that any possible persons, who will suffer more than is outweighed by the good they will experience, outnumber people who will suffer less than is outweighed by the good they will experience. — Benkei
Then for the anti-natalist to continue to have a point it must be the case that there are currently more unhappy persons than happy persons — Benkei
And if they would be born into a situation of abject poverty, where the good does not outweigh their suffering or because of a biological defect that cannot be treated, we understand that "poverty" or that "defect" would cause unacceptable suffering and we should not have a child under those circumstances. — Benkei
If living causes suffering we should be killing everything on the planet and murder would be a just act. — Benkei
If living entails suffering (e.g. philosophical pessimism) then living doesn't cause suffering — Benkei
Saying such a world is better than this one is meaningless. — Benkei
Antinatalits aren't striving for a better world. They just don't want to risk hurting people. Which is why some adopt. — khaled
It tends to make sweeping emotional appeals about suffering — Jack Cummins
and choosing adoption in preference to procreation. — Jack Cummins
Your very existence risks hurting people, yet you're taking that risk all the time — leo
An antinatalist risks hurting a child he adopts. — leo
Because I am part of this calculation too. The "expected value" of the harm I would cause unto others is much lower than the "expected value" of the harm I would cause myself by killing myself. So I continue to exist. You have to consider alternatives. — khaled
But you can't calculate that expected value. — leo
it is possible that you do something apparently innocent, which eventually ends up causing enormous harm in the world. — leo
It's possible that the act of killing yourself would cause less harm. But you can't put a probability on that either. — leo
So in the face of the unknown what do you do? You do your best. And that's how natalists see it too. They are faced with the unknown. But they do their best. — leo
the whole argument that life results in suffering and that this means that it would be better to have not been born at all is a bad argument — Jack Cummins
that any possible persons, who will suffer more than is outweighed by the good they will experience, outnumber people who will suffer less than is outweighed by the good they will experience. Or in short form "unhappy persons outnumber happy persons". — Benkei
If living entails suffering (e.g. philosophical pessimism) then living doesn't cause suffering. Much in the same way that me killing a person doesn't cause his death, killing entails death. Or if I enter a room at noon, I don't cause someone to enter the room at noon. And water, by its mere existence, doesn't cause itself to be wet.
So if the position is, suffering is intrinsic to life then it must necessarily fail as an argument because living then does not cause suffering and the ethical question becomes moot.
If the argument is that it is not intrinsic to life , then it becomes necessary to examine the causal chain. And then you run into problems because living is never a sufficient condition for suffering, merely a necessary condition.
The fact that all living things suffer at some point in time, is not a valid argument to conclude that living is a sufficient condition for suffering so this does not resolve the causal chain. A disease causes suffering, being run over by a car causes suffering, a break up causes suffering etc. etc. Suffering is unique and particular and for an important part based on how a person experiences it and remembers it. — Benkei
However, now that we know that these circumstances are not intrinsic to life, it follows that we have some measure of control over them. We imagine that poorer people are unhappier, so we alleviate poverty. We imagine disease causes suffering, we treat diseases. Even if unhappy persons currently outnumber happy persons, it appears to me that we can control for circumstances to maximise happy persons over unhappy persons. It is, after all, not a lottery when we choose to have a child. See also Nordic exceptionalism with respect to happiness. — Benkei
So the solution is not to retreat from society but to engage it by taking care of our fellow man. Give to charity, get a job helping others, etc. In short, the only moral act here is to support the creation of societies that brings forth happy persons as opposed to unhappy ones. — Benkei
Finally, two unexamined points that occured to me.
If living causes suffering we should be killing everything on the planet and murder would be a just act.
If the anti-natalist plan is succesful, there would be no moral actors around to judge the world to be a better place, leading to another metaphysical nonsense comparison between what we have now and nothing - or at least a world where there are no moral actors to experience anything and have an opinion on the matter. Saying such a world is better than this one is meaningless. — Benkei
But for natalists it is not unknown. They know for a fact that having a child will risk harming them. And they also know for a fact that that decision need not be made. — khaled
1- Take an unjustified risk with someone else's life
2- Don't. — khaled
Anti-natalism, on the other hand, doesn't have any such basis. There is nothing here to give the supposed imperative any weight. There are no subjects to benefit, and the actual addressee doesn't even feature in the consideration. It could only possibly be grounded in some divine principle, and that is in effect how the argument treats it. Which is also the reason why the anti-natalist position can imagine a world without moral subjects to nevertheless be a moral good. — Echarmion
1) Let's say it is almost 100% certain a baby that would be born would get tortured. Your reasoning would conclude, "Well, the baby would have to be born in order for there to be a person in the world to be tortured, so considerations of the baby being born don't matter until they are born". Clearly, that is faulty reasoning to say that the baby needs to be born so that torture exists so that we can say torture should not exist.
