First off, someone having a preference to x doesn't imply that they've experienced x yet. — Terrapin Station

That is what I have been saying all along. You appear to be claiming someone needs to be actively experiencing something for it to matter.

In my thread that was merged with this I expressed how I know I did not consent to all the negative experiences I am having. My parents assumed before having me I would have a certain kind of life. they didn't imagine the reality. I know consent matters from personal experience.

Society cannot be based on the idea individuals are responsible for their own lives. But it should be based on the fact that society is created by parents creating new people. I am not responsible for coming into existence but I would be responsible for my children coming into existence.

That is what I have been saying all along. You appear to be claiming someone needs to be actively experiencing something for it to matter. — Andrew4Handel

It's frustrating because it seems like you're not at all understanding what I'm writing, but I don't know why.

Someone needs to be existent and to be able to grant or withhold consent for us to be able to do anything in line with or against their consent.

That doesn't imply that they need to have experienced a particular thing to have an opinion about it.

But they can't have an opinion about it if they don't exist, they don't have thoughts, etc.

Someone needs to be existent and to be able to grant or withhold consent for us to be able to do anything in line with or against their consent.

That doesn't imply that they need to have experienced a particular thing to have an opinion about it. — Terrapin Station

I have not claimed that creating someone is against their consent. I am saying it is non consensual in nature. Chopping down a tree is non consensual because it cannot give or withhold its consent.

I am talking abut how we can imagine people that would not consent to different types of lives or life in general.

One reason consent matters is because of suffering and whether someone would consent to gross suffering. Suffering includes things like work stresses, insomnia, relationship breakdown to chronic disease.

I do not think any one person should have to suffer because other people enjoy life. The Kind of suffering we are talking about is not trivial.

In an analogy a lot of people find sex pleasurable but that does not justify rape. If everyone was glad to be alive then consent would be less of an issue but this simply is not that kind of world. There are clearly things that happen that people would not consent to and i can say that from rich personal experience. Your world view does not appear to recognize any kind of suffering.

I have not claimed that creating someone is against their consent. I am saying it is non consensual in nature. Chopping down a tree is non consensual because it cannot give or withhold its consent. — Andrew4Handel

"Nonconsensual" conventionally has a connotation that something is against someone's consent.

Otherwise, how do you distinguish between an action involving something with an inability to either grant or withhold consent and an action that's contrary to an agent's wishes?

"Nonconsensual" conventionally has a connotation that something is against someone's consent.

Otherwise, how do you distinguish between an action involving something with an inability to either grant or withhold consent and an action that's contrary to an agent's wishes? — Terrapin Station

Words are not that rigid.

A tree probably would not want to be cut down if it was conscious and plants like this appear to strive to exist and flourish unconsciously.

Humans can consent once they are created so you are not referring to a situation where someone can never consent anyway.

An unconscious person can never consent because they are unconscious. The reason we don't offend against them is because of future potential.

It is important to point out that people did not consent to be born when it comes to ethical and social issues.
For example you cannot blame a child if its parents are drug addicts and it lives in poverty. I think morality is undermined because of the lack of initial consent to life. Morality implies a responsibility or contract. People are responsible for their children's existence but not for their own existence. I don't think my child would be a serial killer but it is a possibility and it is a certainly that my child would harm and exploit someone. These are the risks of creating someone else.

Otherwise, how do you distinguish between an action involving something with an inability to either grant or withhold consent and an action that's contrary to an agent's wishes? — Terrapin Station

A dead person is unable to give consent but that does not justify necrophilia. That is an extreme example but it does not follow that if something can't consent we are justified in taking any action towards it.

This is a big issue with ecological philosophy. Should we pollute a lake because it and its inhabitants are outside the scope of consent. Should I be allowed to torture a dog because it cannot voice its consent other than expressing distress.

Words are not that rigid. — Andrew4Handel

Again, it's as if you can not understand what I write for some reason.

I didn't say anything about rigidity. I simply said that conventionally, "nonconsensual" has a connotation of being against someone's consent.

And then I asked you what terms you use to distinguish between something against an agent's consent and something that involves an entity that is incapable of granting or withholding consent.

I was hoping you'd actually tell me what terms you use for that distinction. If you don't make the distinction, do you not think it's worth making?

You constantly amaze me with your patience. What are you getting out of it? It seems to me that he is not listening, is refusing to concede blatant errors and is simply (childishly as ive said already) doing the philosophical equivalent of crossing his arms and stomping his feet.
Im not knocking ya, but are you REALLY, actually confused about why it seems like he is not understanding what you are writing? It seems perfectly obvious to me he is not trying to understand what you are writing.
What are you seeing that im not here? You think he is actually interested in counter-arguments to his position?

I don't expect anyone to ever admit it online, but I think that it's possible to get through to some people via patience/persistence-via-trying various different wordings, angles of explanation, etc.

