Yes I have read the OP.
I think you are suggesting that the evidence of human beings clinging so dearly to life, even when continuing it means continuous suffering and misery, indicates that death must hold even more suffering. You conclude that any existence after death must then be what you conceive as hell like.
I don't know if the hell you conceive is similar to that described by traditional theists or you are just using the term to indicate a higher level of suffering and personal misery than what an individual may suffer during their lifetime? Am I correct or way of the mark?

I am asking you to use your power of reason to give me your view of what you perceive was going on during the time before the Universe contained any life at all. A time that antinatalism considers superior when compared to the period since suffering began. Do you think the hell you posit, existed then or did it have a moment of creation?

I'm not alone in exposing the flaws in our universe — Agent Smith

A fact is a fact! If people had never complained about the awful heat/cold, no one would've ever thought of inventing the AC/heater! — Agent Smith

Again, delusions of grandeur. Complaining never solved any problem. It takes work to do that.

You have not read it at all carefully. I made no claims about human desires. I did not say - and would not, for it is stupid - that we desire not to die and therefore a hell exists. How on earth would that make sense?

I said it is clear to our reason - which is a faculty - that we have reason to avoid death.

It is clear to anyone who stands where I am stood that there is a tree 10 yards in front of this location. Have I just said 'everyone wants there to be a tree 10 yards in front if this location'? No,obviously not. I said that, visually, people get the impression of a tree, and that's evidence there is actually a tree there. That's quite different to the unbelievably idiotic view that we desire there to be a tree there and this somehow makes the case that there is.

Now, again, slowly. Our reason - which is a faculty - gives us the impression (rational, not visual) that we have reason not to die under most circs. 'Reason not to' - that doesn't mean 'desire not to'. It means 'reason not to'. That impression is evidence that we really do have reason not to die in mist circs, unjust as the visual impression of a tree is evidence for a tree.

And then I argued that the best explanation of why we have that reason not to die is that death is a portal to hell.

Anyway, I do not know why you are asking me about the origins of the sensible world. By hypothesis, death ends our stay here in the sensible world. So why are you asking me about its origins? Which premise in my case is it relevant to?

Since it's possible to come into a restaurant, enjoy a meal and leave without facing anything disgusting, it should also be possible to come into life, enjoy what it has to offer and leave without being induced any major harm.

In this analogy, a shit soup is a justifiable condition to leave the restaurant early, but the fact of leaving isn't necessarily equal to the experience of being served a shit soup. Similarly, unbearable suffering is a justifiable reason to die, but the death itself isn't necessarily equal to unbearable suffering.

Well I read it as carefully as I was able to, twice in fact.
I then read some of the exchanges you have had so far with others. This is a long thread so I understand that you might be becoming quite exasperated.
I appreciate your impatience, struggling to understand that which you find so obvious can be frustrating but ok, so your proposal has nothing to do with human desires.
So, reason as a faculty or 'an inherent mental power' informs us that we have reason to avoid death.

So, the actual tree is standing there regardless of my will or anyone else's will for there to be a tree in the position you reference. Ok, so far so good.
So to me, you wish to remove any emotional content within rational thinking or you are defining the term rational thinking as being devoid of human desire.
You draw on the seeing is evidence for believing, in the case of where this tree is.

I only repeat these things back to you to attempt to confirm that I understand your proposal and If I fall short then I hope you will correct me.

And then I argued that the best explanation of why we have that reason not to die is that death is a portal to hell. — Bartricks

Ok, let's say you are correct. Is that the end of the debate for you?
Is it unreasonable or irrational for me to ask for more of your conceptions about that which you call hell?
If you think it is then I will stop right there.

So to me, you wish to remove any emotional content within rational thinking or you are defining the term rational thinking as being devoid of human desire. — universeness

No, the point rather is that neither impressions of reasons to do things, or reasons to do things themselves, are desires of ours. And thus to get the impression that there is a reason to do something is not equivalent to getting the impression that one desires to do it (anymore than getting the impression of a tree is equivalent to getting the impression that one desires there to be a tree). And reasons themselves are not desires of ours.

Note as well that an impression of a tree is 'evidence' that there is actually a tree there by dint of the fact it generates a 'reason to believe' that there is a tree there corresponding to the impression.

So, all appeals to evidence are really appeals to reasons to believe things. And among the reasons to believe things that there are - and that our faculty of reason tells us about - are reasons to avoid death at almost all costs.

Our reason is our guide to reality. It is precisely because our reason tells us to believe that there is an external world resembling our sensible impressions that we have 'evidence' for an external world.
And our reason tells us - tells virtually all of us - that we have reason to avoid death under all but the most extreme circumstances.

Why might that be? What would it be 'reasonable' to believe about death, given what our reason is telling us about it? That it is pleasant? That it benefits us to die? That it is a portal to a better place? Those would be utterly unreasonable - as unreasonable as thinking that as the waiter has been imploring you not to order shit soup and recommends ordering almost anything else other than shit soup bar broken razorblade soup, that shit soup is delicious and something to look forward to and to seek out and not to avoid at all.

