I'm confused that the thread got merged, especially when the other thread specified that he didn't want to get into the typical antinatalist stuff. — Terrapin Station

Right. The typical anti-natalist stuff always involves responses where people explain why they think that people are entitled to have children, whereas his discussion involves responses where people explain why they think that people are entitled to have children.

I asked him about rights realism because he was framing his discussion in terms of rights. — Terrapin Station

Since rights aren't exclusive to ethical realism, that makes no sense.

Straw man? — NOS4A2

Yes. You attacked a much simpler and weaker stance which you came up with yourself:

If the news shows a swastika or racial vandalism, for example, I don’t think a bunch of neo-Nazis are going to rise from the ground and start attacking people. — NOS4A2

I said I didn’t want hate speech censored, not that I’d “rather have his speech published to a wide audience”. I don’t know how you leaped from what I said to your interpretation. — NOS4A2

What you're quoting out of context is a logical consequence of what you said, not what you said. Which part of the logic I set out for you are you seemingly incapable of following? There was no leap. You replied to my explanation by dismissing it with the mischaracterisation that it's a word salad, which suggests that you possibly have brain damage, as it was perfectly understandable.

I approve of the discussion merger.

When we talk about rights, at least in the American context, there is the claim that they are endowed by our Creator, which is a religious reference. Atheists also believe we have all sorts of rights, but I think it's harder for them to establish a basis for them. — Hanover

It definitely isn't, because those whose arguable justification depends on the existence of a Creator have the infinitely harder task of first establishing the existence of a Creator.

Atheists can easily appeal to the moral sentiment common to us all.

We're entitled to have children by default, in accordance with liberalism, and we only lose that entitlement if there's a valid reason for it, which would be a matter for social services, not the whackier members of this philosophy forum.

Lacking any justified objections, we can have children if we so desire. The only objections that I've seen (and I've seen a lot of them over the years) are riddled with faults, such as exaggeration and cherry picking. In the other discussion, an argument was made which commited a fallacy of relevance by referring to necessity or a guarantee, which simply aren't required as part of the justification which I accept.

What if we're not realists on rights? — Terrapin Station

What of it? I'm not a realist on rights, and I'm the one who made the claim. There's no contradiction there because obviously as an ethical anti-realist, I abide by an interpretation of rights consistent with that stance.

Forget it. I thought there was an opportunity to do some actually philosophy here. But it seems you aren't interested in that. — petrichor

On the contrary, it's because I'm interested in actual philosophy that I'm so critical of lines of inquiry which are a waste of time because we already know the answer. The question of what rights are is not controversial enough for me to have much of an interest in.

Haven't you ever read Plato? I was trying to draw you into something a bit like a Socratic dialogue, my role being that of gadfly. You clearly don't want to examine your beliefs. And that's fine. I'll go play elsewhere. — petrichor

I was well aware of what you were trying to do in playing Socrates, but that's an approach to philosophy which I am critical of, hence why I reacted in the way that I did. I say stop the pretence, let's start with what we know, and then we might have a chance of getting somewhere productive. That's what I consider doing actual philosophy. It does help to have common sense and intelltual honesty.

But I'm quite happy to forget it.

I already made clear my reason for asking you what rights are. — petrichor

You made a point about a circular definition without addressing my criticism that you know the answer to your question without my assistance, and that you are in fact merely feigning ignorance because apparently you think that that's what philosophy is all about.

I don't think you can justify your claim that we are entitled to have children. — petrichor

And that's just speculation or opinion which I see little reason to care a great deal about.

You accused someone else of not understanding entitlement. — petrichor

Yes, and understandably so, because he seemed to be conflating it with freedom.

I suspect that you don't understand what you're accusing that person of not understanding. — petrichor

I don't care about your uncharitable suspicions. You can keep them to yourself.

Just a flat assertion that we have a right to X and then a "defense" of that claim by just accusing people of not understanding rights is not going to fly in philosophy circles. — petrichor

That clearly wasn't intended as a defence of the claim that people are entitled to start a family. You're just trying to make me look bad, and you're coming across as elitist.

I don’t think hate speech should be censored. If the news shows a swastika or racial vandalism, for example, I don’t think a bunch of neo-Nazis are going to rise from the ground and start attacking people. — NOS4A2

You're deliberately picking examples which are more likely to skew the outcome in your favour, just like Terrapin Station has done a couple of times now.

Stop wasting time attacking a straw man. This is what I actually put to you:

So you'd rather have his speech published to a wide audience, which is exactly what he wants. And if, out of that audience, a number of people are converted to his ideology, and maybe even go on to commit serious crimes in the name of that ideology, then that's alright with you. — S

And is the supporting evidence:

As mentioned earlier, the case of Anjem Choudary.

