:pray:

I wonder if just being a human necessitates living with unfair decisions on other's behalf. — Tom Storm

It does and hence there is the first political thing to tackle. What do you do when a practice is unfair or unjust or unempathetic or cruel? Stop it.

The question for me is what can be changed, why should it be changed, and how can it be changed. — Tom Storm

Don't have people, it causes a state of affairs where the consequence is another person is having to work and feel stress.. the how goes along with the what basically.. don't make the decision for others, like birthing them in the first place to work and feel stress.

If the situation is intractable, then the people already existing can at least realize the folly rather than just accept it as the way it is... Well no shit it's "the way it is".. and so then what? I just gave you an answer. Communal catharsis of recognition of the situation "this sucks" OR that "not everyone will like X, Y, Z work and stress that I do" and a realization not to put the burden on a future generation "We won't make the state of affairs like this for someone else".

What do you do when a practice is unfair or unjust or unempathetic or cruel? Stop it. — schopenhauer1

No. I would only consider stopping anything if there were no significant and damaging consequences. To do otherwise is naive. You can always make things worse, no?

Don't have people, it causes a state of affairs where the consequence is another person is having to work and feel stress.. the how goes along with the what basically. — schopenhauer1

Why don't you advocate death for children? They are only going to suffer through puberty, relationships, illness, work, and disappointments. Death is better, right? A rock solid guarantee of no more suffering? I also think anyone seriously interested in reducing their carbon footprint and environment impact could consider dying too.

No. I would only consider stopping anything if there were no significant and damaging consequences. To do otherwise is naive. You can always make things worse, no? — Tom Storm

So an individual choosing to not procreate is all that? Misleading and false characterization. How is simply not procreating “damaging”? Quite the contrary..not foisting the state of affairs of work and stress to another person is a good thing.

Why don't you advocate death for children? They are only going to suffer through puberty, relationships, illness, work, and disappointments. Death is better, right? A rock solid guarantee of no more suffering? I also think anyone seriously interested in reducing their carbon footprint and environment impact could consider dying too. — Tom Storm

Because, why would I be the opposite of ethical? How do you jump to the conclusion that my position is the ends justifies the means in ethical reasoning?

A world with no people is still a state of affairs where no one feels stress.. So it isn't a world of fantasy. The world in fact existed billions of years before humans and presumably billions of years after.

A world with no people is one thing, a world where no one feels stress is something else entirely. But ok. You can call your state of affairs a world where no one feels stress, and I’ll call your state of affairs a world where no one feels joy or happiness.

You can call your state of affairs a world where no one feels stress, and I’ll call your state of affairs a world where no one feels joy or happiness. — NOS4A2

So @Tom Storm indicated that “ends justifies means” reasoning. You are assuming that the collateral damage of stress and work is okay to impose for someone else to justify providing possible experiences of joy. Why is this kind of collateral damage justified, even if joy is the intention? It’s not like the person already exists to ameliorate a lesser harm for a greater harm. This would be creating the state of affairs of stress and work just because the parent wants this outcome to come about. That doesn’t seem like a good justification. An intention for good outcomes with known (and permanent/intractable) collateral damage, and for no other reason, “just because”, seems wrong. Not sure how it’s defended other than it’s currently held to be ethical by most people currently.

You misinterpret and you take everything to be about you. I was not talking about antinatalism. And I was not talking about you. I was elaborating on the principles you raised and seeing where they go. Let's stop here.

So @Tom Storm indicated that “ends justifies means” reasoning. You are assuming that the collateral damage of stress and work is okay to impose for someone else to justify providing possible experiences of joy. Why is this kind of collateral damage justified, even if joy is the intention? It’s not like the person already exists to ameliorate a lesser harm for a greater harm. This would be creating the state of affairs of stress and work just because the parent wants this outcome to come about. That doesn’t seem like a good justification. An intention for good outcomes with known (and permanent/intractable) collateral damage, and for no other reason, “just because”, seems wrong. Not sure how it’s defended other than it’s currently held to be ethical by most people currently.

I was only making the point that one must first exist in order to negate stress. The argument that one will not feel stress if he doesn’t exist is a weird one. He will not feel, do, or be anything, so you could replace “not feel stress” with any aspect of existence, like joy, happiness, gravity, breathing, eating McDonalds.

I don’t believe that giving birth is tantamount to imposing stress and work. That opposite is the case, except in the case of negligence. More often than not a person is coddled, raised, and cared for during the early stages of life, so pretending parents impose work and stress is largely untrue.

