What we deserve before others is different from what we deserve before the universe. As Chesterton wrote somewhere, a healthy mind can accept a paradox while the insane have lost everything but their reason. Gn

Did Mr Chesterton have any views on whether one can use moldy lemons to make a lemon meringue pie? I mean, I want to get something useful out of this exchange.

You asked which premise I disagree with. I told you; therefore your "argument" doesn't work for me. And you cannot even argue in support of the premise in question. You're still a fucking joke, barftrix. :sweat:

Which premise do you dispute?
— Bartricks
That anyone "deserves" anything. — 180 Proof

Either

1. We deserve nothing

OR

2. We deserve the same thing

Just givin' ya some options, that's all!

barftrix — 180 Proof

:rofl: Absit iniuria Bartricks.

We deserve the same nothing.

We deserve the same nothing. — 180 Proof

:lol: Good one! What's the big idea then - all this hullabaloo about having to earn it? Envy/Jealousy/Resentment at the huge dollops of luck some people have? :chin:

An innocent person deserves to come to no harm. Thus any harm - any harm whatever - that this person comes to, is undeserved. — Bartricks

How did we learn to avoid the mouldy lemons?
Why was there a need to coin the word 'innocent?'
How do you know what harm is? What harms you might have no affect on me.
If you don't experience 'negatives,' how can you know what 'positives' are?

Ask @Bartricks.

:smile:

Which premise do you dispute? — Bartricks

that natural persons are born innocent.

that natural persons are born innocent. — Wayfarer

More so, I object to the notion that innocence is any kind of virtue, or bestows any kind of entitlement. It is no achievement and merits no reward, not even temporary existence, for which and to which it already owes its life.

More so, I object to the notion that innocence is any kind of virtue, or bestows any kind of entitlement. It is no achievement and merits no reward, not even temporary existence, for which and to which it already owes its life. — unenlightened

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

Innocence, in this world, as it is, the sooner you lose it the better! Every innocent person has a piece of paper stuck on their back that reads "kick me!" Oui, monsieur?

You think of these two claims a) innocent people do not deserve to come to harm and b) innocent people do deserve to come to harm, it is 'a' that is the bizarre one? — Bartricks

The dichotomy is bizarre. If I were to say that fishermen either did or did not deserve sports cars, you'd think me mad. It's obviously nonsense to claim that everyone must either deserve or not deserve anything you care to mention (where by 'deserve' you mean it's someone's duty to provide it). Once you introduce the element of a duty to provide that which is deserved then the dichotomy becomes between that for which a person benefits from another's duty to provide them, and that for which no such duty exists.

The opposite of the claim that innocents deserve non-harm (entailing a duty on others to provide such a state) is that there is no such duty on others to provide such a state, not that they actually deserve the opposite.

If one says that nurses deserve a pay rise, the opposite position is not that they deserve a pay cut, it's just that no such duty to provide a pay rise exists. They might incidentally get a pay rise. It's not a requirement of the argument "nurses don't deserve a pay rise" that the proponent actually go out of their way to avoid a pay rise happening, even incidentally. They would just be claiming that no one has duty to provide them with one.

The opposite of the position that innocents deserve protection from all harm is not that innocents ought to be harmed, it's that no such duty exists.

This phrasing as innocents "deserving harm" is ludicrous. It ignores the possible (and indeed prevalent) state where innocents neither deserve harm (no one has a duty to cause it), nor deserve non-harm (no one has a duty to provide such a state). Ie, no one has a duty to either cause harm to Innocents, nor to protect innocents from all harm.

@Bartricks @Isaac, I see this more clearly formulated in an argument I've made in the past that goes something like, "If you can't bring a person into a perfect version of their Utopia/Paradise, then it is wrong to bring that person into the world, period".

Other moral considerations:
WHY would you bring someone into a world where they would be knowingly harmed? The problem here is that any answer you provide violates some moral intuitions of not using people.

For example, "Oh well, they NEED to be harmed because X needs to happen (for them, society, for yourself)". A false sense of what YOU think is right for someone else doesn't justify harm.. even if you think that you can do a good job mitigating collateral damage to the person you know you are going to harm. And I would say that this is a violation of using a person, for certain regards (for your agenda/mission/purposes/goals).

Don't get me wrong. I don't think the potential parents are trying to be nefarious.. I just think that usual instincts of what is wrong are misapplied to this specific case of procreation.

Procreation first leads to a not yet fully developed person. And only a fully developed person is a person in the strict and actual sense.
A not yet fully developed person does not deserve a painless paradise.
Only innocent full persons would deserve such a thing.
However, once babies become full persons, they are not innocent because of their deeds. The deeds at the moment of reaching personhood and shortly thereafter are not innocent.