It says that he was convicted of terrorism offences, because they were obviously going to nail him for a more severe crime if they could, but it's hate speech.

It’s well worth reading the remarks delivered by the judge in Choudary’s sentencing. Despite only finally falling foul of the law after being found to have pledged support to Isis, Holyrode points out that Choudary used his platform to spread his messages of division and violence long before he was arrested. Choudary is said to have “taken every opportunity to address audiences by various means”. He said to Choudary: “You wanted to address a large audience because you know that you were held in high regard by your followers, and that they could therefore be expected to be influenced by what you said.”

“Those who already held views in favour of Isis would no doubt have been encouraged and strengthened in those views by what you said, and that in itself makes your offending serious; but you were also aiming at a wider audience,” the judgment continues.

Choudary’s views, and more importantly his ability to communicate and share them, led to his extremism being propagated. What’s more, we know they contributed to encouraging others to engage in acts of indiscriminate, abhorrent violence. He was linked to one of the men who killed the soldier Lee Rigby, and the London Bridge attacker, Khuram Butt. His words are said to have influenced at least 100 British jihadists.
— The Guardian

From here.

And from the same article linked above, with regard to Darren Osbourne, perpetrator of the Finsbury Park mosque terrorist attack:

Police say it took just three or four weeks for Osborne’s extremism to emerge – evidence from devices he used show that he accessed posts by Tommy Robinson, Britain First and others.
— The Guardian

And oh, look:

Tommy Robinson banned from Facebook and Instagram over hate speech

Jayda Fransen: Ex-Britain First deputy leader convicted over hate speech — S

The links didn't cross over in the quote, but you can find them in the original post by clicking the link contained in my username just under the quote above.

I just looked it up in the dictionary. Basically it says that entitlements are rights. And if I look up rights, basically it says they are entitlements. Each is even listed as a synonym of the other. Not very helpful! — petrichor

Okay, so... what? You expect me to believe that you haven't a clue what a right is, what it entails, and that you can't think up any examples, despite racking your brains?

Why should I humour you in this charade? What would I get out of that?

I understand that this is a philosophy forum. I joined it years before you did. And of course I understand what entitlement is. Why should I care about your presumptuous speculation about me?

What I think is that sometimes people try to rationalise the asking of stupid questions by suggesting that it is the mark of a profound philosophical investigation.

What a convoluted word salad. — NOS4A2

Hardly. And I only felt it necessary to clarify in greater detail because you were evidently so confused over my initial more brief and straightforward wording.

I wouldn’t mind if the media showed us hate speech, if that’s what you’re getting at. — NOS4A2

Clearly I was getting at more than just that. So I take it that you accept the rest of what I said also? Or did you just decide to ignore the related points I put to you, as though I never made them? Selective reading, is it?

Do you want to try again, since you've failed to properly address my point twice now? Perhaps it will be a case of third time lucky, though I don't have high expectations of you.

As has the press coverage in the UK. The reality though is that Corbyn is not remotely radical, and has not proposed a single policy that goes beyond what has already been implemented in the country and then dismantled. Some public housing, a national railway and power system, a national post, a national health service, and some workers' rights. It's all so mainstream that only Americans and propagandists would even call it unusual. — unenlightened

Yeah. Also, nationalising the railways, for example, is known through polling to be highly popular with the general public.

The first priority is to vote out the Conservatives, so I’ll vote for whoever has the best chance of beating them. — Michael

I agree, just don't let my party know about my agreement. I'll be voting for Labour, of course.

And also, that Corbyn is a misguided idealist (at best) whom many reasonable voters would never vote for (as Tony Blair is saying.) — Wayfarer

The same Jeremy Corbyn who won a larger share of the vote than Tony Blair in 2005?

I am in a safe Tory seat unfortunately and will vote for the remain alliance, which ever party represents this. — Punshhh

You can't risk basing your decision on the notion of safe seats. What were thought to be safe seats were taken by both of the main parties in the last general election. For example, Labour took Kensington from the Tories with a hair's breadth.

Bratwurst. — T Clark

Too many syllables. I reckon that would come out like, "Brashvurrrghsh".

There's only one letter in your name. — T Clark

Username. Maybe that can be today's word of the day.

Would you knowingly hop on a perpetual roller coaster though? Obviously not. Then it’s not worth starting is it? — khaled

It's not a perpetual roller coaster, it's a perpetual roller coaster ride if you never reach a point where it isn't worth continuing. Personally, I'd get off at some point.

You did when you claimed that life being enjoyable makes it (guarantees it is) worth starting. — khaled

No, you're just putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about guarantees. Like I said, for lots of people, life is worth living, and worth living on the basis that it's enjoyable, and you can't enjoy anything if you aren't alive.

