What's wrong with the reasoning? — Bartricks
And you're attacking a straw man. I am not arguing against educating children. Perhaps if you'd been made to undergo more education you'd have realized that. — Bartricks
Default wrong' doesn't mean always and everywhere wrong. Sheesh, are you doing this on purpose? — Bartricks
My argument is - for the umpteenth time - 'Kantian'. — Bartricks
No, I mean by default wrong what I said I mean. Now address the argument not the label I have attached to it. The label is correct and all you're doing by disputing that is a) not focussing on the issue at hand and b) revealing your ignorance.
Engage the argument or go away and start your own thread in which you use whatever labels you want to attach to things. — Bartricks
What an astonishingly silly point - no, I am NOT opposed to those who have been brought into existence being educated. — Bartricks
I am opposed to people bringing people into existence. — Bartricks
The argument is Kantian and it isn't my fault you don't know what that word means. This thread is not about a label, it is about an argument. — Bartricks
The label is correct, but I am not debating it further here - start your own thread about Kantianism and what it has to involve if you want. But this thread was started by me - me, not you - to discuss a particular 'argument', not a 'label'. Okay?! — Bartricks
As for what you say about governments and surgeons - which premise are you trying to challenge with these examples? Presumably this one:
1. It is default wrong to perform an act if doing it will significantly affect another person without their prior consent. — Bartricks
Other posters have outlined the problems in principle that you need to overcome, but you seem genuinely flustered by the people here not agreeing to your premise, which you have finally been kind enough to reveal that "lack of consent is wrong by default". — boethius
Yes? Well, a) how does it challenge that premise given that the premise does not say that it is always and everywhere wrong? You need to show that it is not even default wrong, not just that there are a whole range of scenarios in which it is overall justified - for by definition, that is consistent with premise 1. — Bartricks
Of course surgeons are often going to be justified in performing operations without a person's consent. But a) it is regrettable that they have to do without it (if, for instance, a surgeon performed an operation without getting the consent of someone who was perfectly capable of giving it, then we'd all recognise that what the surgeon did was seriously wrong; and when consent is impossible its absence is still bad, it just doesn't operate to make the act overall wrong because there are countervailing moral positives that make it overall right. — Bartricks
b) in the case of governments you can't seriously be maintaining that consent is irrelevant to their legitimacy? — Bartricks
Now, I think most would agree here that there can be just governments and unjust governments, but even concerning only just governments, an argument defending a just government can't possibly be based on the consent or everyone that government significantly affects. Not only a single person not consenting then makes the government "default wrong", but many can't consent, in particular unborn children. — boethius
I mean blimey, there's a vast, vast literature on what it takes for governments to be justified in their activities and a great, great deal of it focusses on the issue of consent. — Bartricks
So the fact that most citizens in a community have not, in fact, given explicit consent to be governed is an age old problem - now, I am not saying that some kind of extreme anarchist position is right, I am just pointing out that it speaks to the overwhelming plausibility of premise 1 that virtually every political philosopher there has ever been recognises that there is an issue here that needs to be thought about, not just dismissed. — Bartricks
Now, I think most would agree here that there can be just governments and unjust governments, but even concerning only just governments, an argument defending a just government can't possibly be based on the consent or everyone that government significantly affects. Not only a single person not consenting then makes the government "default wrong", but many can't consent, in particular unborn children. — boethius
This is a reply to the first bit - no, I care about accuracy and I am not misusing the term 'Kantian' in labeling the argument as such. But this thread is not about labels and I am not discussing it further because there is nothing to discuss. — Bartricks
This is a reply to your second bit. Do you deny the premise? You haven't said. If you deny it, provide a case against it. — Bartricks
If you don't deny it, why do you deny my conclusion? — Bartricks
What about your government cases? Well, exactly the same applies. They're simply not relevantly analogous to procreation cases. — Bartricks
So all you're doing is pointing out that sometimes we are plausibly justified in doing things that significantly affect others without their prior consent - which isn't in dispute. — Bartricks