Ok, let's say you are correct. Is that the end of the debate for you? — universeness

It would be the end of the debate for all reasonable people - for if I am right about what our reason is saying our predicament is, then it is obvious that it is wrong voluntarily to make it anyone else's predicament. For if I am right, then our predicament is terrible - orders of magnitude worse than most people assume it to be. Most people assume either that death is the end, or that it is a portal to heaven. Neither of those views is remotely sensible - neither of those views is implied by reason and I defy anyone to show me otherwise. Now, if we're all going to hell in a handbasket - and if that is the inevitable fate of anyone here - then voluntarily to bring an innocent person into our predicament to share it with us would be a wicked thing to do. So it would indeed 'end the debate' in that it would make procreation about as obviously immoral as, say, rape.

Since it's possible to come into a restaurant, enjoy a meal and leave without facing anything disgusting, it should also be possible to come into life, enjoy what it has to offer and leave without being induced any major harm. — pfirefry

I don't see how that follows - the situation you describe is not remotely analogous to our situation.

First, we do not voluntarily enter the restaurant. We do not choose to be here, but were made to come here - or, summoned into existence here - by the acts of others.

So, first, we're at the restaurant whether we want to be or not.

Second, we don't get to choose the courses, or at least we can make a choice, but whether we get it is not wholly determined by that choice, but all manner of other factors (though our choice often influences what we get). So, you can ask for tomato soup, and you may get it, but you may get razorblade soup - it depends as much on what's going on in the kitchen as it does on your choices. (Although if you order shit soup, that does fairly reliably arrive).

So, when you force someone - and it is force - to join you in the restaurant that you yourself have been forced into, you don't know what they're going to be served.

Third, everyone gets shit soup at the end. Everyone. Shit soup is death, remember? You don't know what anyone you force to join you here is going to be served in the meantime, but you do know this - their meal will end with a giant serving of shit soup and they have to eat it all. Everyone in the restaurant has to eat shit soup in the end (and then you leave). All you can do is delay it. But you will - absolutely will - eat shit soup if you're in the restaurant. And you can leave the restaurant early, but you have to order the shit soup and eat it before you can do so.

And the waiter has told you - and tells everyone else in the restaurant as well - not to order shit soup, that shit soup is worse than virtually any other dish on the menu, bar razorblade soup.

That's our situation. It's not remotely like the scenario you describe.

Now, if that's our situation, is it not wrong to force someone to join you in the restaurant? Yes, obviously it is wrong. It is bad enough that you have been forced into this restaurant. But you should make the most of it - for there is nothing else you can do - and try and order the best dishes and hope that you will actually be served them and try and forget that, whatever you get served and no matter how delicious it is, you are going eventually to have to eat a huge vat of shit soup. That's what you should do. What you should not do is press the button on the table that brings another diner to your table without their prior consent.

It would be the end of the debate for all reasonable people — Bartricks

I read your response to me 3 times and I think I understood it less from the 3rd reading than I did the first. All I can do is admit that I cannot follow your logic.
I can only bow out of the thread.
I hope others can offer you more.
Thanks for the exchange.

Now you're repeating yourself without addressing my argument.

So, first, we're at the restaurant whether we want to be or not. — Bartricks

Relevance? Every time someone visits a restaurant for the first time they don't know whether they want to be there or not. That doesn't stop them from entering. Even if they are forced in the restaurant, they can still enjoy their meal.

Second, we don't get to choose the courses — Bartricks

Relevance? In restaurants we don't get to choose the menu and we don't get to cook. It doesn't stop us from going to restaurants and recommending them to our friends. Or do antinatalists argue that we should never go to restaurants?

Third, everyone gets shit soup at the end. Everyone. Shit soup is death, remember? — Bartricks

No, your initial argument was that departing from the restaurant was a better alternative to eating a ship soup, therefore you concluded that departure is roughly equal to a shit soup. But then I demonstrated that departure is not equal to being served a shit soup, and you agreed. So it was refuted that everyone gets shit soup at the end.

Feel free not to respond to this commend if you have nothing to add. I'm not planning to re-iterate my argument.

Many of us certainly are grateful to be there.

We cannot ask to be at the restaurant either. Thankfully, our friends were kind enough to bring us there :p

When most people enjoy the majority of the course, I don't think that a precise choice is necessary.

That terrible soup at the end might not always be extremely bad. It could be mediocre, but we would find it terrible because many of the other dishes we had were so good. Furthermore, not everybody believes that a bad soup (whose degree of badness can differ for different individuals) at the end of hundreds of absolutely delectable meals (and a few bad ones) makes the alternative of never having a meal preferable. Lastly, it might be reasonable to say that the final soup tastes bad and could probably cause an upset stomach. What wouldn't be reasonable (I think) would be to think that it would set one's tongue on fire for eternity. Anyway, this has been discussed for long, so I shall stop here. Hopefully, more people can judge the menu in its entirety instead of emphasising a single dish. Have a wonderful day!

Relevance? Every time someone visits a restaurant for the first time they don't know whether they want to be there or not. That doesn't stop them from entering. Even if they are forced in the restaurant, they can still enjoy their meal. — pfirefry

Back at you: relevance? I don't understand what point you are making. I have described a situation analogous to the one we are in. All you have done is describe one that is nothing like it at all. What moral can we possibly extract from your version of the example? I don't see how you're engaging with the point my example is making at all.

