elements. This way, you'd have the maximum value.

But if you gave this same task to a human being, they wouldn't actually be solving it like a computer. They'd look at the list of numbers, and very likely quickly spot the biggest number by looking after 9s and the numbers with the most digits. And this is an essential property of consciousness - consciousness has access to this direct intuition in matters that computers can only calculate step by step.

But I don't think those operate independently of faith. (i.e. meditation, prayer, ascetism, etc will not work absent affective insight and intuition and the faith they give rise to). — Janus

Do affective insights and intuition require faith to happen in the first place, or does faith arise as a result of them? I'd think it's a bit of both. You certainly need some faith - or at least openness to the experience - otherwise, it's impossible to have it if you harden your heart against it. But then meditation, prayer, asceticism etc. are preparatory for such affective insights and intuitions - they do not generate them, but they make the participant open to them - they come by grace as it were.

Do affective insights and intuition require faith to happen in the first place, or does faith arise as a result of them? I'd think it's a bit of both. — Agustino

I agree. So, when I said " faith they give rise to" it would have been better to say "the faith they sustain". Faith, affective insight, and intuition are all interdependently co-arising.

And many times we gain practical knowledge about something by doing, and only later translate it into discourse. — Agustino

And this is an essential property of consciousness - consciousness has access to this direct intuition in matters that computers can only calculate step by step. — Agustino

Yes the difference between computers and humans (as well as animals) is the ability to grasp context. An interesting point I noticed in the 'Lions and Grammar' thread is that the grammatical structures of symbolic language allow context to be separated from the world and imported into language itself. However this is still dependent on the original animal ability to grasp context in the 'umwelt' sense; that is common to both humans and animals.

Evolution should not lead us to think of ourselves as soulless creatures of deterministic processes.
— Bitter Crank

Well, that’s my only beef with it. Insofar as it doesn’t do that, I don’t have any issue with it. — Wayfarer

There are people who do think of other humans "as soulless creatures of deterministic processes" (which of course doesn't include themselves). They may employ evolution, but Darwin isn't their source book.

Very large scale centralized, bureaucratic organizations such as GM, [the old AT&T--Bell Telephone], General Electric, military organizations, authoritarian political regimes (like the CP-USSR), Google, Apple, and such like, tend to reduce populations to objects, because dehumanization suits their goals and methodology. The very large scale centralized bureaucratic organizations that we are most familiar with are focused on extracting value from their employees, profits from their customers, projected power as directed (the military), and so on. The high level (and maybe not-so-high managers) tend to instrumentalize people, and manage or manipulate them as objects, not as persons.

Advertisers play this game too. For instance, "the market" to which advertisers address their messages, is as segmented as an ear of corn. Each kernel represents a unique group, sub-group, or sub-sub group which can be targeted (by one means or another). For instance, Midwesternern heterosexual couples between the age of 55 and 75, who live in a affluent, minimally integrated suburban census tracts, own a second home on a lake surrounded by forest, have adult children, and who travel frequently, form a kernel on the cob.

Young single white women who opt for motherhood without a partner (live in or married), reside in a particular kind of urban census tract, are college educated, and employed, are another kernel on the cob. Young college educated gay men who are professionally employed, live in certain urban census tracts, read any of 5 national gay magazines, and buy up-market products are yet another kernel on the cob.

The market doesn't consist of human individuals, it consists of collections of traits with a certain amount of purchasing power...

These various managers, directors, manipulators, and so on are, I think, the most likely to be interested in evolutionary psychology, influence of genes in behavior, and using data mining to identify persons of interest.

They may employ evolution, but Darwin isn't their source book. — Bitter Crank

Yeah but it is actually. Western culture seized on evolutionary theory as a way to bring human beings within scope for science. That is why the 'new atheists' - Dennett, Dawkins, and others - are all 'Darwinian fundamentalists'. There is only one possible 'creation myth' and that is the one that (surprise!) happens to provide an exact analogy for capitalist free-market economics.

