Want to do the right thing morally? Do not harm any existing person unnecessarily. :death: :flower: — 180 Proof

If I intend to put someone in harms way at x time in the future, not sure why I can’t take that into consideration.

You ought to "take that into consideration" iff that "someone" is an existing person.

But you just made a fact-based argument for AN, no? — schopenhauer1

Yes. In response to Bartricks response to my post.

I am supposing that unpleasant pain is a fact of life, not a personal judgement. The innocence of children (as a matter of Grace) and infants not deserving punishment is a personal judgement -- one to which I have no objection. As I said, I don't believe people (many at least) become antinatalist on the basis of logic. This being the kind of place it is, logic assumes a bigger role than it actually has in matters of belief.

One can toss logic into the air till the cows come home (at milking time, late afternoon - early evening), but chances are strong that whatever one believes, logic didn't lead one to it. Are apples better than oranges? Logic doesn't help.

You ought to "take that into consideration" iff that "someone" is an existing person. — 180 Proof

Why?? Someone WILL be harmed if you do X. Don’t do X.

"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

Some are willing to, as they say, settle for less which takes forms such as less suffering than joy or both in equal amounts or even more pain than pleasure given some idiosyncratic conditions are met. How would you convince such folks? We can't, can we? If the main premise of antinatalism is rejected right from the get go, antinatalism is a lost cause.

Food for thought: Assuming, arguendo, that objectively there's more suffering than joy in life or, worse, life is suffering à la Buddhism, is hell an adequate deterrent for those of immoral bent? People don't seem to mind or are we f*cking insane?

Accepting for the sake of argument that innocents do not deserve to come to harm, it does not follow that they deserve to be harm free either. — Janus

Yes it does. The only exception is harm an innocent person freely decides to visit on themselves. Harm that an innocent has done to themselves (and done of their own free will) is harm that is neither deserved nor undeserved.

But all other harms are undeserved and, as such, the innocent person deserves not to suffer them.

I think you're confusing the notion of legal innocence - of not having committed a crime - with an existential question - what is the cause of the suffering and harm that all humans are susceptible to. — Wayfarer

No I am not. The legal notion presupposes the moral notion. If you haven't done anything of your own free will, then you do not deserve to come to harm.

There is only one way you can come to deserve to come to harm: you have to have freely done or become something.

You don't have to have done anything to deserve respect, good will, and a happy life. And you don't have to have done anything to deserve not to come to harm.

You only have to have done something in order to deserve to come to harm.

These are not legal claims. These are moral claims.

And a person who has just been created has obviously not done anything. And so they do not deserve to come to any harm. They deserve respect, good will, and happiness and no harm whatsoever.

if - if - they develop reason-responsive free will, then they may, depending on how they use it, come later to deserve harm.

But that's not what procreative acts create: they create an innocent person and an innocent person deserves no harm at all and a happy life. Which is not what this world provides. Thus, it is an injustice to create such a person.

I am not against antinatalism. From a practical POV, it would help our environmental problems a great deal if far fewer people had been born in decades past. — Bitter Crank

That wasn't my argument. Focus on my argument, not any old argument that has vaguely antinatalist implications.

But arguing the merits of antinatalism is a bit like arguing the merits of homosexuality — Bitter Crank

No it isn't. I am arguing that it is wrong to procreate because procreation creates a huge injustice: it creates a person who deserves more than this world can provide. That's not remotely like arguing the merits of homosexuality.

One IS a homosexual or one is not. Logic has nothing to do with it. One IS an antinatalist or one is not. I do not believe people embrace antinatalism because of compelling argument. They embrace antinatalism because of compelling experience. — Bitter Crank

What total and utter nonsense. I am an antinatalist because I'm very rational and the arguments for it stack up. Just because you believe whatever the hell you want and couldn't care less what the evidence indicates if it indicates something you don't already believe, don't tar the rest of us with your brush of self-indulgence.

Now, cod psychology aside, which premise in my argument do you disagree with?

Do you think newly born babies deserve to come to harm?

Which premise are you denying?

No you didn't. Be clear. Do you think newly born babies deserve to come to harm?

Focus on my argument — Bartricks

Reading your arguments, such as they are, entails suffering we do not deserve.

Reading your arguments, such as they are, entails suffering we do not deserve. — Bitter Crank

:rofl: Let us enjoy our suffering, mon ami! Let us.