You misinterpret and you take everything to be about you. I was not talking about antinatalism. And I was not talking about you. I was elaborating on the principles you raised and seeing where they go. Let's stop here. — Tom Storm

About me? Don’t see where you get that but okie dokie.

as only making the point that one must first exist in order to negate stress. The argument that one will not feel stress if he doesn’t exist is a weird one. He will not feel, do, or be anything, so you could replace “not feel stress” with any aspect of existence, like joy, happiness, gravity, breathing, eating McDonalds. — NOS4A2

Hence my use of “state of affairs”. It is sub species aeternatatis.

I don’t believe that giving birth is tantamount to imposing stress and work. That opposite is the case, except in the case of negligence. More often than not a person is coddled, raised, and cared for during the early stages of life, so pretending parents impose work and stress is largely untrue. — NOS4A2

You are either being intellectually dishonest or you are truly not understanding me. It’s not that parents are directly giving work to their children. It’s that by giving birth to them they will have to work and feel stress. This can be prevented. The state of affairs of someone working and feeling stress is not occurring by not procreating. You do understand that, right? That is the point being debated: Is knowingly putting someone in a position where they must work and feel stress (unnecessarily) ethically wrong? That is the point being debated, not whether someone has to exist to know that this is the case, just that proposition there.

@180 Proof @darthbarracuda
I guess the question restated is, that if we know the usual manner in which we need to survive, why is a life with work something that should be bestowed for another person, on their behalf, even if there is [place positive attribute of life here]?

1.) One can say a kind of decision that affects another person negatively, and that decision was not meant to mitigate another worse outcome for that person (because no one was born to need mitigation in the first place), then that is wrong..
a) To elaborate: Work is not like a painful abscess or incredibly tortuous disease (though those are plenty good reasons right there to not bring people into the world).. Work is a daily, grinding kind of gnawing thing that needs to get done for most individuals.. So it seems more innocuous. But is it really, when it is about making the decision on behalf of another person?

2.) If no person exists, there is no experiencer of the world. Is having no experiencer of the world make any negative outcome one does on another's behalf permissible? Thus, because there would be no one to feel X, bestowing life to another (and thus having an experiencer) that will have negative event Y (torture, the grinding nature of daily work and maintenance) is permissible because ANYTHING is better than nothing?

3.) Some people think working is just a "good" in itself, and that others need to experience it.

Both 1 and 2 seem off by a longshot. 3 is a personal preference that certainly not everyone shares.. Some people think torture is something that is cleansing, doesn't mean one should make others go through torture.

For me it does not follow that refusing to have a child prevents work and suffering any more than refusing to buy a car prevents a flat tire and busted tail-light. It’s not so much a problem with the proposition, but with my own thinking: the consequences of your behavior and the beings they are applied to cannot be empirically observed and measured. The sum total of suffering in the world remains. You haven’t prevented, eased or done anything about it.

At best I can say you are preventing yourself from having children. That’s it; you have prevented nothing else. And given that this behavior is entirely self-involved, that’s as far I can stretch the ethics in your behavior, and even then it’s pretty threadbare. In other words, it isn’t ethical at all.

To expect adulation and praise for what isn’t ethical behavior, though, is unethical behavior. I suppose that’s the man reason for my pushback.

the consequences of your behavior and the beings they are applied to cannot be empirically observed and measured. The sum total of suffering in the world remains. You haven’t prevented, eased or done anything about it. — NOS4A2

The suffering is 100.. By adding another person, it becomes 120 let's say.. You have prevented that 20 addition that would have been suffered by someone So you HAVE done something. To ignore this fact would be to ignore future conditionals.. Then I would think you were making a playground of how we think of "could statements" to suit your argument.

To expect adulation and praise for what isn’t ethical behavior, though, is unethical behavior. I suppose that’s the man reason for my pushback. — NOS4A2

Who the hell said (mainly talking about myself) that I thought I wanted "adulation"? This has nothing to do with wanting a pat on the back or adulation. That's your interpretation somehow.

The suffering is 100.. By adding another person, it becomes 120 let's say.. You have prevented that 20 addition that would have been suffered by someone So you HAVE done something. To ignore this fact would be to ignore future conditionals.. Then I would think you were making a playground of how we think of "could statements" to suit your argument.