2) No suffering in the world means no people who suffer, nor people deprived of happiness. The instant a person is put into the world, the antinatalist position becomes valid. You do not need people to exist in order to recognize that the "good" of not existing is taking place. All you need is the fact that if someone does exist, the position becomes valid at that point. We can have millions of years of nothingness, and then this position would be sort of "activated". Once something exists where suffering would take place, then it becomes valid. — schopenhauer1
2) No suffering in the world means no people who suffer, nor people deprived of happiness. The instant a person is put into the world, the antinatalist position becomes valid. You do not need people to exist in order to recognize that the "good" of not existing is taking place. All you need is the fact that if someone does exist, the position becomes valid at that point. We can have millions of years of nothingness, and then this position would be sort of "activated". Once something exists where suffering would take place, then it becomes valid. — schopenhauer1
This only makes sense if you presume there exists some divine logos which is the source of morality and also capable of recognising possible states of "good" and "evil".
Otherwise, the phrase "You do not need people to exist in order to recognize that the "good" of not existing is taking place" just doesn't make any sense. — Echarmion
But it does. Only in situations where someone is capable of suffering, does the position become valid. — schopenhauer1
But for natalists it is not unknown. They know for a fact that having a child will risk harming them. And they also know for a fact that that decision need not be made. It is not like the case where there are two alternatives both of which cannot be precisely calculated which you just cited, no. Here there are two cases:
1- Take an unjustified risk with someone else's life (risk of harm)
2- Don't. (no risk of harm) — khaled
In your example, if the person decides not to have a child, this may have unintended consequences more harmful to existing people and to future children than if the person had decided to have the child. — leo
If living entails suffering (e.g. philosophical pessimism) then living doesn't cause suffering. Much in the same way that me killing a person doesn't cause his death, killing entails death. Or if I enter a room at noon, I don't cause someone to enter the room at noon. And water, by its mere existence, doesn't cause itself to be wet. — Benkei
That any possible persons, who will suffer more than is outweighed by the good they will experience, outnumber people who will suffer less than is outweighed by the good they will experience. Or in short form "unhappy persons outnumber happy persons". — Benkei
So the solution is not to retreat from society but to engage it by taking care of our fellow man. Give to charity, get a job helping others, etc. In short, the only moral act here is to support the creation of societies that brings forth happy persons as opposed to unhappy ones. — Benkei
And I would argue that even if you somehow knew that your next child would do something great (which is impossible) it is the right decision not to have them. That it would be right to have them would imply that the suffering of the child doesn’t matter, as long as he alleviates the suffering of others which I find is a disgusting idea. If I knew my next child would cure cancer but also that he’d suffer severely during his life I wouldn’t have them. In my view: You do not have a duty to help people, but you do have a duty not to harm them. — khaled
It tends to make sweeping emotional appeals about suffering, leading to the belief that it would be better to not having been born at all, with an overriding conclusion that it is wrong morally to bring children into the world. — Jack Cummins
Rather, one that is closer to my stance is that it is wrong to force unnecessary impositions on people. Recently, I have been using the term "dealing with" situations (I'll just call DWS for short since I'll probably bring it up a lot). To force someone absolutely into DWS, is wrong to do. Absolutely here is defined as not needing to experience a DWS instrumentally to get a more desired state, but simply put people in DWS unnecessarily and by force. — schopenhauer1
The easiest way is to simply say that until all causal chains of suffering are worked out, it is not worth risking that suffering onto someone else. If we knew the world was a utopia without suffering, then we are in the clear. Otherwise, as you point out, we don't know every avenue of the causal chain, so precisely the reason to not impose the causes onto someone else. One need not know which cause to know that all causes are not resolved. Even if we are to weight some causes as "not as bad as others", there are some really bad causes out there that are indeed bad. — schopenhauer1
However, that's not even a main argument. My main argument against this reasoning is in regards to the idea that suffering is unique. While I agree, each instance of a particular brand of suffering is suffered individually by humans, certainly there are categories that can be distilled down that are well known sources of suffering. Further, I do agree with philosopher's like Schopenhauer that life isn't just instances of contingent harms (that is to say situational, probabilistic, contextual, etc.) but rather there are necessary forms of suffering as well. Necessary here meaning, sort of "baked into life". These baked in forms of sufferings are overlooked for the more immediate (I'd characterize as Western) ideas of suffering (physical torture, hunger, disasters, disease, illness, emotional anguish, etc.). However, I do take seriously that we are imposed upon to "deal with" survival, finding comfort, and existence itself (overcoming one's own boredom). These are forms of suffering in the form of deprivation. There is always a lack of something to be overcome. Now add the usual (Western) forms of contingent harm that we must deal with and overcome and the bigger picture of an existence of both necessary and contingent harms comes into focus. All of these are DWS imposed upon the person born. — schopenhauer1