So, kindly explain to me what point you were trying to make with your restaurant example and what, exactly, you think it challenges in the argument that I have made.

Is your point that there are some nice things on the menu??? Is that it? Er, I know. Nothing I have argued implies otherwise.

Engage with the example. I did not deny that there are nice things on the menu. I pointed out that shit soup is on it and furthermore you have to have shit soup eventually, and the waiter - which in case you didn't realize it, is modelling what reason tells us about death - tells us that shit soup is worse than everything else on the menu, including things you really don't want to eat, except broken razorblade soup.

So, read the example again and try and understand what it is doing - for you clearly haven't a clue at the moment.

Good luck with those horses!

Ah, I see, so you have precisely no point whatsoever to make with your restaurant example, you were just talking about restaurants. Excellent. Just excellent. Why the hell did I just waste some peep juice reading it then!? Bartricks is illustrating his point with a restaurant example. I know! I'll say some things about restaurants. Restaurants sometimes have nice things on the menu. My favourite restaurant is the canteen at my day centre. It serves ice cream on thursdays. I like ice cream. If we go to the canteen and order ice cream and like it, was that worthwhile? Do tell me Bartricks, for it is very relevant to the argument you have made. Oh, you have run off into a field to scream at some horses and pull large clumps of your own hair out. Oh well, each to their own.

:lol:

I did have a point, but I found it offensive that instead of addressing it you said: "Your point is irrelevant because it goes against my point, and my point is correct. Let's talk about my point and how I'm right." If these are the rules of the OP, then I'm not interested in participating.

Your example had nothing to do with anything I was arguing, at least so far as I could see.

What point were you trying to make with it?

Death is only imagined as worse because it's associated with the visage of ugly, stiff, rotting corpses.

It's the spark of life, the ephemeral beauty of it, that defies reason. That defies our fate to decompose into what can only be described as Hellish.

The question is, why isn't life Hellish at all then? And by that I mean reasonable life. It's the opposite. Whatever we are, and whatever this spark of life is, is so beautiful that we literally celebrate it non-stop. Even though it's fated to decay when the pulse stops.

The buck doesn't stop there, though. What is more natural than rigor mortis is love. Call it supernatural, if you will.

I was trying to see if I could challenge the following logic:

Death is an immense harm to everyone. <...> How big? Well, you gage that by looking at how much harm you need to be suffering or prospectively suffering before it becomes rational to seek death. And the answer is: a lot of harm. — Bartricks

Is it reasonable to measure the harm of death by the amount of suffering before it becomes rational to seek death? My point was that it isn't. When does it become rational to leave the restaurant? When we've been served shit, or when the course is over. When does it become rational to die? When we're facing a lot of harm and suffering, or when our bodies run out of life juice. It's possible to come to a restaurant, enjoy your meal and leave happily. So it should equally be possible to come into existence, enjoy your life, and die peacefully. As a result, it is not evident that death is an immense harm.

Or perhaps life has so much value that it takes a significant amount of suffering before one decides that they no longer want to live.

Even if there is pain involved in death, I don't think we have sufficient reason to believe that the harm outweighs all the good one can also experience throughout their life. It could, but not necessarily.
Interesting stuff.

:up:

That's the deprivation account again. And the problem with it is that death is clearly a harm even when our lives have ceased to be worthwhile.

So, again, if you are in agony, then death may be rational. But it is not good, is it? It is the lesser of two evils. If your only options are razor blade soup or shit soup, then shit soup is better. But it's still shit soup.

The disvalue of death is not a function of the value of the life it terminates.

If you are in the restaurant and not really enjoying it as every dish you've been served is grey mush, is it a good idea to order the shit soup and leave (remembering that you can't leave without eating the vat of shit soup)? Well, what does the waiter say? The waiter says no - better to stay and continue eating grey mush for as long as possible. If you get served razorblade soup- yes, now it is sensible to order the shit soup and leave, not otherwise.

These possibilities seem demonstrably false.

For example, imagine you know - thanks to a pocket oracle or something - that any child you have will have a life of moderate misery. No great highs or lows, just hum drum misery and boredom. Ought you refrain from procreating if other things are equal? (So don't muddy the water by imagining you really want to have a child, or that your own welfare depends crucially on you having a child, for you need someone to go down the mine for you when you are old - exclude all those sort of considerations).

Seems clear you should refrain So, that life isn't worth starting. Maybe there's some kind of intrinsic value to being alive, but not enough to make starting that life and subjecting someone to a lifetime of moderate misery a moral thing to do.

There are plenty of such lives being lived. Yet those living them do not have reason to kill themselves. That can't plausibly be to do with the intrinsic value of life, for otherwise it would be equally clear that these are lives worth starting. Yet it seems they are not worth starting, however once started they their lives have reason to stay.

Another example: the death penalty. There's a debate over whether it is justified, but there's no question it is a penalty (the debate is over whether this is a penalty it is moral to serve to someone). Now, if it was the intrinsic value of life that explains why we have reason not to destroy it, as opposed to it being predominantly to do with the harm it visits on the person who dies, then the death penalty wouldn't be a penalty. I mean, a Rembrandt painting has some intrinsic value. So imagine the 'penalty' for murder is that we will destroy the Rembrandt. Well, that's crazy. Yes, we will have destroyed something of intrinsic value, but what's that to the murderer? The death penalty would be like that if the rationality of death was a matter primarily of its intrinsic value as opposed to it being about harm to the one who is to be killed. Note I am not denying life has intrinsic value, I am just pointing out how implausible it is to think that it is at the heart of why we have reason not to kill ourselves and others must of the time.