A false sense of what YOU think is right for someone else doesn't justify harm — schopenhauer1

As I said earlier...

all antinatalist arguments ... start with a bizarre premise with which no-one else agrees and then proceed to show that it yields bizarre conclusions with which no-one else agrees. — Isaac

Yours is no exception. We cause harms to others to achieve what we think is right all the time. So long as we feel satisfied that the harms were the minimum necessary most people consider this quite ethically unproblematic.

If you take a hyper-individualistic, neo-liberal type approach, then maybe this isn't going to work. Maybe it does lead to antinatalism. One good reason (among many others) to discard such a morally decrepit position.

They don't deserve harm but rather need "harm" (trials) to grow — Gregory

What a sadistic method for improvement.

We cause harms to others to achieve what we think is right all the time. So long as we feel satisfied that the harms were the minimum necessary most people consider this quite ethically unproblematic. — Isaac

And another one.

As with all antinatalist arguments Bartricks starts with a bizarre premise with which no-one else agrees and then proceeds to show that it yields bizarre conclusions with which no-one else agrees. — Isaac

That's not true. I think the innocent deserve that no harm befall them, and that others, those who exist already before the innocents, have a duty to prevent such harm. I know a few other people who think this way.

It surprises me in these discussions how little value people place on their own children, already born or potential, and how little value people place on their own ability and resources for procreation.

My child would be my flesh and blood, mine, and of course I wish to have no harm come to him, so I would do everything to prevent any such harm, including not conceiving the child at all.
The only condition under which I would have a child is if I could guarantee he would not suffer, or at least if I were sure he would become enlightened, in that lifetime.

We cause harms to others to achieve what we think is right all the time. So long as we feel satisfied that the harms were the minimum necessary most people consider this quite ethically unproblematic. — Isaac

Except when one finds oneself on the receiving end of such harm and cannot reciprocate.

I think the innocent deserve that no harm befall them, and that others, those who exist already before the innocents, have a duty to prevent such harm. — baker

Well, then I amend my proposition to "...very few people believe...". The point still stands that if the premises are heterodox, one can hardly be surprised by the novelty of the conclusion.

I see this more clearly formulated in an argument I've made in the past that goes something like, "If you can't bring a person into a perfect version of their Utopia/Paradise, then it is wrong to bring that person into the world, period". — schopenhauer1

:roll: This reminds me, schop1, of the classical Academic Skeptics' canard "If we cannot know anything with absolute certainty, then it is wrong to claim we know anything at all" (i.e. letting the perfect be the enemy of the good / true). Yer bucket's got holes innit, son.

My child would be my flesh and blood, mine, and of course I wish to have no harm come to him, so I would do everything to prevent any such harm, including not conceiving the child at all. — baker

Interesting that you have already chosen a gender for your imagined child and suggested a singular ownership rather than joint ownership with your imagined partner in procreation.
Can you give a clear idea of exactly which harms you might be unable to protect your imagined child against? Are you ok with, accidental bumps/bruises/scratches/throwing up/nappies containing something akin to nuclear waste?
If you can't feed a child then I agree that you should not breed one until you can but would you also not have a child because it might become a drunk or a junkie or even worse, a UK tory or a US Republican later in life? What actual list of harms/learning opportunities do you want guarantees against?
Are you concerned your imagined child might become a serial killer or be the antichrist?

Yours is no exception. We cause harms to others to achieve what we think is right all the time. So long as we feel satisfied that the harms were the minimum necessary most people consider this quite ethically unproblematic. — Isaac

I wouldn't cause harm unnecessarily to others to achieve what I think is right though. I wouldn't create suffering when I didn't have to for mitigating circumstances. I think that is rather common intuition. I wouldn't do harm to someone (when there are alternatives) because it suits my interests either. At least, not if I am trying to be moral and act with integrity.

As I said earlier, often people don't apply moral intuitions to the case of procreation when otherwise they would. I am sure evolutionary pressures helped with this. Here is a good article on just this subject: https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/14444/Antinatalism%20and%20Moral%20Particularism.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

Here is the abstract:

I believe most acts of human procreation are immoral, and I believe this despite also believing in the truth of moral particularism. In this paper I explain why. I argue that procreative acts possess numerous features that, in other contexts, seem typically to operate with negative moral valences. Other things being equal this gives us reason to believe they will operate negatively in the context of procreative acts as well. However, most people’s intuitions represent procreative acts to be morally permissible in most circumstances. Given moral particularism, this would normally be good evidence that procreative acts are indeed morally permissible and that the features that operate negatively elsewhere, simply do not do so in the context of procreative acts in particular. But I argue that we have no good reason to think our intuitions about the ethics of human procreation are accurate. Our most reliable source of insight into the ethics human procreative acts are not our intuitions those acts themselves, but our intuitions about the typical moral valences of the features such acts possess. If that is correct, then acts of human procreation are most likely wrong