I’m not ignoring future conditionals. I’m well aware that the opposite of your state of affairs is also possible, and have previously stated that, just as you claim to prevent suffering, I could blame you for preventing joy, love, and forgiveness.

What I mean is, your behavior does not prevent or alleviate extant suffering. Therefor it does not prevent or alleviate suffering. If I stand on the street and refuse to punch 100 people, I cannot say my behavior was ethical because I prevented 100 bloody noses, when in fact I did nothing at all. Again, all you’ve prevented is yourself having a child.

What I mean is, your behavior does not prevent or alleviate extant suffering. Therefor it does not prevent or alleviate suffering. — NOS4A2

That is just false. I can prevent a future suffering by not doing X. That is not a false statement. Alleviating suffering does not need to be only present suffering.

If I stand on the street and refuse to punch 100 people, I cannot say my behavior was ethical because I prevented 100 bloody noses, when in fact I did nothing at all. Again, all you’ve prevented is yourself having a child. — NOS4A2

Even more strength to the argument for antinatalism. It is simply NOT doing a simple thing.

Certainly we can say, "It is moral NOT to throw that person off the cliff", even if it is not heroic. It is simply an ethically true statement. The ease of which the ethical application of a guideline doesn't have to do with its moral import. "You can prevent suffering by doing X" should be taken as only that, and nothing more. Impactful for a whole future life prevented from suffering, it is. Heroic you can argue it isn't.

I get it, but I keep stumbling. I cannot conceive of living as work and suffering, in any case, but in order to prevent work and suffering one must prevent someone else’s or his own work and suffering. You’re preventing no one’s work and suffering. I can’t get past that fact.

While it is immoral to throw someone from a cliff, it does not follow that other behaviors—twiddling the thumbs, walking, or just standing there—must be moral because they don’t involve throwing people from cliffs. Even if I did believe procreation was immoral, I cannot see how doing something else, whether using birth control or burping the worm, must therefor be moral.

Your integrity and devotion to your principles could be seen as moral, and I do see it that way, but that’s as far as I can extend it. It doesn’t involve any one else, let alone their suffering, and I am unable to pretend you are preventing anything beyond fertilization.

but in order to prevent work and suffering one must prevent someone else’s or his own work and suffering. You’re preventing no one’s work and suffering. I can’t get past that fact. — NOS4A2

I'm not AN anymore but I still hate this argument.

Suppose there was a parent that wanted to have a disabled child and so requested that his doctor genetically engineer the zygote so that his child comes out blind and deaf whereas otherwise he/she would be fine. Is that moral? After all, he's not harming anyone! Unless you think a single cell is a person.

Or another example, say someone had a time machine and he knew that Johnny, 13 years old, would be the first to step on a specific area in the woods 25 years from now. Is it moral to plant a mine there? After all, Johnny doesn't exist yet. And we know Johnny would be the first to set off the mine. Therefore it must be ok by this logic, it's not harming anyone!

You keep making this argument despite first making it like 1 or 2 years ago and I explained to you why it doesn't work. For an antinatalist, it's not that not having children is a good thing, it's that having children is a bad thing.

If I stand on the street and refuse to punch 100 people, I cannot say my behavior was ethical because I prevented 100 bloody noses, when in fact I did nothing at all. — NOS4A2

But you can say that punching 100 people is unethical. Which is exactly what antinatalism is about having children. Again, it's not that not having children is a good thing, (it's not that not punching people is ethical), it's that having children is a bad thing (punching people is unethical). That's antinatalism (anti-punching-people-in-the-street-ism). Hope that makes the analogy clear.

I made this argument:

“In order to prevent work and suffering one must prevent someone else’s or his own work and suffering. [The anti-natalist] is preventing no one’s work and suffering.”

I don’t remember if I said “he isn’t harming anyone” years ago, but the argument above is not analogous to the ones you listed. Maybe we’re getting our discussion mixed up. Perhaps you can help and explain why the one above does not work.

I am well aware of the “having children is a bad thing” argument, but I am more interested in the OP’s argument that he can prevent work and suffering by doing something other than procreating.

“In order to prevent work and suffering one must prevent someone else’s or his own work and suffering. [The anti-natalist] is preventing no one’s work and suffering.” — NOS4A2

Fair enough. I took a step further and thought you said this to argue “And so having children is justified”.