Consider too that plausibly a mass murderer's life does not have any intrinsic value. Yet it seems clear that death still harms mass murderer. The harmfulness of death, then, seems to have little if anything to do with the intrinsic value of life, for it harms us even when that value is absent.

Another example to illustrate the point. Sarah is very beautiful, andbeauty has intrinsic value. Now imagine there's a machine that you can put your face in and it'll scrape away your features with knives. Now it seems obvious that Sarah has reason not to put her face into that machine. Why? Is it primarily because if she did that she would no longer be beautiful and thus would have destroyed something of intrinsic value - the beauty of her face? Or would the main reason be that it'll be absolute agony and seriously affect her life for the worse? The latter, right? After all, even someone who is ugly has reason not to put their face in it.

Well, that's what the harmfulness of death seems to be like. Life may have some intrinsic value, but death's harmfulness to us seems to have nothing to do with it. And it is its harmfulness to us that seems to be what provides us with reason to avoid it, extreme agony aside.

No, they're not.

Many "mediocre" lives can also have value, but I agree that a life which a person won't cherish (for the most part) should not be created. However, you're once again missing the point that people could still prefer their average lives over a painful death or the cessation of their entire being due to a fear of death that's often encouraged by the culture around us. Whether or not that's true is another matter (especially if there is no possibility of joy left and the pain is extreme).

I haven't claimed that all lives are worth creating due to their "intrinsic value". There certainly are harms that also exist, but a "moderately bad" life could also be partially good (and a life where the person is frequently thinking about ending everything might be worse than "moderate"). However, unless the positives would outweigh the negatives for that person, I think it would be better to not create them. I do think that we need to take procreation a lot more seriously.

There are also many meaningful lives being lived that continue to see unfathomable potency in life which is what fuels their desire to continue living even in the face of suffering. I think it would be narrow-minded to reduce their choice to simply an intuition to avoid death, since there is more to their lives than just that.

People could indeed suffer due to a lack of a meaningful relationship, so it's not a trivial matter. However, I won't be emphasising that here.

If the aversion to death is evidence that it leads to something terrible, I think that the fact that people do wish to continue living despite the existence of harms does demonstrate that life has more value than some people realise ;)

As far as the death penalty is concerned, I don't think that there is much confusion here. Since the convict could still have a decent life, the loss of their life/the pain they would feel would certainly be a harm for them. I feel that the latter is more relevant, but the larger point is that both of these points make more sense than some unjustifiable idea regarding the intrinsic badness of death.

The murderer may not be a good person, but that has no bearing on whether or not he enjoys his life. If he does live a mostly happy life, then one can plausibly say that the loss of his life would not be something he would find palatable, especially if it entails harm that would be felt consciously.

Those are two different things. The fact that the beauty of her face was lost is indeed a harm. However, there is also pain and a deprivation of happiness, which would probably be the primary concern here. Fortunately, we don't have sufficient evidence to believe that nonexistence (as opposed to the process of dying) leads to a terrible state of affairs.

I do not necessarily agree with the deprivation account (since I don't think that the void can be either good or bad). However, your criticism of it appears to be merely presupposing that death is a harm without justifying that idea other than resorting to intuitions that may not align with what we know to be in our rational interest due to the existence of strong emotions and a close association of death with physical harm (which has generally been the case throughout history, though it's fortunately beginning to change in recent years, I believe). The deprivation account won't say that death is inherently good or bad, but it would say that the loss of a mostly good life is instrumentally bad by virtue of the good it deprives you of, just as the cessation of a mostly bad life (that would most likely be bad in the future as well) can be instrumentally good (instead of a lesser evil) by virtue of the harm it prevents. Again, simply assuming that death itself is harm because of mostly unexamined intuitions that conflate different pertinent elements (pain and nonexistence) appears to be an irredeemable flaw in the argument.

I don't think that any of your arguments give us reason to think that death is an intrinsically bad state. All of your examples have, in my view, better explanations that also take the limits of our intuitions into account. In short, any potential badness of death (aside from the pain of dying) comes from misconceptions regarding the void, a desire to prevent possible pain (which seems to be more rational), and a loss of the possibility of goods one could experience. Again, we've discussed this before, so I would rather avoid incessant repetition. I hope that you have an excellent day!

Many "mediocre" lives can also have value — DA671

But I did not deny that! Jeeez. However, clearly whatever intrinsic value they have, we nevertheless have overall reason not to start them. And this is plausibly because they harm their liver. It can't be 'becasue' they have intrinsic value - that'd make no real sense. Rather it is because 'despite' their intrinsic value, they harm their liver.

And when such lives are underway, we do not have reason to end them. Why? Becuase killing the liver would harm the liver even more.

Any intrinsic value the life may have is playing no role in these explanations. So you can keep pointing out that life has - or sometimes has - some intrinsic value, but it's beside the point for I am not denying it and it clearly plays no fundamental role in explaining why we have reason not to kill ourselves.