As far as the first part, one of the main reasons antinatalists are against birth is the idea that there is no possible consent, so this is an important part of most antinatalist claims. Certainly if consent is a factor for birth, it is also a factor for death. — schopenhauer1
Now, as far as your idea bout no moral actors, this I find not a good argument. There's two ways to address this.. — schopenhauer1
1) Let's say it is almost 100% certain a baby that would be born would get tortured. Your reasoning would conclude, "Well, the baby would have to be born in order for there to be a person in the world to be tortured, so considerations of the baby being born don't matter until they are born". Clearly, that is faulty reasoning to say that the baby needs to be born so that torture exists so that we can say torture should not exist. — schopenhauer1
2) No suffering in the world means no people who suffer, nor people deprived of happiness. The instant a person is put into the world, the antinatalist position becomes valid. You do not need people to exist in order to recognize that the "good" of not existing is taking place. All you need is the fact that if someone does exist, the position becomes valid at that point. We can have millions of years of nothingness, and then this position would be sort of "activated". Once something exists where suffering would take place, then it becomes valid. — schopenhauer1
I don't think the argument that living logically entails suffering is one anyone reasonably makes. — Hanover
This doesn't do justice to distinguishing between happiness and pleasure and so we are left with suffering being the counter to happiness. This becomes more clear when you provide examples of how we ought to find the sources of suffering so that we can eliminate them so that we can increase happiness. If I suffer from hunger, I'm sure I will be happier if I am fed, but I don't know you've made any real progress toward making me happy in the holistic sense typically needed to truly declare me happy just because you tended to my needs.
What this means is that happiness is not alleviation of suffering and that suffering is not incompatible with happiness. In fact, considerable wisdom, growth, perspective, and gratitude arise from suffering, all of which are traits of someone who is happy. — Hanover
I see this as a stab at creating a formula for societal harmony, but I don't see it as eliminating suffering entirely. I also see this as only half the solution for creating societal harmony. The half you provide is that those who have more should be generous and giving. The other half of this would therefore be that those who have less should be humble and gracious. This societal harmony is achieved I would think only upon recognition that everyone is both of these halves. — Hanover
My point being that I don't see suffering as demonic, devoid of all light, joyless, and evil. I see suffering as a necessary component needed to fully achieving one's full potential. This obviously means that I'm placing an intrinsic goodness to life itself and its promotion and development. I'm not entirely sure you can avoid pessimism about life if you're not able to posit the intrinsic value of life. — Hanover
You do not have a duty to help people, but you do have a duty not to harm them. — khaled
We don't need to know the avenue of all causal chains because it's obvious that living is not a sufficient condition. Just being alive doesn't cause suffering. If your point is it does, then suffering is intrinsic to life
and therefore an ethical moot point because living doesn't cause suffering if it's intrinsic. We should be dealing with the proximate and sufficient conditions for suffering to resolve it. — Benkei
You'll just get stuck on the causality issue any way so it doesn't matter how you formulate it. The main point of the metaphysical part is that we need to be sure we are comparing something with something and not nothing with something, to avoid the contradiction that something exists that doesn't exist, etc.
There's also some issues with the loaded language of "force" and "impositions" which are assumptions but since it doesn't matter for the end result I'll leave that as it is. — Benkei
I find philosophical pessimism totally irrelevant to this discussion as pointed out before. If suffering is intrinsic to life than living doesn't cause suffering. It reveals a misunderstanding of what causality is. — Benkei
I don't ask for consent of animals to breed them, to kill them or to eat them. Ethically totally fine. Yet the idea of killing every animal on the face of the earth seems to be an issue. — Benkei
Quite obvious this is not what I said nor does it follow from what I said. — Benkei
But your "no suffering the world means no people who suffer" actually means "nothing who suffer". You're just camouflaging bad metaphysics and bad language. Of course we need moral actors to exist. Without moral actors to experience "good" there is no good or bad. If we are in a position where we cannot ascribe propositions such as "people are suffering" or "people are not suffering" then the absence of suffering is not a moral good because it's not enjoyed by anyone. — Benkei
1. Although it is not logically required that every life have suffering, every life ever lived has had suffering.
2. Suffering is required for happiness.
3. Life is intrinsically good and worth living even if one experiences no happiness or only suffering because life is the end, not the means for anything higher. — Hanover
I should safe them. I doubt anyone would deny this moral duty. — Benkei
Similarly, I might have to harm someone to protect either them or others from something worse. Harming a criminal in the act is perfectly fine. Jabbing a vaccine needle in a child is morally right. — Benkei
I'd say, it depends. Have you played The Last of Us? — Benkei
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