Not an AN anymore but that line doesn’t work for the examples I cited above.

just wanted to bring this up, but if you accept that things can be good or bad regardless of whether or not someone is around for them how come you’ve stated in previous debates you don’t accept Benatar’s asymmetry? You bring up the example of someone planting a mine set to explode in 300 years. Wouldn’t it be a morally good thing to disable the mine even though nobody who would be harmed by it is alive?

Our culture of work has been influenced by Protestantism. Working hard (is supposed to) build character. It's just another partially-obscured belief that everyone holds regardless of whether or not it's actually true. The belief is pernicious though as it tends to makes someone who works and suffers expect that everyone else work and suffer alongside them. Just like how older generations get mad at younger generations for demanding affordable college education ... "if I don't get a slice of the pie, nobody gets a slice of pie!!"

Once you're born, the logic of ethics changes. You are now someone who requires help. Giving someone the opportunity to work so they can take better care of themselves is a beneficent thing to do, as long as you're not taking advantage of them (which is usually the case).

I cannot conceive of living as work and suffering — NOS4A2

Living almost always involves work (at least maintenance) and certainly suffering.

I am well aware of the “having children is a bad thing” argument, but I am more interested in the OP’s argument that he can prevent work and suffering by doing something other than procreating. — NOS4A2

I am not sure what you are asking. You can prevent work and suffering by not procreating. Once born, it is an inevitable (what I call) evil or form of suffering. Certainly, an implication is you shouldn't assume for another that they should go through this and all is good because you don't mind it (at the time of the decision at least).

The belief is pernicious though as it tends to makes someone who works and suffers expect that everyone else work and suffer alongside them. Just like how older generations get mad at younger generations for demanding affordable college education ... "if I don't get a slice of the pie, nobody gets a slice of pie!!"

Once you're born, the logic of ethics changes. You are now someone who requires help. Giving someone the opportunity to work so they can take better care of themselves is a beneficent thing to do, as long as you're not taking advantage of them (which is usually the case). — darthbarracuda

Yes, I agree with all of this. Notice you said, "Once you're born, the logic of ethics changes." So why create this situation in the first place for someone who needs to work to be in a better position? I'm being rhetorical here, because your answer seems to be something akin to the Protestant idea of purification through work or at least, the "elect" "knowing" that they were "elected" by the "consequences" of the "fruits" of their labor has permeated cultural practice (even presumably in non-Protestant countries that were influenced by colonial practices). Protestant work theology was always a bit foreign to me, but I'm willing to learn more about its wrongness :). Perhaps people are simply uncreative and work gives them something to do.. like a slave who doesn't know what to do with freedom or something. Zapffe's psychological mechanisms comes rearing again (sublimation, isolation, distraction, and anchoring). We need something to "limit" our consciousness, otherwise Schopenhauer's dreaded "boredom" with existence comes seeping in.

Living almost always involves work (at least maintenance) and certainly suffering.

But it involves a great deal more. It seems to me the rest should be included among what it is you are preventing.

I am not sure what you are asking. You can prevent work and suffering by not procreating. Once born, it is an inevitable (what I call) evil or form of suffering. Certainly, an implication is you shouldn't assume for another that they should go through this and all is good because you don't mind it (at the time of the decision at least).

Again, when I look at what act or object or process it is you are preventing, I can only ever see that you’re preventing fertilization, and nothing besides. I have nothing beyond your word to turn to that shows me, yes, he really is preventing suffering.

It’s true, one shouldn’t assume for another that they should live, but ought the corollary hold, one shouldn’t assume the opposite? We cannot get consent from the unborn in any case, so the idea of consent seems ridiculous, but might you wonder if in fact your future lives would prefer to be born?

But it involves a great deal more. It seems to me the rest should be included among what it is you are preventing. — NOS4A2

I think that is my point. As long as suffering is in the package, it doesn't matter what the other part of the package is. It is already not suited to decide for someone else.

It’s true, one shouldn’t assume for another that they should live, but ought the corollary hold, one shouldn’t assume the opposite? We cannot get consent from the unborn in any case, so the idea of consent seems ridiculous, but might you wonder if in fact your future lives would prefer to be born? — NOS4A2

No actual harm is done to a person in the scenario: future lives prefer to be born but were not.
Actual harm is done with the opposite scenario.

The asymmetry is that:

Having children: Chance of harm (bad), chance of pleasure (good)

Not having children: No harm (good), No pleasure (not bad)

I don’t see how that follows from anything I said. I think it’s stupid to say that the absence of harm is good in itself.