I was pointing out that life being worth living through doesn’t guarantee it being worth starting. — khaled

And I responded that no one said anything about guarantees, and that guarantees are irrelevant. Don't send us around in circles.

Agreed. People who are alive have an interest in continuing living. That doesn’t guarantee the experience is worth starting as I’ve said. — khaled

Guarantees are irrelevant, as I've said, and as you're making me repeat.

Arguing from popularity is a fallacy first of all. — khaled

Yes, it is a fallacy. Well done. It is a fallacy I haven't committed.

So I’m going to ask YOU this: do you think every experience worth living through is worth starting? — khaled

Doesn't matter.

Now the burden of proof is on you to show that life is worth starting. Because it being worth living doesn’t logically guarantee that. — khaled

Guarantees are irrelevant. I'll keep pointing that out if you keep bringing it up. I don't have a burden to show that life is worth starting, because I've already fulfilled it. Life is worth starting because life is worth living for lots of people. The odds are favourable, and you have the option of leaving the table.

No. — khaled

Yes.

It would be to suggest those lives are not worth starting. — khaled

That's literally nonsense, as they've already started.

Let me ask an alternative question then: is genetically modifying children to blind them ethical? — khaled

The question is irrelevant.

And if not why not when you’ve said that having blind children is ethical. — khaled

Nothing I've said commits me to the view that modifying children to blind them is ethical, so I don't need to answer for that.

I did say that it can be ethical to have blind children, and I stand by that.

A cat with no arms or legs isn't a snake. It's a doorstop. — Hanover

My doorstop just bit me.

faust handschuh. — T Clark

Is that someone trying to order a ham sandwich whilst suffering a stroke?

Number of letters in my first name: 6. Number of letters in my middle name: 6. Number of letters in my last name: 6.

Okie dokie.

If you could just grab that domain name before someone else takes it. :up: — Baden

Already on it. Apparently it's owned by a Mr. Porat, though he's selling it for £100,000.

That’s not reasoning that’s just your intuition. — khaled

No, it's basic reasoning of a form we all make all of the time: that's worth doing, so let's do it.

Every experience worth starting is worth continuing (at least I can’t think of a counter example) but not vice versa. — khaled

Not that it matters, but it's easy to think of counterexamples. A perpetual roller coaster ride? No thanks. There'd definitely be a point where it wouldn't be worth continuing.

guarantee — khaled

No one said anything about guarantees, either. That's another irrelevant point like your point about necessity. Again, there are lots of things worth doing that don't require a guarantee, and this is one of them.

I agree. Having your skull folded and bent as you scream in pain is much worse. Childbirth is a painful experience for both mothers and children. So my analogy is apt this far. — khaled

They're obviously both painful, yes. Hence your analogy is indeed apt in that one respect. It's an apt analogy, so long as you ignore a whole bunch of important differences. So pretty useless overall.

I don’t understand what this has to do with anything. It’s almost as if you’ve already declared starting life the goal when that is exactly the topic of debate. — khaled

It obviously has to do with my reasoning in relation to the topic. Life is worth living for lots of people, and you can't have a life worth living if you don't begin to live. It's not rocket science.

I think you’re misunderstanding what I meant. I was saying that life being an experience worth living through doesn’t mean it is worth starting. — khaled

But it does mean exactly that for lots of people. That's the point.

I understand that the gouging eyes out example isn’t the best. — khaled

That's an understatement if ever I saw one.

How about: having a child knowing they will be blind. Is that ethical for you? — khaled

It can be, yes. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that the lives of blind people aren't worth living on account of their blindness, and I think that a lot of blind people would strongly dispute that, and would probably find it highly offensive.

The Worthless Pseudo-Intellectual Nerousis Waste Of Time Trivial Folly Inconclusive Incoherent Play Dumb Charade Pathetic Morons I Hate You All Die Mother Fuckers Forum.

What is a right? — petrichor

You know what a right is without requiring me to define it, and you're capable of thinking of examples.

Anyway, so we're talking about a newspaper article? What was the link to it again? — Terrapin Station

Your request for me to effectively spoon feed you actually offends me.

Whether or not the living think life is worth living has nothing to do with whether or not they can add more people. — khaled

Of course it does. What an absurd denial.

Because there is a difference between an experience worth living through and an experience worth starting. Example: blindness is an experience worth living through but that doesn’t make it ok to go around hacking people’s eyes out does it? — khaled

Yes, there's a distinction, and obviously the reasoning is that because life is an experience worth living through, it's worth starting. Your analogy would be a false analogy in the full context of this discussion, because the experience of being born is nothing like the experience of having your eyes hacked out, and you don't need to have your eyes hacked out in order to start life.

Similarly, life is worth living through but that doesn't necessarily justify adding more people to it does it? — khaled

Who said anything about necessity? That's a red herring. Lot's of things aren't necessary, but are nevertheless worth doing.