Hey this is not only the province of conservative evangelicals, either. I have discovered that the new left, specifically Adorno and Horkheimer wrote books about the 'instrumentalisation of reason'. Marcuse's One Dimensional Man was based on something similar. (I have a recent book on the New Left awaiting in the Christmas Stocking through which I hope to learn more about them.)

So it's all part and parcel of the scientific-secular mindset, which has to assume that the Universe has no 'logos', that there is no reason for existence other than mindless propagation.

Yeah but it is actually. Western culture seized on evolutionary theory as a way to bring human beings within scope for science. That is why the 'new atheists' - Dennett, Dawkins, and others - are all 'Darwinian fundamentalists'. There is only one possible 'creation myth' and that is the one that (surprise!) happens to provide an exact analogy for capitalist free-market economic — Wayfarer

Isn't it the case that capitalist free-market economics proceeded Darwin's book? It seems more like the prevailing zeitgeist more seized on Darwin than had Darwin imposed on it.

I'm pro-evolution; I assume you are too, in as much as Darwin explains the differentiation of species. You know, we all have our inner fish.*** One can be a 'evolutionary enthusiast' without wanting to depersonalize, alienate, instrumentalize, impose crude determinism, et al.

Of course I don’t dispute the facts of evolution. But the influence of evolutionary biology on philosophy, ethics, psychology, and culture in general is often regrettable, in my view. It’s something I have only begun to notice because of the culture wars over evolution. I don’t have any particular sympathy with the ID movement, for various reasons (one of which is that they’re all climate-change deniers.) But I agree with them on some points of philosophy, the main one being their criticism of the acceptance of the notion that life itself is a product of ‘the accidental collocation of atoms’, to use Bertrand Russell’s phrase, and also that there is not an ontological distinction between living and non-living things. All this is the subject of the Thomas Nagel book that I created a thread about recently.

And I’m really opposed to the widespread acceptance of the idea that humans are ‘no different’ to animals. Of course it is true that from the perspective of biological science, we’re just another species. But what makes us different to animals, is not only a matter of a biological difference. It’s an existential difference - humans are able to reflect on the nature of existence in a way that animals simply cannot. Yet people seem to delight in debunking that notion and in fact they seem to regard the assertion of a difference is quite offensive; I think it’s actually a very non-PC attitude. So again the view is that you’re either a sensible, educated, rational materialist, or your a science-denying, irrational religious believer who clings to out-dated worldviews.

But what makes us different to animals, is not only a matter of a biological difference. — Wayfarer

"Biologically" there is no significant difference among mammals, and we have very strong similarity to the biology of fish, for instance. Not that cold blooded fish and warm blooded mammals are likely to swap parts, but the basic design and operation of fish (many millions of years back) affected our design and operation.

Certainly, the human brain has no equal among all other animals. Our capacities exceed all others. But the operation of our capacities is not fundamentally different than that of a chimpanzee or bonobo, or even your cat or dog. The way neurons perform their functions was worked out a long time ago. A fruit fly neuron and a human neuron are doing many of the same things.

Even a rat brain is very complex, and our brain is much, much larger than a rat's brain and many orders more complex, particularly in the pre-frontal cortex.

... humans are able to reflect on the nature of existence in a way that animals simply cannot. — Wayfarer

Right, and it's a good thing, too. If our pets and domestic animals could reflect on the nature of their existences, it is quite possible they would become bitter and resentful, and god only knows what they might do while we were asleep. A lot of people would probably have never (literally) woken up.

But the influence of evolutionary biology on philosophy, ethics, psychology, and culture in general is often regrettable, in my view. It’s something I have only begun to notice because of the culture wars over evolution. — Wayfarer

How could the theory of evolution not affect philosophy, ethics, psychology, and culture? Before Darwin there were discoveries in geology (really, the invention of geology) in the late 18th, early 19th centuries, that undermined the received biblical view of history and our place in it. The unseating of the earth as the center of the cosmos was very disruptive. The advances in computers challenges some assumptions (depending how much credit one is willing to extend to one's CPUs).