Wouldn’t it be a morally good thing to disable the mine even though nobody who would be harmed by it is alive? — Albero

To disarm it? Sure. But that’s not the analogy. The analogy would be to put it down vs to not put it down. It’s not good to simply not plant a mine. Claiming it is would be like saying: “Look at how much of a paragon of virtue I am, for I haven’t murdered anyone!”

Simply not harming people is not good in itself.

I would argue that work activates people. The early humans got mentally and physically active because of doing what was needed in nature.

I would argue that work activates people. The early humans got mentally and physically active because of doing what was needed in nature. — denverteachers

Why should this be decided for on someone else's behalf, especially if no one had to work in the first place (because they weren't born)? Why cause another person to deal with something in the first place? You can't say because it solves another problem for that person if they don't exit yet.

Is giving someone the "opportunity" to succeed through stressful trial-by-fires and work a good thing? Why?

Is it an opportunity or is it imposing one's values at the behest of negative stress on another person? Certainly, it would be hard for people to function otherwise. They must put in some effort to do a task that institutions approve through profit/salary/subsidy. But why is the presumption, "And this is good" a true one? — schopenhauer1

Giving someone an opportunity is not the same as compelling them to take up the opportunity.

In some cases work is good for the worker. This doesn't make it right to compel adult human beings to do some such work.

I suppose it's acceptable for guardians to compel minors to do some sorts of work, like schoolwork, exercise, chores, volunteer work. It's arguably irresponsible for guardians to raise children without getting them to perform some such work on a regular basis. This supposition rests on another, that some such work is required for the healthy development of the child.

I'm also sympathetic to the view that work is required for the flourishing of the adult human being. Not work for pay, necessarily, which you seem to have especially in mind. But work that exercises the powers of the human person, and that offers them perhaps a mode of participation in a community united by its interest in work of the relevant kind.


Chomsky offers a version of this view by way of Humboldt and Marx in his 1970 lecture "Government in the Future" (audio available here):

For Humboldt then man “is born to inquire and create, and when a man or a child chooses to inquire or create out of his own free choice then he becomes in his own terms an artist rather than a tool of production or a well trained parrot.” This is the essence of his concept of human nature. And I think that it is very revealing and interesting to compare it with Marx, with the early Marx manuscripts, and in particular his account of, quote “the alienation of labor when work is external to the worker, not part of his nature, so that he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself and is physically exhausted and mentally debased. This alienated labor that casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines, thus depriving man of his species character, of free conscious activity and productive life.”

Recall also Marx’s well known and often quoted reference to a higher form of society in which labor has become not only a means of life but also the highest want in life. And recall also his repeated criticism of the specialized labor which, I quote again, “mutilates the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrades him to become a mere appurtenance of the machine, makes his work such a torment that its essential meaning is destroyed, estranges him from the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in very proportion to the extent to which science is incorporated into it as an independent power.”

Robert Tucker, for one, has rightly emphasized that Marx sees the revolutionary more as a frustrated producer than as a dissatisfied consumer. And this far more radical critique of capitalist relations of production flows directly, often in the same words, from the libertarian thought of the enlightenment. For this reason, I think, one must say that classical liberal ideas in their essence, though not in the way they developed, are profoundly anti-capitalist. The essence of these ideas must be destroyed for them to serve as an ideology of modern industrial capitalism. — Noam Chomsky, Government in the Future

Recall also Marx’s well known and often quoted reference to a higher form of society in which labor has become not only a means of life but also the highest want in life. — Noam Chomsky, Government in the Future

So much of this OP was about how procreation is unnecessarily creating people that will be forced to work. The unnecessary part here is that, prior to birth no "one" needs to do anything, but after being born, almost everyone has to be a part of the economic system in some way (usually as a laborer/worker). Why create more little laborers? Well your quote from Chomsky (and ultimately Marx) is a perfect example of how I think procreation becomes its own self-creating political agenda. Work becomes this paternalistic political goal that "must" be foisted on the next generation. The parent has an assumption that work is edifying and someone MUST be born to be edified by this. It is just intrinsically "self-fulfilling" according to this conception. However, I am turning this notion on its head. Perhaps it is paternalistic and wrong to foist upon another person the need to labor, lest that new being born die. It is unnecessary and wrong to cause others to exist to then have to labor (run through an obstacle course of the economic system). Thus unnecessarily creating obstacles for others (like in the definite case of procreation) is wrong.