So you find following an argument painful. No doubt that's why you don't do it.

Which premise are you denying? — Bartricks

Moral judgements such as it's right or wrong are fine to have, anyone can have an opinion about it. My point is at least for me that moral imperatives are only a small part of the big picture, and that nature or evolution does not "care" about our individual moral stances. It trucks right through them. My perspective on this and many other issues are heavily rooted and contingent in that we don't actually have free will. Not that i want to discuss free will in this thread. I just try to consider things from an objective and evolutionary perspective. I don't think it will be a fruitful discussion if we have differences in that respect.

I made an argument in the OP. Which premise do you dispute?

Do you think that a newly born baby deserves to come to harm?

It's ironic that you are always complaining about lack of argument in others' posts. :roll:

Do you think that a newly born baby deserves to come to harm? — Bartricks

No, not personally, but i also think it's a necessary "evil" because my moral stance you could say is that evolution is what's important not our personal feelings.

Mine was a zinger. Your response was just sour grapes.

Why's that ironic? Are you Alanis Morrissette?

No, not personally, but i also think it's a necessary "evil" because my moral stance you could say is that evolution is what's important not our personal feelings. — punos

And do you agree that a newly born baby will experience some harm?

@OP, Nice!

Not only is it that we can't gurantee happiness to children, it is their right, by virtue of their innocence, to be happy. Double whammy!

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple (a childless spinster)

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

No you didn't. — Bartricks

:sweat: Pathetic.

Do you think newly born babies deserve to come to harm?

Nobody does.

Why's that ironic? — Bartricks

I'll leave that to you to figure out. Good luck.

Yes, a truly feeble response it was!

Probably in most cases if not all to some degree. But our opinions about that are arbitrarily influenced by our specific culture. Take for example the Spartans, and how they treated their children.

If nobody deserves anything, then nobody deserves to come to harm, do they?

Think it through.

So it seems you do think that babies do not deserve to come to harm.

So which premise do you dispute?

It's not ironic. I argue things. Most others don't. When I point out that others are not arguing anything or engaging with anything I have argued, that is not ironic. Unless you're Alanis Morrisette.

So you agree that newly born babies do not deserve to come to harm and you agree that they will come to harm.

So you agree, do you, that we ought not to create them then? Or at least that there is a desert-based case for drawing that conclusion?

If you think procreation is moral, then you need to provide countervailing moral positives that could justify the creation of an unnecessary injustice.

Life is a karmic debt trap - once you're born, it's impossible to live a life without sin and once you sin, and you will, you enter into the vicious cycle of Samsara ($Birth \leftrightarrow Sin$). Quite the scheme, whoever is running it!

You are not looking at this with any sense of depth it seems.

You may as well ask ‘Does anyone deserve to live?’ … but it not really a solid question because the assumption is that people ‘deserve’ or do not ‘deserve’ something in the first place. It is a common habit of the virtue signalling types to claim that they have an ‘undeserved privilege’ based on their sex, skin tone or perhaps their native tongue … it is taking the term ‘deserve’ and framing it as some technical term where it is actually just a term that can be applied in many ways given on differing situations.

To say that ‘innocent people do not deserve to have harm caused to them’ only makes sense in terms of particular instances involving an ‘innocent bystander’ hit by a car. It makes little to no sense to state they didn’t ‘deserve’ it yet ‘innocent ‘ also crosses into the category of ignorance. Ignorance is not something that can excuse people on one side or another.

In some cultures it may be deemed a threat to life if you wave at someone yet if you walked into the village of people with this cultural signal of ‘threatening death on someone’ by waving to say hello they are innocent if they attack you and you are innocent by being attacked. If both parties are innocent it does not necessarily mean there is ‘no harm caused’.

That is why I asked why you think ‘innocent people’ do not ‘deserve harm’. Generally speaking we all understand what you meant and generally speaking myself and others have tried to point out why your claim is not fully justified because it is parcelling up ‘innocent’ as having a concrete meaning that you insist others adhere to. Hopefully you can see why this is not necessarily the case although in society today it is generally something many people will believe without bothering to question it … just like antinatalists insist what they are saying is something that questions common assumptions.

Why's that ironic? Are you Alanis Morrissette? — Bartricks

:rofl: Absit iniuria Janus