The whole business of fundamentalism was more than a reaction to just Darwin -- it was also a reaction against scholarship which impugned the authorship and formation of the biblical texts.

The culture wars are tiresome, tedious, and interminable. Stupid too, and I don't blame Darwin for their ill effects. All that is required for a culture war to get going is a significant change in the people's prospects. Since Darwin a lot of coincidental changes in people's prospects have been visited on us: electricity and electronic media; the automobile; world wars; atomic weapons; ICBMs; antibiotics; Black Power; "bra-burning" feminists; militant homosexuals, and so on.

That's a lot, plus there have been pleasant economic booms followed by some really horrible busts; deep changes in manufacturing and trade (globalization) caused, and are causing upheaval across the working class and middle classes too. The baby boom rode an economic wave which peaked by 1970, and they, and their children have been on the economic skids (declining income and deteriorating purchasing power) ever since.

So, a once nice comprehensible model of the world went KABOOM and here we are picking up the pieces.

What you're not seeing is the broader cultural issue. Your OP is basically 'ain't life grand? How could anyone be unhappy, considering? ' And, as I said, if you feel like that, then bully for you. The comments I'm making are only partially about how I feel about the culture wars and evolutionary materialism. Personally, I get along fine. But there are many who turn up on this forum and write posts like this - and I think that there you're seeing the manifestation of the very nihilism you're railing against.

So the fact that you 'don't feel that way' is not really a philosophical response so much as 'pull up your socks, son. Things aren't so bad'.

Compare these two quotes:

When man lived securely under the canopy of the Judeo-Christian world picture he was part of a great whole; to put it in our terms, his cosmic heroism was completely mapped out, it was unmistakable. He came from the invisible world into the visible one by the act of God, did his duty to God by living out his life with dignity and faith… offering his whole life—as Christ had—to the Father. In turn he was justified by the Father and rewarded with eternal life in the invisible dimension. Little did it matter that earth was a vale of tears, of horrid sufferings of incommensurateness, of torturous and humiliating daily pettiness, of sickness and death, a place where man felt he did not belong, “the wrong place,” as Chesterton said…. In a word, man’s cosmic heroism was assured, even if he was as nothing. This was the most remarkable achievement of the Christian world picture: that it could take slaves, cripples, imbeciles, the simple and the mighty, and make them all secure heroes, simply by taking a step back from the world into another dimension of things, the dimension called heaven. Or we might better say that Christianity took creature consciousness—the thing man most wanted to deny—and made it the very condition for his cosmic heroism.

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York, Free Press, 1973), xvii

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden.

So, given the average reading age and intelligence, and the inability to devote time to pondering such questions, which do you think might be the more likely to give rise to 'nihilism and anti-natalism'?

FFS.
Life INHERENTLY good, is absurd.

I think what you may be describing is an issue with Scientism. Science is useful. Some people have made it into a cult-like religion.

What you're not seeing is the broader cultural issue. — Wayfarer

Damn! When I try to see the whole broader cultural issue, nothing happens.

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York, Free Press, 1973), xvii

Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden.

So, given the average reading age and intelligence, and the inability to devote time to pondering such questions, which do you think might be the more likely to give rise to 'nihilism and anti-natalism'? — Wayfarer

You cite many interesting books and articles. I add them to my reading list, which I will (I hope) eventually get through.

On the one hand, there are depression and allied psychological conditions which darken the individual's reality, whatever their preferred intellectual positions. On the other hand, there are philosophical positions which individuals construct over time, drawing on preferences, experience, maybe predisposing genes, and those broader cultural issues. Depression happens to us, nihilism and antinatalism are our creations.

I'm not all that worried about antinatalists. There are more children being born than the world can reasonably support, so antinatalism makes sense from that angle. I know people who have opted to not have children for philosophical reasons, who aren't quite antinatalists. It's an entirely supportable position, at least from some angles. Being a gay guy, I never intended to have children. Not fathering a brood hasn't felt like a loss to me.