I haven't claimed that all lives are worth creating due to their "intrinsic value". — DA671

I never said you did. You've missed the point. If it makes it easier, just assume I think that all lives have some intrinsic value, other things being equal. The point is that moderately miserable lives are lives we ought to refrain from creating (if we know they'll be moderately miserable). Now, it would clearly be stupid to try and explain that by citing their intrinsic value! "We ought not to create them because they're intrinsically valuable". That's dumb. No, any plausible analysis of why we ought not to create them is going to mention their harmfulness to their liver. That is, we have a duty - normally - not to create harm and thus not to create harmful lives. And that duty plausibly eclipses any putative duty to create intrinsic value. And thus that is why it is wrong - or is part of the story about why it is wrong - to create moderately miserable lives. It's the same story we'd give about incredibly miserable lives. They harm their liver.

Yet such lives are being lived. And if you are living one, it would be irrational for you to kill yourself. Now the reason for that cannot be that your life has intrinsic value, for that is already acknowledged and we know already that such value does not eclipse in importance the importance of sparing you the miserable life. Thus, the reason you have not to kill youself is that killing yourself will make your situation - which is already bad - much, much worse.

As far as the death penalty is concerned, I don't think that there is much confusion here. Since the convict could still have a decent life, the loss of their life/the pain they would feel would certainly be a harm for them. I feel that the latter is more relevant, but the larger point is that both of these points make more sense than some unjustifiable idea regarding the intrinsic badness of death. — DA671

You haven't engaged with the argument I made, you've just resurrected the deprivation account of the harmfulness of death - a view I keep, keep, refuting. It's like arguing with goldfish!

Look, first, a mass murderer's life doesn't have any intrinsic value. They're a mass murderer! They've lost their value by what they've done. That's the first thing and even if you disagree, it's a pretty damn plausible claim. Yet death still harms them. So, the harmfulness of killing a mass murderer doesn't consist in it robbing the world of some intrinsic value. I mean, I explained this and you've just blithely ignored that argument.

And you can't plausibly claim that it harms the murderer himself by depriving him of something - for what does it deprive him of? A life in prison? It harms him because it is harmful.

Again, I have refuted the deprivation account of the harmfulness of death about 100x now, yet you and others just keep invoking it.

If the deprivation account is true, then death isn't harmful to a person living a mildly miserable life.

It is though, isn't it!?! They have reason to keep living.

So, what follows logically from that? This: the deprivation account is false.

If P, then Q
Not Q
Therefore not P.

The deprivation account is false.

Sarah wants to go to the cinema. She falls over in the bathroom and breaks both her legs and spends the evening in agony. Now, how has Sarah been harmed? What's the main way in which those broken legs have harmed her? Is it that they deprived of an evening at the cinema?? Er, no. She has been deprived of that, no question. But it's stupid to think 'that' is the core explanation of why Sarah's broken legs are a bad thing for her. They're bad for her becasue they've pitched her into agony.

Deprivation accounts of the harmfulness of death are every bit as stupid as deprivation accounts of the harmfulness of Sarah's leg breaking incident.

Don't now switch to talking about intrinsic value - I refuted that view too above. Don't be a goldfish.

I have argued that death is a great harm and that its harmfulness consists in what it does to you, rather than what it deprives you of. It takes you to hell - to a world worse than this one, anyway.

Most people, if asked, would agree that they do not know for sure what happens after we die. Yet most people think that it is one of two possibilities - that death is either the cessation of our existence, or a door to heaven. I have shown that neither of those is remotely plausible - I mean, they just have nothing to be said for them at all and are, I would suggest, wholly a product of wishful thinking and/or a total lack of any thinking at all. The truth is that death takes us to a worse place. But even if you think - because you're a confused little chicken - that I have not put the matter beyond a reasonable doubt, the fact is it is a possibility. That is, even if you want to wrap yourself up in the whole 'how do we know anything' silly scepticism that infects most of those whose capacity to think clearly is severely limited, you should accept that though we do not know what happens after death, one possibility is that it takes us to a worse place.

Now, if you accept that it is distinctly possible that death takes us to a worse place - and you should - then you should also accept that it would be culpably reckless to expose an innocent to that possibility.

Our predicament is that we are all heading inexorably to hell. Well, antinatalism is a no-brainer if that's true.

But even if we do not know whether we are heading inexorably to hell, or to nowhere, or to heaven, antinatalism is still a no-brainer. For it is immoral to expose an innocent to the risk of an inexorably journey to hell, and that's what you're doing if you procreate. You can hope that we're all going to heaven, or nowhere, or that there's just more of the same the other side of death - you can hope those things. But those hopes do not justify you in summoning an innocent into existence here so that they have to run the same gauntlet you've been made to run.

Until we know - know beyond a reasonable doubt - that death is a portal to heaven, or perhaps to nowhere - one should accept that it is immoral to procreate.

No, the point was that it's not necessary that the "mediocre" lives are mostly bad. They could certainly be, but they could also be good (overall).

Why did you put "becasue" in quotes? Was that a prophecy that you were going to write it in paragraph 15 of your reply?