Even though in both cases the person in question will likely get over the difficulties of blindness/life and come to enjoy it later. — khaled

Except that the two are not judged in the same way, so they're not truly analogous in this respect either. Way more people are glad to have been born, and many people would give you a funny look if you framed it as something to get over. That's obviously not the case with getting your eyes hacked out. Terrible argument.

To reject my argument we must resort to a utilitarian calculus dependent on an improbability of the consequences I described or balancing suffering with happiness. However these are all, as you know, probabilities and we can never be sure of them to the degree required to allow us to make a decision. — TheMadFool

Yeah we can. Look around you. You'll see a world full of people. People have been sure enough to make that decision for hundreds of years. Your objection has been rejected innumerable times. It is not considered a serious enough objection.

I don't think it'd be good advice to avoid being hurt at all costs. Some experiences in life require you to get hurt. That doesn't make being hurt a good thing somehow, but it does mean I don't really want my children to never get hurt. — Echarmion

Exactly. I completely agree. That's what I mean about how shortsighted what he said is. It's like he either hasn't thought it through properly, or worse: he's deliberately leaving out important factors because they don't work in his favour.

In very simple terms either your child will hurt or get hurt. — TheMadFool

This is astoundingly shortsighted when you think about it. I was a child once. You were a child once. We all were a child once. We've all hurt and been hurt. Who here wishes they were never born? Not I.

I asked you twice now if we were talking about his written decision in the case. You never answered. — Terrapin Station

I deliberately ignored that because it should be blindingly obvious what I was referring to. How many times have I referred you to the remarks delivered by the judge in Choudary's sentencing, as quoted in the Guardian article?

And then I asked if you had a link to the decision (or whatever you would have been referring to if not his decision). i said I was only finding articles about it. You never responded to that. — Terrapin Station

If you mean what the outcome was, as in his sentence, that was all there for you to easily access through the link in the original post. I can't work out whether you're being really lazy or you're just staggeringly incompetent.

You did say that the judge didn't explicitly claim that hate speech legislation has a connection to controlling terrorism. — Terrapin Station

And I also said that your emphasis on that was a frankly ridiculous debate tactic.

I think ethics is more important than entitlement. I'm entitled to eat meat but is it ethical to kill animals? — TheMadFool

Entitlement is part of ethics. It means having a right. You don't seem to understand what entitlement is. It isn't the same as freedom. Your question makes no sense. If you're entitled to eat meat, and the only way for that to happen is for animals to be killed, then it must be ethical for animals to be killed, otherwise how could you be entitled to eat meat?

Of course people are free to choose. That's not the issue. It's about the ethics of having children and clearly, if you don't want your child to hurt anyone or get hurt, both of which are inevitable and unethical, then people should NOT have children. — TheMadFool

Do you not understand what entitlement means?

And regarding what you say about people not wanting their child to hurt anyone or get hurt, that's fine. That's just part and parcel of life, and people can and do still value and enjoy their lives regardless. Virtually everyone concludes that it's much better for the child to live in the first place.

Is there any academic source that suggests that hate speech legislation would have something to do with controlling terrorism? — Terrapin Station

Did you not read the remarks delivered by the judge in Choudary’s sentencing? Did you not read about the cases linked to Choudary's hate speech? The judge is an authority when it comes to hate speech and crime.

Or you did, but you're just going to keep asking for something else. Fine, be unreasonable. There's obviously no convincing you, and you're just going to keep making the same stupid requests.

It just doesn’t follow that me defending his free speech means I’d rather his speech published to a wide audience. — NOS4A2

Try not to lose track. It shouldn't be that difficult to follow the logic. We were talking about the media publishing a censored hate speech, as opposed to the full details of it. The media has a wide audience. You are totally against censorship, and you said that you would rather know, than to remain ignorant, as you would do under censorship. That implies that you'd be okay with a fully uncensored publication by the media, which would reach a wide audience, which is exactly what the perpetrators of hate speech desire. And if you're okay with that, then in order to be consistent, you should accept the potential consequences of that stance.

You can't have it both ways.

Bandwagon fallacy? :broken: — TheMadFool

No, I'm not suggesting that it's true because lots of people believe it, I'm suggesting that it's none of your business to presume that you know better than them and to contradict them. That's not warranted. If you think that life isn't worth living, than you can make your own decisions with regard to your own life, and keep out of the lives of others. People are entitled to start a family if they so desire.

I’d like to hear those. I don’t mean this in a challenging or standoffish way, I’m just curious if there’s any I haven’t heard before. — khaled

Surely you've heard this before. All the people who think that life is worth living.

See argument — Bartricks

No argument can support such a conclusion. There's no such thing as an immaterial soul, except in religious fiction.