If you take a hyper-individualistic, neo-liberal type approach, then maybe this isn't going to work. Maybe it does lead to antinatalism. One good reason (among many others) to discard such a morally decrepit position. — Isaac

Odd, since politically speaking, I am far from neo-liberal. But indeed, ethically, I do think the locus of ethics is the dignity of the individual. I don't think antinatalism needs to be based on individuals to work though. There are negative utilitarians for example. Also being individualistic, if you want to characterize it like that (which I think is just your little construction), doesn't disqualify from being moral. That itself, would have to be proven. What I think you mistake for "group" is actually a construction of a particular end goal you have in mind. And what doesn't fit that end goal you call "morally decrepit". That is just reifying your preferences to moral standard.

To procreate is to create an innocent person. They haven't done anything yet. So they're innocent. — Bartricks

You are simply declaring that a procreated person is "innocent"; perhaps, perhaps not. One does not need to be a Christian (or of any religion) to recognize the possibility that a procreated person may be capable of great wrong-doing, even if they do not actually wreak havoc.

An innocent person deserves to come to no harm. Thus any harm - any harm whatever - that this person comes to, is undeserved. — Bartricks

You are again declaring that the innocent procreated person deserves no harm. This hinges on your definition of innocence (which is a kind of religious concept, as well as a legal concept). "No harm whatsoever" is a sweeping generalization.

Furthermore, an innocent person positively deserves a happy life. — Bartricks

How do you (or anyone else) know what a happy life is, and why the arbitrarily defined innocent person deserves it?

It is wrong, then, to create an innocent person — Bartricks

I think you began with "It is wrong, then, to create an innocent person" and then built the support.

There is no outside agent that defines innocence, or what a person--innocent or otherwise--deserves. There is no agency that guarantees a happy life to anyone. All of which makes your new approach unsuccessful.

The world is, in fact, a fairly harsh arrangement which guarantees a certain amount of pretty rough experience (for all creatures, great and small), while at the same time allowing for a measure of delight. Antinatalism comes down to one preferring to not have children for various reasons, from personal inconvenience (children are inconvenient) to an imbalance of suffering and delight -- like the universe had ever suggested one would get a a fair share.

Logic can't solve the problem.

An innocent person deserves to come to no harm — Bartricks

Why?

It's just what it is to be innocent. Bachelors do not have wives. Why? That's just what a bachelor is - a wifeless man. And an innocent person 'just is' a person who does not positively deserve to come to harm.

You are simply declaring that a procreated person is "innocent"; — Bitter Crank

And you are just declaring that.

One does not need to be a Christian (or of any religion) to recognize the possibility that a procreated person may be capable of great wrong-doing, even if they do not actually wreak havoc. — Bitter Crank

You are just declaring that.

This hinges on your definition of innocence (which is a kind of religious concept, as well as a legal concept). "No harm whatsoever" is a sweeping generalization. — Bitter Crank

You are just declaring that.

There is no outside agent that defines innocence, or what a person--innocent or otherwise--deserves. There is no agency that guarantees a happy life to anyone. All of which makes your new approach unsuccessful. — Bitter Crank

You are just declaring that.

The world is, in fact, a fairly harsh arrangement which guarantees a certain amount of pretty rough experience (for all creatures, great and small), while at the same time allowing for a measure of delight. Antinatalism comes down to one preferring to not have children for various reasons, from personal inconvenience (children are inconvenient) to an imbalance of suffering and delight -- like the universe had ever suggested one would get a a fair share. — Bitter Crank

You are just declaring that.

Logic can't solve the problem. — Bitter Crank

Another declaration.

See? Tedious isn't it. Now argue something.

SO you think babies deserve to suffer?

Clarify whether you think babies are innocent? Yes or no?

It's yes, right? And that means they do not deserve to suffer.

What dichotomy? Here are my claims and you tell me which one is bizarre. Don't make up stuff and attribute it to me just because it makes sense to you. Address what I said.

We are born innocent.

Is that a bizarre claim? Or, you know, the reasonable default view? Well, Isaac?

An innocent person does not deserve to come to harm.

Is that a bizarre claim? Or is it, you know, a conceptual truth that only someone who didn't understand what the word 'innocent' meant would dispute?

An innocent person positively deserves a happy life. Now, is that bizarre? Do you think they deserve nothing? Don't alter the claim - don't confuse it with the claim that others owe them a happy life. That's a different claim. Address what I actually said: do you think it is bizarre to think that innocent people default deserve to be happy?

Do they deserve respect, for instance? Or, in your oh so sensible view, do innocent persons deserve nothing?