The pain could certainly be harmful. Other than that, I don't think that unsubstantiated claims about the badness of death can be accepted.

You have once again failed to understand that if life does have more value, it would not make sense to end it, especially if the process could be painful. It's certainly quite relevant.

Moderately miserable lives can also be good. I don't think that the harm is the only relevant factor in consideration. Just as there could be harms in such a life, there could also be pleasant moments which would make the person's life worth living. That judgement would probably have to be made by the person themselves. If we have adequate reason to believe that the life would still contain more good than bad, it can be justifiable to create them. However, it's true that we should refrain from creating them if the risk of significantly high.

No, you're the one who keeps misssing the point. Uninvestigated intuitions don't give us a basis to believe something is inherently bad. As I have mentioned ad nauseam, just because the life has many harms one cannot ignore the fact that it could also have many goods. If it didn't, it would probably be worse than a mediocre life. A person could have a bad life but still find living to be preferable to a painful death (which could be rational) or they could also consider the harms to be not strong enough to devalue the goods they experienced. They could also believe that nonexistence brings them to some special sort of hell, but while they might "think" that this gives them a reason to avoid death, it would be an unjustified reason that would be akin to fearing thunder as some evil force that sends us to hell.

I've already said before that I don't agree with you the deprivation account. You're the one seems unwilling to go beyond your rigid framework.

Throughout this discussion, I have repeatedly tried to excavate the foundations of our intuitions by searching for the reasons we have them. You have, mistakenly so in my view, ignored that by callously accusing me of focusing on "psychology". Howbeit, you have missed the fact that it can be important to focus on the reasons because:

A. We can see whether or not the intuition is rational by searching for the elements that gave rise to it. For instance, imagine that you are afraid for the life of a loved one. This intuition would surely deserve more attention if this was because you thought that she was in a risky part of the neighborhood than if it arose because you saw a character being harmed in a horror movie. How do we determine whether or not the intuition is rational? We do so by looking at the evidence at hand and whether or not our reasons for having that intuition are reasonable. A loved one being defenseless in a risky area is, but a fear that arises from watching a horror movie does not seem to be so.

B. We can also see if the absence of the reasons behind the intuition would cause it to reduce/not exist. Now, I had talked about three major reasons (aside from a pure instinct to survive and propagate that all organisms seem to have):

1. External influence that we take in blindly.

2. A desire to cherish the good that exists in one's life.

3. The desideratum to avoid extreme pain.

I think that we have more than decent reason to believe that the lack of the above factors can certainly help diminish/remove the intuition that death is bad. Regarding (1), I think my own perspective has changed quite a bit depending on the environment around me and the amount of knowledge I possessed. When I was younger, I did not really fear death. But when everyone around me kept talking about how bad death is, I internalised that view and started to view death as something terrible. However, when I actually started reading about this issue and the nature of reality itself, my dear (in terms of nonexistence itself being bad) reduced significantly, and due to this, I also don't have such a great desire to avoid death.

As for (2), I think that this is fairly obvious. As one starts to lose value in their life, they increasingly begin to see death as a valid option. This is a good example of how the replacement of joy with pain can gradually make a person to wish to cease to exist: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/podcasts/the-daily/marieke-vervoort-euthanasia-belgium.html

I hope that people can have the right to a graceful exit, even though I also wish that we can create a world where nobody would have to take that option amidst intense harm.

And finally, (3) ties into the second point because people clearly do wish to avoid pain. However, when they have the ability to die in a relatively painless way (such as those who chose voluntary euthanasia), people can prefer cessation or at least stop fearing death too much. I've personally experienced this as well as seen this with other people. Since we now know that the lack of these reasons can diminish the intuition, I believe we now have an abundance of valid justifications for thinking that the intuition that death itself is bad (as opposed to pain/loss being bad) is not reliable. The intuition that we need to avoid death can certainly be rational, but this would be for vastly different reasons and it would also entail that we should not infer that the void itself is a realm of agony.

I also explained that there's a difference between any value that life would have for us/any moral value that life would have and the joys that life itself would experience. The immoral person could still have a life that would be mostly good for themselves, even if they harmed others. I thought that the topic was the badness of death for the person, and if that is the case, then the same reasons I mentioned before apply here. Obviously, it wouldn't help us if the killer continued to live. However, the question was whether death was a harm for them, not for us. As I've mentioned before, the only plausible view could be that it robs them of a good life or the process itself would involve immense pain. Except for this, I don't think that meaningless about the inherent badness of death that are premised upon intuitions that we haven't really looked into can be considered logical. Blithely ignoring the reality won't affect it.

Whether or not the killer has a good life in prison would depend on their attitude. A friend of mine who had been to a prison that some people there were fairly happy and clearly wanted to keep living. Obviously, they would have preferred if they were not imprisoned. But many things exist in degrees, and it's not necessary that a person would immediately desire nonexistence if they are in prison. As per the deprivation account, if the person would still have lived a life that had more moments of happiness than harm, it would be bad for them to die. If it would contain more harm, it would not be bad for them to cease to exist (other than a few goods that would be lost, but then that could be outweighed by the prevented harm). Alternatively, it could still be reasonable for them to keep living a fairly average life over dying in a painful way. What wouldn't make sense would be an aversion to death on the basis of a baseless argument for the void being some sort of hell. Thankfully, most people don't seem to have this unreliable intuition.