Part of why I think that is probably due to my experience teaching, including times where I taught private students (I've taught music as much as anything else), including teaching kids who had various obstacles to overcome--learning disabilities, ADHD issues, language issues, kids whose parents were basically forcing them to take music lessons when they didn't want to, and so on.

Aside from that, I tend to be an "irrational optimist," lol.

I thought it was something like that, and of course its a virtue in most cases but sometimes your just wasting your time ive observed. Anyway, just curious if you had expectation or hope. Hope I can get, expectation might make me question your sanity in this case. ;)

”Our time in this inevitable but temporary life is brief, so what is there to do, but to enjoy it while it lasts.” — Michael Ossipoff
.
I am not convinced by the inevitability argument.

.
There’s more than one answer to that:
.
1. If you’re a Materialist, then, according to that metaphysics that you believe in, your life wasn’t inevitable. But, in the unparsimoniously brute-fact physical universe, randomness of events was inevitable, maybe with the generation of biological life on some planet, and a randomness of resulting lives, which turns out to have resulted in your life.
.
If it’s like that, instead of your life having been inevitable, does that really give us more to productively protest?
.
Your life is still without reason, purpose, meaning or agency—an accomplished reasonless fact. What good can it do, and in fact, what can it even mean, to protest it or complain about it if it’s agentless and reasonless?
.
2. Even under Materialism, maybe there’s an infinite physically-inter-related multiverse, containing infinitely-many universes with every possible system of physical-laws, in every possible configuration and state, in which case it’s inevitable that there would happen somewhere the life that is your life.
.
3. To believe in Materialism is to believe in an unparsimonious brute-fact, an unverifiable, unfalsifiable proposition. …and, more generally, to believe in a metaphysics/ontology. I don’t believe in one, and if someone does, then ask them what they mean by context-less, unqualified, objective “Exist”, “There is…”, and “Real”.
.
In my previous reply in this thread, I quoted Faraday, and mentioned (as a truism) the logical structural relation among a system of abstract implications that are to some extent about eachother and about some of the same propositions, and about some of the same hypothetical things that the propositions are about.
.
Among the infinitely-many logical-systems that I spoke of in that previous post, it’s inevitable that they include a system in which the logical and mathematical structural-relations are those of your experience of your physical surroundings….without any claim of their objective, unqualified, context-less “real-ness” or “existence”.
.
Of course, as a truism, there are your life and surroundings in their own context, where the meaning of “There is…” is contextually limited.
.
Maybe a good briefer reply would be to just point out that, unless objective, absolute, contextless, unqualified “Exist”, “There is…”, and “Real” mean something, then your life (as a hypothetical logical system that can be called an “experience-story”) is inevitable as one of the infinitely-many hypothetical systems of inter-referring abstract implications.
.
So, all of this has been in answer to your saying that you aren’t convinced about the inevitability of your life.
.

The problem is that it is not always on our power to enjoy life. I think the optimistic position that everyone could enjoy life is part of the Just World fallacy.

.
Of course not all of life is enjoyable. That’s what I mean when I refer to our inevitable “Shit!” moments.
.
I often find myself saying (to myself, but sometimes to others) “Shit!”. …or “I’m so tired.” (…not referring to physical tiredness, but to being tired of all that happens to us.)
.
It can be because of some local hardship such as minor physical discomfort (such as being out on a freezing winter day, or stubbing a toe, etc.), or social discomfort, or anxiety or insecurity (both of which I consider normal and appropriate), or regret about past mistakes (whether recent or long-distant).
.
Absurdists emphasize the absurd drastic difference or contrast between human wants and needs, vs the things that actually have happened and continue to happen.
.
(Kentucky Buddhist Ken Keyes emphasizes that we have likes, but needn’t believe that we have needs, or even wants.)
.
I’ve learned much from the Antinatalists and Absurdists here. What they say, and what I’ve read from Absurdists confirms my own sentiments, when I say:
.
I didn’t ask or choose to be born, and I didn’t have a chance.
.
I like the Absurdist response to that fact.
.
(I don’t know all of Absurdists’ beliefs, and I well might not agree with all of them (e.g. many of them are Materialists), but they’re right about some significant things.)
.

I just found it difficult to embrace something so unjust.

.
I don't either.
.
Unjust, of course. But without agency there’s no one to blame.
.
Inevitability isn’t anyone’s fault.
.

It seems better to be a psychopath narcissist where one might only be concerned with ones own desires.

.
That’s still unnecessarily taking it seriously, taking it up, and acting it out…and digging oneself deeper in it.
.
Participating in it hardly sounds to me like something that would do oneself any good.
.
Michael Ossipoff
.
10 Su
.
0001 UTC

Additionally:

If you never asked or chose to be born, and it wasn't your fault, then it isn't really your problem, and you needn't take it seriously.

Disown it.

It's dealt with, and what's dealt-with is done-with

Michael Ossipoff

10 Su

0434 UTC