You say this is a good thing and should be carried out because that is just what happens. Again, this is an is ought problem.... — schopenhauer1
We must be both sufficiently differentiated and integrated to thrive as ... social creatures. And everything else I say follows from this basic picture of the human situation. — apokrisis
This is not a smooth process. Individuals have an inclination for freedom of their own thought. Thus, not recognizing people's tendency for their own freedom of thought, is tacitly just putting the "is" of group dynamics as the "ought" of individuals conforming to demands of the given. Rather, though people must acquiesce to the given, the situation is still the given. Why create more situations where individuals must encounter the given? — schopenhauer1
Now from here, you take this IS and make it an OUGHT by PREFERRING to have future people that experience this dynamic of the individual and society. — schopenhauer1
And collectively, as a society, we will make some general choice. Who could complain about that? — apokrisis
Because there is always tension between the individual and society... — schopenhauer1
Of course we conform to society's expectations/roles/givens, etc. We eventually learn to integrate. — schopenhauer1
But why do we want this process to continue? — schopenhauer1
What is it about seeing new people navigate the social/physical world that is valuable to you that this needs to be procreated to a next generation? It is a legitimate question, but so fundamental you seem to think it should not be asked. — schopenhauer1
You might not. But why should I want what you want? Why should everyone have to serve your preference in this matter? — apokrisis
My reply to the OP was that one justification is that having kids makes you less selfish, more socially responsible and involved. — apokrisis
My outcome leads to no negative outcome for a future individual. — schopenhauer1
What is it about the word "flourishing" that draws people like a moth to a flame? — schopenhauer1
If we know of the "sufferings", why are the positives worth it when nothing had to be created at all? — schopenhauer1
....is not an answer to the question: "Why should everyone have to serve your preference in this matter?" — apokrisis
If my perspective is "wrong" no ONE is hurt by it. If your perspective is wrong, someone is always hurt by it. — schopenhauer1
If we are reasonable people, we could make reasonable judgements about whether on average those babies will later feel grateful.
And being reasonable, it would be on average rather than absolutely. Practical reason also includes the principle of indifference. Near enough is good enough. We don’t have to be fanatics about these things. — apokrisis
It's not fanatical to abstain from having children. People do it all the time. — darthbarracuda
And I think you are using the term "reasonable" illicitly here, in that you effectively monopolize the term to refer to anything you agree with. — darthbarracuda
I can just as easily say that reasonable people do not take unnecessary risks, — darthbarracuda
In this form antinatalism is the logical extension of the common ethical categories (common-sense morality), and it's only because of the affirmative assumption that life and reason must never intersect that antinatalism is seen as unreasonable. — darthbarracuda
The reason as to why this assumption is so prevalent is probably evolution and the basic biological drive to survive. — darthbarracuda
'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention...
The 86-year-old social scientist says accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it.
We’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”
Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute, does say so. His bleak forecast of the consequence of runaway climate change, he says without fanfare, is his “last will and testament”. His last intervention in public life. “I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said,” he says when I first hear him speak to a stunned audience at the University of East Anglia late last year.
What is the point of having children as we approach the cliff off of which we will collectively fall? — Bitter Crank
If we are reasonable people, we could make reasonable judgements about whether on average those babies will later feel grateful. — apokrisis
Just as the torturer could make reasonable predictions about whether, on average, his victims will develop a Stockholm Syndrome such that they feel grateful to him. — Thorongil
No. It is unreasonable because the facts are that the majority of people don't go through life wishing they had never been born.
Antinatalism is only logical to those who take a black and white absolutist stance on things. Any pain or suffering - even a papercut - makes existence structurally intolerable.
For most people, life is a mixed bag. And yet overall, they don't regret living. So if you are going to take on moral guardianship for the unborn, deal with the facts as they actually are out there in the world. — apokrisis
And once again antinatalism is not concerned about paper cuts and minor boo-boos. — darthbarracuda
Yes, it is true that many people irrationally find life to be something positive. Yet people can be profoundly misled. — darthbarracuda
A billion happy people has no value when it depends on a single victim of torture. — darthbarracuda
Every single person who exists is a possible suicide. That's a fact. — darthbarracuda
A consistent atheist committed to a logical problem of evil seems, on pain of inconsistency, to be required to endorse some form of antinatalism as well. — darthbarracuda
Reason and life do not always parallel each other, and when they intersect it's not always beautiful. — darthbarracuda
Yep. It does come down to me being happy to let nauture tell us what reality is. You have some invented image of rationality that you won’t even questioin. You know the right answers despite what nature might say. — apokrisis
Am I do see you as an oracle, proclaiming the truths of reality? Of course I believe what I think is reasonable. — darthbarracuda
Seems to me YOU'RE the one who thinks they have special privilege to the whisperings of nature. — schopenhauer1
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