I've only mentioned it because you don't fully understand it, but I've also explained that I don't agree with it. However, as always, you continue to turn the other way when things don't suit you. One could do better, my friend. Once again, you are missing the point by forgetting the face that a moderately bad life could be worsened by a painful death, in which case it could be better for a person to keep living. Furthermore, if the life is moderately bad, it could also be moderately good, which would give them a reason to not choose nonexistence. Death could still be reasonable if the harms would always outweigh the good, but just because it is doesn't mean that everybody would be able to overcome their emotions, the deeply ingrained views regarding death, and their (very rational) fear of pain to take the final step, especially if their life also gives them a decent amount of reasons to keep living.

I disagree with the deprivation account for different reasons. However, your arguments against it fail to defeat the deprivation account, since you've only claimed that death would be a harm for a moderately valuable life whilst failing to consider the limits of intuitions and restricted understanding that afflicts many people. In your case:

If P, then Q.
P
Therefore, Q.

If death prevents greater suffering than good, then it is preferable (according to the deprivation account). It could be that ending one's life would be a slight harm as well if it prevents some positives. However, non-existence would still be better overall. But I don't think that most lives are mostly negative.

The upshot is that the deprivation account still stands as far as your criticisms are concerned.

I agree that the pain is bad and it would probably be the real reason why the harms are bad. If only some people could realise that there is also pain involved in death, which might be the real reason behind why we want to avoid death (and which would be rational) instead of some unjustifiable claims about the inherent badness of death (which we have no evidence to believe that it plunges us to hell). But you also don't understand what exactly would be lost. Sure, it would be bad that the person couldn't watch the movie. However, the bigger loss would be the fact that they would be robbed of their health. I don't think that you understand the things you are criticising, my friend.

Your criticisms of the deprivation account are often incoherent and often don't even realise what would be lost (health instead of a movie). As things stand, I am afraid that you have merely initiated a pointless cycle to talk about your cherished beliefs that you never truly wanted to be changed in light of new evidence.

You didn't, and neither did you prove the intrinsic badness of death. I think that even a goldfish is capable of paying attention for a while, which is much better than ignoring everything.

I've argued that while we have certain intuitions regarding the harm of death (which could include the idea that it brings us to hell), not all of those intuitions appear to be reasonable in light of a critical analysis of the world around us. The annihilation of our being (loss of good) and the pain incurred by us during the dying process can give us good reasons to avoid cessation, but it's apparent to me that they don't give us a reason to think that the joyous moments of life that consist of ineffable love and beauty don't matter.

Wishful thinking/total lack of thinking at all might be an apt description of your replies. I wouldn't want to degrade chickens here, so I won't comment on them. You have failed to justify that death does not lead to the cessation of our being other than point to intuitions while ignoring the fact that not all intuitions are reasonable. Your intuition might tell you that driving your car for the first time will necessarily kill you, but you logically disregard that instinct once you consider the evidence at hand, such as the fact that there's no evidence that people are always dying when driving for the first time, and your fear probably has to do with a movie you saw a while ago. But since we know that movies don't always match with reality, we have good reason to think that our intuition is unreliable. Now, you could claim that people do in fact die and are secretly replaced by invisible clones, but the question is—which view is more reasonable? And just as one would probably consider the clone explanation to be unlikely, one could also see that the lack of any evidence for hell post existence combined with other reasons for our intuitions (fear of loss and pain)
give us solid reasons to reject the idea that nonexistence leads to hell.

You're free to believe otherwise, but it would be pertinent to remember that this would probably be a position held despite of true reason, not because of it. The" truth", probably, is that there is no good reason to think that death takes us to a worse place. As for heaven, I think one could definitely say that the fact that so many people believe in heaven gives us a "reason" to believe that it's a serious possibility (since that's apparently all that's required for one to think death is a special form of hell). One could bolster this intuition by mentioning the fact that some people have a strong desire to die (and reach heaven) that's not acted upon only due to the possibility of extreme agony while dying. So, it's so good that only extreme pain can make us want to delay it. As for other people, there could be other reasons for the lack of their desire to immediately go to "heaven" such as the fact that they believe that living a specific sort of life is required for going there. Additionally, one could just as plausibly say that our strong desire to exist and reproduce give us a "reason" to think that nonexistence is always bad (before and after existence) and it's only life that can provide us relief, even if it contains harms. The point is that these intuitions are no less reasonable than the ones you rely on. If you could look beyond your lazy dogmatism, you could realise that mere intuitions give us very few rational reasons to believe in the existence of something we have no evidence for. This becomes even more important when those intuitions can have other intuitions driving them (such as dying being too painful and death leading to a loss of happiness), which gives us a reason to believe that the intuition is pointing to something other than the inherent badness of death (along with the fact that not all parts of the intuition give us equally good reasons to trust them). You have certainly taken this matter out of the realm of reason, my friend, but it has also given us excellent reasons to doubt your position. You've managed to convince me even more that many of our attitudes towards death are based on vacuous claims and uninvestigated intuitions that are not defended in a very rational manner. Since there is a "possibility" that there are souls in the void suffering horribly before they exist (which is supported by our intuition that living is good/preferable even in the face of harm), we could also say that we have a reason to think that life brings us to the only "better" place possible.

