You'd have to say that it's morally problematic to do things to materials that could turn into living things — Terrapin Station
I did. And so did you. You said genetically modifying babies to suffer is bad. Genetic modification and birth are both things you do to organic materials that turn into living things. — Terrapin Station
At this point you had used "materials" to refer to sperm and eggs on multiple occasions — khaled
In my defense I thought you were talking about this: — khaled
Cause: A necessary condition — khaled
So it has no relation to "cause" in terms of culpability? For example, for legal purposes? — Terrapin Station
So if someone decides to commit suicide, say, you're holding not only their parents, but their grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., as well as the gun manufacturer, the builder of their home, the people who zoned that area as residential, etc. all legally responsible for the suicide? — Terrapin Station
I never said legally culpable. What is practical to make legal and illegal and what's moral and immoral are not the same. — khaled
The point remains that to know this, we'd need data about persons' evaluations at the two different time periods in question--the (1) scenario in my post above.
If we had the data in question, and it suggested what you're hoping/claiming it would suggest, we'd also need an argument as to why the evaluation at time T1 has precedence over the evaluation at time T2, rather than those simply being two different evaluations, where it's not the case that one is correct and the other is incorrect. — Terrapin Station
All I'm saying is self-reports don't necessarily tell the whole picture of what's going on. But, as I said to you, this empirical data, doesn't even matter to the argument. I know shocking, since that is what you will use.. — schopenhauer1
At worst a little responsible for their suffering , and greatly responsible for their joy (in the case where I do my best to bring happiness to the child and it works). — leo
The individual is the one who decides who to blame. It seems to me that you're blaming your parents for your suffering, but plenty of people do not blame their parents, they blame other people. — leo
I disagree with the contrast between suffering and pleasure, I would rather talk of joy or happiness in opposition to suffering. Because some people (potentially many, including me) don't see pleasure as worth living for, but they see joy or happiness as worth living for, to me pleasure is not the same as joy. — leo
I don't see why we would owe "no suffering" to future children but not "joy". — leo
You apply a double standard there. On the one hand you focus on the positive experiences you can provide other people, on the other hand you focus on the negative experiences you can provide to a child. — leo
You take risks for others without their consent every second of your life — leo
they need to have children to survive through the genes that their children will carry — leo
Some people so badly need to have a child that they can't survive if they don't have one. — leo
Life is not a job, that's only how you personally feel about it. — leo
And yet spreading antinatalism and being successful in making parents believe that they are bad people for having children could precisely harm them to the point of them committing suicide, only to satiate your own desires. — leo
What makes the difference on your view? — Terrapin Station
It seems like you don't really buy the idea of free will.
You don't believe that every preceding factor could be the same (hypothetically) in two different cases with person A deciding x and person B deciding y (which is not-x)?
(Or we could ask rather if you don't believe that in possible world W, versus actual world A, someone couldn't make decision y (not-x) in W at time T1 rather than decision x in A at T1?) — Terrapin Station
The reason it matters to me is, as I said, that my view doesn't ignore other persons' opinions. Most people don't think that only suffering matters, and most aren't so miserable that suffering greatly outweighs everything else. My view takes other persons' opinions into account. You don't have to do that, of course. There's not a right or wrong way to formulate an ethical view. I'm just telling you how I formulate mine on this particular issue. — Terrapin Station
The reason it matters to me is, as I said, that my view doesn't ignore other persons' opinions. Most people don't think that only suffering matters, and most aren't so miserable that suffering greatly outweighs everything else. — Terrapin Station
My view takes other persons' opinions into account. You don't have to do that, of course. There's not a right or wrong way to formulate an ethical view. I'm just telling you how I formulate mine on this particular issue. — Terrapin Station
I don't but that doesn't matter. That's what's so convincing about antinatalism to me. ALL THE WORLDS A through Z WILL include some suffering (except for one world and its permutations which we sure as heck aren't living in). And in ALL THE WORLDS A thorough Z that suffering WILL start at birth. Birth will ALWAYS be a partial cause in EVERY instance of suffering. Although it might not be the most direct cause, it being a partial cause in EVERY SINGLE CASE adds up to quite the atrocity. — khaled
Morally culpable: Did an action classified as wrong under a certain set of axioms that evolve out of culture and survival strategies. — khaled
I don't but that doesn't matter. — khaled
If you notice a couple posts back I asked if you were the "arbiter" of what is good. — schopenhauer1
Focusing on that one first, you're claiming that a precondition like zoning an area as residential is classified as wrong where that evolved out of cultural and survival strategies? — Terrapin Station
The reason it matters is that there's no way to make sense out of saying that Betty, Joe's mom, is culpable, with respect to causality, for Joe's suicide, where Joe freely chose to commit suicide in world A at time T1, whereas in identical world (prior to T1) W, Joe did NOT choose to commit suicide. — Terrapin Station
No? Under what set of axioms do you think zoning an area as residential is wrong? — khaled
Zoning an area as residential is a cause per your vernacular, where you're using cause to refer to culpability, for someone committing suicide at home. — Terrapin Station
Yes there is. If you use my definition of causality as necessary condition. Joe's mom had to have Joe in order for Joe to commit suicide. Therefore Joe's mom is accountable for his suicide (although partially). Joe's mom is also accountable for all suffering and joy Joe experiences — khaled
Also I want to take this problem to the extreme and ask why the kidnapper is wrong in this case:
A person kidnaps you at night completely painlessly and without any damage done then puts you into a torture chamber. You wake up, he gives you a button and says "Press this button and you will die" and then proceeds to torture you. Now you have two options
A: Die
B: Severe pain
Oh in that sense yes but there is a nuance here. Zoning an area as residential IS a cause for "Joe commited suicide at home" but not for "Joe committed suicide". It is a necessary condition for the area in which Joe commited suicide to be called "home" but not necessary for Joe to have committed suicide — khaled
The reason we'd not be able to make sense out of it is that all of that's identical in the two cases with different outcomes. So that makes mincemeat out of the conventional connotations of "cause" and "culpability." There's no way to make sense of it other than simply saying that it's a precondition, but that term doesn't at all have the same connotations. — Terrapin Station
The kidnapper in that case would not be the cause of the person choosing to die. The person deciding to push the button was the cause. — Terrapin Station
By the same token, by the way, in my view Hitler didn't kill anyone (at least not per my knowledge/memory). People beneath him (hierarchically) rather made decisions to kill people. — Terrapin Station
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