I have a larger concern about nihilism. I have no objection to assertions that we live in an essentially meaningless universe. I don't think the universe has built in meaning, either. We, on the other hand, are meaning givers, and if the universe has a meaning, it comes from us, for better or worse. Of greater concern is that nihilism can become a "universal negator", rejecting meaning willy nilly. It can be a pernicious influence. Entertaining the absence of meaning, morals, values, and so forth leads one into "If God is dead, everything is permissible" territory, which is in general not a good place to be.

Your OP is basically 'ain't life grand? — Wayfarer

No, life isn't "just grand" it's "just good". I hear a distinct difference between "grand" and "good". The antinatalists are right about suffering: Obviously there is suffering. Life is still "good", not grand. Death is grievous, and comes to us all--quite often in very unpleasant form. Despite that, life is still good, not grand. There are pleasure and joys in life, as well as suffering and death, and if our pleasures and joys are more limited than our miseries, life is still good.

"Life is good" is a starting point. Every philosophical position begins somewhere. "Ain't life grand" is more the starting point of Auntie Mame (a 1950s movie/broadway musical), where "Life is a banquet and these poor suckers are starving".

We're talking past one another at this point, so I'll leave it for another time.

I'm not all that worried about antinatalists. There are more children being born than the world can reasonably support, so antinatalism makes sense from that angle. I know people who have opted to not have children for philosophical reasons, who aren't quite antinatalists. It's an entirely supportable position, at least from some angles. Being a gay guy, I never intended to have children. Not fathering a brood hasn't felt like a loss to me. — Bitter Crank

You mentioned our relation with other animals in a previous post. Other animals do not self-reflect. There might be insights and problem solving skills, but probably little to no self-reflection. Maybe the occasional dolphin has a pessimistic thought about its own existence, but I doubt its thought process gets to that level. Other animals have a mix of instinct and learned responses (also based largely on instincts that allow for basic learned responses to easily take place and get passed on). Other animals do their business without a secondary level thinking on top of it. They live an instrumental life- they eat, crap, build nests, avoid predators, mate, clean, preen, repeat, day in and day out. Maybe some have a form of play, bonding, etc. We do the same for the large part, but we have sort of an existential component to it. We know of our instrumental being, yet we need psychological mechanisms to not dwell on this. We have anchoring mechanisms, distracting mechanisms, isolating mechanisms, and sublimation mechanisms. All of these mechanisms being aided by social institutions. The very absurdity of the instrumentality of existence doesn't have an answer. You can live with the knowledge, pushing the boulder like Sisyphus with a smile, true. That is the point of Camus existentialism. You can see your life as a tragi-comedy with all its pains and suffering as seasoning life to make it [your individualized pain. It is your struggle, even if it is a struggle, and apparently, that in itself can make it good.

Of course, being the self-reflective creature we are, we can then ask the why. Breeding all of a sudden is broken asunder in its similarity with other animals. We can reflect as to whether life itself is something to bring forth into the world. We can look back prior to our individual existence and imagine something like "non-existence". We can look past our life and imagine something like "death". But then we can ultimately ask, what is it that we want new humans to "have" or "experience" or "endure" between the non-existence and death, that is to say, the potential 90+ years of human life. What is it about the essentially instrumental nature of life that needs to be expanded to yet more people? Remember, it is the already-living who will make this decision for the new person. So it is a question for the already-living prospective parents as to why that new person being born has to be another individual's perspective on the world, that will experience it. Now, this new perspective may have some uniqueness to it, but it basically will endure the same things- survival, comfort, entertainment seeking. We all know the drill, but why is it that more people should know the drill too? What is it that it is not enough for just the already-living to endure/experience, why must it be expanded. If you say it is because of some experiment, that these new people will bring something novel, it would be using them for the hope of some novel outcome. If you just want new people to "experience" life, then you must ask what it is about enduring life, overcoming challenges, and experiencing harm, that is an imperative to be experienced by yet another person. It is not so easy as other animals, you see.