Now, since there is a possibility that there are souls floating around in the void desperate to exist and avoid the pain of inexistence (which we apparently have a reason to believe sans any actual evidence merely due to intuitions), it would be reckless beyond comprehension to even think about supporting a view that leads to the cessation of all life and condemns billions of souls to an eternity in agony. Not saving innocent souls from that terrible state of affairs for as long as we can is patently immoral. A view that rejects this clearly deserves opprobrium.

The reality is that we have no evidence to think that nonexistence leads to hell. If anything, your inability to truly understand the nature of reality and our intuitions inexorably leads one to the conclusion that universal antinatalism remains a flawed position to hold. But if we are going to trust our intuitions blindly, then the possibility of an eternally painful void containing souls being tortured makes natalism a no-brainer. The true predicament might be that a few people don't understand the seriousness of the matter.

Those might be possibilities, but they aren't the only ones out there. If nonexistence leads to an eternity of happiness for innumerable souls, I don't think that it's a good idea to not create a person. Furthermore, going by our intuition that life is preferable to nonexistence, I think it can certainly be "reasonable " (if you think that our intuition that death is bad is totally reliable without any investigation/context) to think that the void contains innocent souls being harmed in ways you and I cannot even imagine. Not saving them just because one personally doesn't see value in life is too cruel a game for any ethical person to play. You can continue fearing a hell that we have no evidence for if that's what you have chosen to do. I think that you deserve better, my friend. But be that as it may, I don't think that your opinion justifies condemning souls to an eternity of pain. Or, more realistically, it does not give us a valid reason to prevent all potential joys.

Until we know beyond reasonable doubt that the void does not have souls (which we cannot see or know except for "inferring" that on the basis our intuition that life is better than nonexistence even in pain) who are desperate to exist and avoid the agony of nihility, it is immoral to advocate for universal antinatalism. More modestly, I think that it would be irrational to believe that death is inherently bad unless we have a good reason to think that we should not try to see whether or not our intuitions are always reliable about things it doesn't know much about (and we know that thunder is not a magic spell cast from hell) and when that intuition might actually be pointing to other things than the one we think it is at a superficial glance. Considering that (in my opinion) you failed to demonstrate the falsity of the idea that the intuition might be the result of societal influence (in which case it as as arbitrary and unjustified as the idea that racism is good merely because one's culture believes it to be so) and that it could be linked with other intuitions (life being good, the process of dying involving too much pain) that give us a reason to think that it's actually pointing at something else, I believe that we can safely say that your position is not reasonable and universal antinatalism remains immoral and deeply problematic. Pessimistic prognostications about the void cannot be accepted without sufficient justification.

Thanks for your detailed replies. I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts in such depth, and though I disagree with you, I am truly grateful to you for sharing your insights. You clearly care about the reduction of harms, which is something that we definitely need to focus on. I hope that we can live in a better world someday (and prove more definitively that death doesn't necessarily lead to eternal hell and that life does indeed have profound value!). Hope you have a fantastic day/night!

It's like arguing with farmyard chickens. Here's a nuanced view about the harmfulness of death. "Cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck". Nothing you've just said addresses anything I have argued.

Other than that, I don't think that unsubstantiated claims about the badness of death can be accepted. — DA671

It's a 'conclusion' not an unsubstantiated claim!

Chickens might be wiser since they don't hold seem to hold strange views regarding the intrinsic badness of death.

A view that ignores the larger picture and doesn't even bother to check whether or not it's what it appears to be can never be nuanced.

Projection is a real problem. Nevertheless, I apologise if I failed to grasp what you wrote and consequently misinterpreted it.

Putting on the blindfold when the lights are turned on will generally impair one's ability to see. That doesn't affect the ineluctable truth. However, it's fine that you missed the fact that I addressed them thoroughly.

A "claim" can also be used to refer to any argument/position/conclusion/opinion. Your conclusion is a part of an argument which claims that something is true. It's not an indisputable fact to me, so I will continue to refer to it as a claim. But as I've demonstrated (I think), your conclusion remains indefensible.

Have a nice day!

There is no way to know what happens at death from our fear of it because our fear might be of the beginning but not the end. A fetus might fear birth but not life.

I would also add that escape from death by materialism is a false step too. As Stephen Hawking applied the no boundary hypothesis to the universe and it's beginning, we can apply these imagery number systems to the end of life and speculate that life continue forever even though without a boundary. Consciousness continues in the body even after amputation, but instead of a limb what it it's your whole body? Where else can consciousness reside? Nobody knows.

There's definitely much to truly understand, much of which could be counter-intuitive ;)

This absurd sh*t again? – Okay :roll:

Lobotomize every newborn (or in vitro if technically possible), which effectively removes the moral prohibition of producing more sufferers (i.e. persons anticipating pain and loss as well as projecting counterfactual memories of painlessness and losslessness). Thus, procreation rates will precipitously drop well below the sustainable population replacement rate without policy or ideational coercion (additional pain). No need to "destroy the village in order to save it", just (obliviously sing-a-long, lil lobots) with