Procreation does not prevent something bad happening to the person who otherwise would not be created - as I said in my opening post (maybe you should re-read it). — Bartricks
This is a reply to the final bit - no, I don't 'want' antinatalism to be true. Even if I did - and I repeat, I don't - that would be irrelevant to the credibility of the argument. — Bartricks
Now, to solve the surgeon issue of consent on unconscious patient you invoke "more good than harm" so "default consent is regrettable but we don't care about it in that situation, and you can apply the same to government "more good than harm", but then parents can also apply it to children "having children does more good than harm". — boethius
so I guess you agree that as long as parents are plausibly justified in having children then all's ok, even if that significantly affects their yet-to-be-born baby — boethius
Again, in another realm where you have actually put in the work to understand your own argument and it's implications, maybe this would be a point for you. — boethius
There are no doubt exceptional circumstances, such as where a great harm will come to the person unless the act is performed or where the person in quesiton positively deserves to be treated in this way. But that's why I said 'standardly'. We might say that an act is 'default' wrong/bad if it has the above qualities, though not necessarily wrong. As such we can reasonably assume an act that has the above qualities is wrong until or unless we are provided with reason to think that the act in question is an exceptional case.
The act of procreation has this feature. It seems undeniable that in procreating one significantly affects another person, for one thereby commits someone else to living an entire life. And it also seems undeniable that the person who is affected in this way has not consented to it.
So, it would seem that on these Kantian grounds - Kantian because it is something about the nature of the act, namely the fact the act is one that has not been consented to - we have reaosn to believe that procreation is wrong. — Bartricks
Ehhhh not Kantian. Others have already out argued you on that point. — Mark Dennis
The Hypothetical consent scenario; You have a time phone. It rings, it’s your parents. They want to know if they should use contraception. What is your answer? — Mark Dennis
I’ve got a better idea, how about instead of demanding that I cite your sources for you, you do it like you should have been doing from the start. Literally dozens of philosophers have written about Kant and Kantian ethics and if I don’t agree with you that they made the distinction more than Kant did, then I’m not gonna know who it is based upon your subjective belief that only this one philosopher made the distinction. You could be talking about Hegel, Heidegger, Hill, Cummiskey or any number of people.Yes. It. Is. Name the philosopher who drew the distinction between 'Kant's moral philosophy' and 'Kantian' moral philosophy.
Are you the product of a rape? If not I don’t see how this view is relevant to you and how you answer tells us a lot about how you view your parents which in term impacts your view of antinatalism.Imagine I'm the product of rape. the rapist phones me and asks me if they should rape my mother. Would my answer - whether positive or negative - tell you anything about the ethics of rape?
So mr Antinatalist, why are you so angry with your parents? — Mark Dennis
One more thing; Will the antinatalist movement ever convince 100% of the population to A not have children B always use a 100% fool proof contraception (doesn’t exist) and get an abortion if one slips through the net? This includes teenagers with raging hormones, sex addicts, prostitutes and basically every women who used to be a little girl that dreamed of being a mother and every man who dreams of being a father... or just dreams of having sex and being lousy with protection.
Oh and you can’t sterilise the entire population either because you run right back into consent. Of which, you will not get 100% as I said before. — Mark Dennis
I am not entirely sure I follow you, since the Kantian claim I am making - namely, that it is default wrong to do something that impacts another in some significant way without their prior consent - is normative. — Bartricks
That is, it is not a claim about how we actually behave, but a claim about how we ought to behave. And although you are right and it may well not persuade many people, that's neither here nor there since what's true is not equivalent to what persuades people. — Bartricks
It’s your own argument that makes it wrong. If it is without consent then it is default wrong by your own definition.And as for sterilising the whole population - well, I haven't argued for that, have I? But if it is seriously wrong to procreate then it could be justified to sterilise the whole population. Why do you think it wouldn't be?
Btw this is why in real philosophy we cite our sources — Mark Dennis
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