Yes the difference between computers and humans (as well as animals) is the ability to grasp context. An interesting point I noticed in the 'Lions and Grammar' thread is that the grammatical structures of symbolic language allow context to be separated from the world and imported into language itself. However this is still dependent on the original animal ability to grasp context in the 'umwelt' sense; that is common to both humans and animals. — Janus

I haven't checked that thread out (yet), but language functions differently than consciousness. A computer is basically a language processor. All language processing takes time, and it's a cumulative, step-by-step process. There are no "insights". If you give a computer a 100x100 matrix full of 0s with the exception of one non-zero number, the only way it can establish that that matrix has 9,999 zeros is by going through each element one by one and recording how many zeros it finds. That means it essentially must do 10,000 calculations. The computer can also be aware of context, provided it stores it into memory. So if it stores the number of 0s in the matrix in a variable, or it notes the row and column position of the non-zero number as well as its value + the total number of rows and columns, then it could be aware of the context. Then, if it has to multiply that 100x100 matrix by another one it could simplify the process, now being aware of the internal and external structure of the matrix.

But consciousness is not like this, since consciousness has direct insight - it can at once perceive what is the case, in a leap as it were. And self-consciousness can also be aware of itself, also at once.

And many times we gain practical knowledge about something by doing, and only later translate it into discourse. — Agustino

What you call the computer's "being aware of context" would seem to be merely an algorithm though, not a true awareness, and much less a self-conscious awareness. The first of the latter is what I meant by "the original animal ability to grasp context in the 'umwelt' sense; that is common to both humans and animals".

We're talking past one another at this point, so I'll leave it for another time. — Noble Dust

You just figured out I'm right.

>:O

You just figured out I'm right. — charleton

It took you quite a long time... >:) >:O

Merry Christmas!

What you call the computer's "being aware of context" would seem to be merely an algorithm though, not a true awareness, and much less a self-conscious awareness. — Janus

Merry Christmas! Well, I meant the same thing as when I say you are objectively aware of something - ie you can judge it and react appropriately to it. So in this case, the computer would be able to multiply the 100x100 matrix once it has stored its properties in memory by another matrix without doing all the calculations one by one - ie it would be able to do exactly the same thing as you would be able to do from a pragmatic point of view.

I did not mean that the computer has the subjective capacity of awareness that you do or can behave intuitively, devise new methods of solving a problem, etc.

Yeah, OK, I think we are agreeing, but in any case, Merry Christmas to ye!

@Bitter Crank Just wondering if you had a response to last post here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/136859

"Just wondering if you had a response to last post here:"

I do.

You mentioned our relation with other animals in a previous post. Other animals do not self-reflect. ... Other animals do their business without a secondary level thinking on top of it. ... We have anchoring mechanisms, distracting mechanisms, isolating mechanisms, and sublimation mechanisms. ... — schopenhauer1

I think you are probably right that other animals do not self-reflect--at least most of them. But we can't be 100% sure there is no sense of self, no self-reflection, because they can't answer our questions of them. If you watch people in silence, they don't seem all that self-reflective a good share of the time, either.

Are these people engaged in self reflection? Anything but. Naked apes addicted to the latest distraction.



Our brains have the complexity (we think) to support this higher level of selfhood. I like to point out that our brain structure is genetically governed, and some parts of brain structure have been the same since fish were invented. Since then--a few hundred million years--brains have become more and more complex. It doesn't seem altogether reasonably that only in this last iteration of brain structure did all our capacities spring forth for the first time. Some of them probably did.

Of course, being the self-reflective creature we are, we can then ask the why. Breeding all of a sudden is broken asunder — schopenhauer1

Not really. The drive to reproduce does not depend on self-reflection. Animals (including us) are wired to become aroused, copulate, and reproduce. Is human reproduction a self-reflective decision? One can hope, but clearly it is not always the result of self-reflection, or reflection on the goodness of the species' prospects, or the prospects of a specific child.

Not broken asunder, because what bonds baby to mama and papa is pretty much the same mechanism across mammals (at least -- not sure about birds). Various stress-suppressing hormones are issued during labor, and then at the critical moment, oxytocin, and that seals the deal. We don't like thinking that our cozy gauzy scenes of maternal bliss are shared with apes, dogs, and god knows what else.

Humans also have instincts. To suppose that all the creatures up to us are governed by instinct, but not us--oh, no!--is absurd. In us, instinct is buried underneath layers of learned behavior more so than among most other animals, but instinct is still operating. And then there is language and culture, which are pretty compelling forces in themselves.

What is it that it is not enough for just the already-living to endure/experience, why must it be expanded. If you say it is because of some experiment, that these new people will bring something novel, it would be using them for the hope of some novel outcome. If you just want new people to "experience" life, then you must ask what it is about enduring life, overcoming challenges, and experiencing harm, that is an imperative to be experienced by yet another person. It is not so easy as other animals, you see. — schopenhauer1

The impulse to keep expanding, to add another generation, was not invented by us bipedal opposable thumbs-bearing homo sapiens sapiens. It has been an installed feature of life from the get go. It is hundreds of millions of years too late to complain. That window was closed... how many hundred million years ago? We are, for better or worse, stuck with it.

If we already-living smart asses were completely language-shaped, philosophizing cultural creatures -- no genes, no instincts, no drives, no hormones, no fit-together-pleasure-producing-baby-hatching parts--then your big WHY? would be of some use: We could rationally decide to pull the plug on one more iteration of our species. We can't.

Children don't have to be planned, they just happen. Yes, I realize they don't just appear like magic--they are the result of fucking. And people like to fuck, and fairly often sperm will meet egg, and another generation will result. To always and everywhere prevent eggs and sperm from meeting, so that no more generations would occur, would require a persistent resolution quite unfamiliar to us. Neither language, culture, genes, habits, biology, nor instincts are in support of such resolution.

it doesn't matter how well reasoned antinatalist objections are. It doesn't matter how much suffering the next generation will have to endure, (or, not incidentally, how much pleasure they would have to forego by not being born). Reproduction isn't the result of culture, language, literature, ideas, philosophy, or anything else that humans have cooked up. When it comes to biological matters (like life) humans are the objects of processes, not the subjects.

That we are the objects of life, and not the subjects, is a singularly inconvenient truth for a smart assed species like ourselves. We are borne aloft, and forward, by mechanisms we have nothing to do with. We are also extinguished by the same biological forces. We are born, flourish for a time, then get old or sick, and die. Sic transit gloria mundi, and all that -- but that's the way it is.

People read statements like mine, and they object that it is all too reductionist, depressing, mechanistic, and so forth. Much the way people (me too) respond to your antinatalist statements. The difference between your view and mine is that you think people can help it, I think people can't help it. Yes, we could cease to reproduce -- but the commitment and prolonged concentration that universal, species-ending non-reproduction requires is not one of our features -- and it isn't going to happen.

But nature isn't reductionist. It's tremendously expansive, inventive, and energetic. We are one of its products, after all.

We probably will become extinct at some point in the future. Our demise will probably owe much to a lack of insight into the consequences of our standard operating procedures. But the capacity to benefit from insight into the medium term and long term consequences of our behavior is something that neither biology or culture has provided. We know we are spoiling the environment on which our existence depends, but... we are what we are -- a reckless resource-gobbling species that can see no further than the short term.

"Hmmm, I'm going to run out milk tomorrow--better get some more." Or "You know what, I should fix the roof before it starts raining again."

But, "Gee whiz, I'm already 30 years old, and retirement is only 45 years away. I'd better start saving for retirement!" Non monsieur.

"Oh dear, we're already past peak oil! Better replace the petroleum based economy!" No way, y'all. Gotta keep pumping."

"God help us, CO2 will ruin the climate, not to mention methane and CFCs." Don't worry, dear, some future generation will jump off that bridge when they get to it.

As for the long term, we don't get it. And if we did get it, we wouldn't be able to get ourselves together to do anything about it. We are what we are, after all.

There may not be a purpose for us to fulfill, there may be no unifying pattern which makes all life meaningful — Bitter Crank

Regardless of your view on life's inherent goodness (which I don't agree with), this forms the very basis of Nihilistic thinking.